Ghost of a Tale

Fun adventure. Light stealth.

Truly a gem

РЕКОМЕНДОСЬОН!!!
Ghost of a Tale = Fable + Dark Souls + Hitman

+ Отличное приключение в интересном мире
+ Классные игровые механики
+ Интригующий сюжет
+ Хорошая графика
+ Отсутсвие багов

Perhaps the cutest game I have ever played!

Growing up in the 90’s, I was practically glued to my television set watching Canadian Networks such as Teletoon and YTV, where I was subjected to some pretty banger Series such as Redwall and the lesser-seen Toad Patrol with both series appearing rather joyful and light-hearted due to their cartoonish anthropomorphic art style but delved into darker themes under their colorful facades.

So, coming across something Like Ghost of a Tale a good 2 and a half decades after I first watched those series struck a Nostalgic nerve. I expected a light adventure, something akin to what I used to play on the Gamecube and Xbox but I was quite surprised by just how charming the whole package ended up being!

Ghost of a Tale begins in a jail cell, not exactly a place anyone wants to be, especially for our Boi, Tilo the Minstrel Mouse! Who is not only missing his freedom but the presence of his Wife, Merra! Thankfully, his claustrophobic predicament is short-lived as a note and a key to his cell is quickly presented to him by an unseen ally who may be Tilo’s only hope of escaping the jail and seeing his wife again!

Right off the bat, the presentation is exquisitely detailed and adorable, with characters like Tilo easily fitting into their high-fidelity surroundings while sporting very charming designs that don’t feel out of place or cartoonish regardless of their appearance. Gameplay is also tight to control and easy to get into, with the prison itself unveiling new locations to the player as a tight-knit Metroidvania approach that ties in well with the RPG mechanics of leveling up Tilo’s stats and abilities to better navigate the Prison of Dwindling Heights and it’s many denizens that unfortunately call it home.

Speaking of whom, Tilo meets quite the motley crew of characters in and around the jail who can both help and hinder his adventure and many can be fooled by Tilo’s ability to masquerade as a new character with the outfits he can quickly assemble to both elude and blend in with the Guards. Without spoiling anything, there were many times I just grinning ear to ear from the humorous and engaging writing chops on full display and I can’t for the life of me name one bad character from this whole game!

However, Ghost of a Tale is not without its shortcomings.

For one, the second half of the game is truly a stress-test on the players ability to navigate the labyrinthine design of the Prison as the map isn’t much of a help when it comes to the endless parade of fetch-quests Tilo is tasked with. While I myself never had much trouble as by the time I came across these quests, most of the time I had the items I needed as I was quite the kleptomaniac (Only two quests requiring a guide on where to find very obscure items notwithstanding, sheesh!) but players who are not as nosy as I am would most certainly be quite tired of running back and forth avoiding patrols.

Speaking of which, the game itself is very upfront about it’s stealth focus and use of disguises as Tilo is anything but a confrontational fighter, so it can be quite surprising when there are times where he will have no choice but to fight spiders and if they are not prepared enough for them it can be easy for some to soft-lock themselves especially with the limited amount of healing supplies and gold most players can find on their own especially given the sudden spikes of difficulty when spotted in some places even with high armour and health stats!

Regardless, I couldn’t deny just how charming the writing, characters and world are regardless of some of it’s gameplay shortcomings, especially as I felt like this game helped hone my navigation skills that have been hampered by years of icons and yellow paint pointing me in the way I need to go. If you are willing to overcome these obstacles, then Ghost of a Tale is certainly one you won’t soon forget!

Here’s hoping the Sequel that has been teased this year comes to fruition!

yes

Lovely game , just started playing, Really impressed.
Graphics are superb. Rat looks so real with a guitar on back .
Give it a try , 5 star.

Such a fantastic game. I really hope they make a sequel.

beautiful and boring infiltration

I've played this game before, but on a different platform. It feels like an old game you would play on our dad's brick PC growing up, the sense of nostalga is so strong with this one. Also reminds me of an old book (and animated film) The Tale of Despereaux.
Wishing and praying for a sequel!
Higly recommend!

I thouroughly enjoyed my time with this very sweet and engaging adventure game ! So much so that I wish the developper would expand on this rich and charming universe !

Fun game.

How is the release date for 2018 when I've had this game since around december 2017?
Regardless, for what I can remember playing it: the game was fun, adorable and all around worth the money spent on it.

Lots of character, a well done indie game. I'll be starting a second play through.

What a glorious game! Rich story and likable characters. It was a joy to play.

Great story, great graphics, great soundtrack and great gameplay. Missions are sometimes a bit vague and there's a lot of running back and forth, but all in all I've truly enjoyed this game,

This game was a lot of fun. The major action for the main character is eluding enemies. So if you like lovely landscapes and searching for items you will enjoy this game.

This game was a delightful experience, dripping in personality! It never felt too difficult or too easy! I genuinely cared for the characters! The music is some of the best I've heard in some time! Lovely!

I wanted to love this game because it's cute as hell. Athmosphere, animations, lore and all are really good. Plays pretty well and overall the setup is great.

But they chose the worst type of missions to fill the game with. I don't think there's a single person that likes fetch missions. And this game chose to put them at the forefront. Bouncing between fetch missions and others that simply drag way too much till the point they drain your energy.

That's a lot of work and love put to build a game with such an abusive set of missions.

I don't mind backtracking if the mission is interesting. But going a 100 times through the same places trying to find 17 roses, 10 types of mushrooms (8 number of each), burning 13 banners, X sets of clothing with 6 pieces each, 7 beetles, 10 ash urns, X ingredients for a drink, X ingredients to dye someone's beard, more than 20 different keys, lighting 9 candles in very separate places IN ORDER or they RESET, and more.

There are so many things in this game's presentation that I love. But it drained my energy till the last drop to the point I uninstalled it. I wanted to have fun and I ended up having anxiety.

So if you hate these type of missions like me, and games with missions that overstate their welcome, this is definetly not for you.

Idiotic counter intuitive control scheme. Runs like garbage. Looks great.

I don't understand the high praise for this game. I tried to beat it, I really did, but it's just awful. Nothing but pointless fetch quests that you make you go back and forth between the same exact same copy and pasted assets. The maps are useless. Tilo runs out of stamina within 1 second and then is slow as shit. Wearing that dumb-ass armor so the guards don't bother you is slow as fuck....That main story-line then forces you to do the asine fetch quests I was hoping to skip. I get this was made by a small team, but like really? Do you think most people's idea of fun is to collect pieces of fucking clothing in a game?

Thumb up but it's 5/10. -5 for the gameplay and it's very tiring. You need to backtrack back and forth. No fast travel makes everything less enjoyable.

a nice little game.

An incredible game that i wish had a sequel

I don't get the positive reviews, it's like we are playing 2 different games. The stealth gameplay is very boring and unpolished.

Amazing hidden gem. The story and the characters are great and it reminded me a lot of Redwall. I really hope a sequel will be released.

It's simply a fetch quest game. Lot of quests are so vague on what to do or where to go pretty sure you are gonna look for a walkthrough.
Gameplay is bare bone and the game is easy enough but some achievements are just ridiculous to get when the entire game is not even that engaging.
Story is fine though with some little twists here and there.
Good for one time playthorugh

Good game, looks beautiful, very nice area design, gameplay is fun, especially once you get used to it.
Only remarks: Quest description could be a bit better and the last " quest" is kinda rubbish.

I really enjoyed this game! Loved the characters/dialogue/exploration. It got tedious at times with the fetch quests and backtracking. Even with maps I was still getting lost and not knowing where to find anything. I definitely had to pull up guides to finish certain quests. Even then I really liked this game and I can't wait for the sequel.

Great little self published indie game with 10-15 hours of game play depending on side quests and collectables.

The game is all about exploration, stealth and the search for your mouse wife Merra after escaping your prison cell (with a little help). The games primary focus is on the story and exploration as there is no combat except for a few thrown items at some creatures during your journey. The map is relatively small but you do spend a lot of time in each area and unlock secret passageways and paths to connect them together and make traversal faster. Doing manual saves often will help for those who want to get all the achievements as after you progress past certain points a few quests are unable to be completed as characters are unavailable.

There are plenty of guides online to help you out if you get stuck and you can even trick out your mouse character with a number of different outfits.

Recommended.

Can't recommend because i can't play it. Game has massive bugs during startup and in menu -> unplayable for me

Such a small game, in such a huge world, that really needs to be expanded upon! Sequels, films or books I'll gladly buy em!

The story, the characters, the lore, the music and the environment I love it all.

The game itself honestly reminds me a lot about Redwall, and if you like Redwall, you'll love this game.

(Don't be a pirate scrunt, buy it!)

Fantastic game, beautiful graphics and story. Can't wait for the sequel

A neat, charming, very well told little adventure with smart use of limited resources. It has great, likable characters and clever, charming writing; it managed to make me emotionally invested.

Only real issue I have with it, other than perhaps a repetitive structure (lots of fetch quests) and minor bugs, is that while it looks very nice, it's also quite difficult to parse and orient yourself. It took me far too long before I stopped getting lost over and over again, and that's WITH maps. Travelling between locations is fun at first, as it's a neat little world to explore, but then you have to find your way back, just there and back again, many times if you happen to miss something. At one point I missed a single item and it took me hours until I managed to make any progress. Eventually I had to use a guide. None of this was helped by a stamina system that mostly becomes irrelevant eventually, yet a constant nuisance.

Also, at a certain point almost all tension is removed, replaced with inventory management, which is very weird direction for what is mostly a stealth game.

Still, the fact that it managed to grow on me and tell its story as well as it did is more than enough of a reason to recommend it. I also got it cheap during a sale, so I don't have too much to complain about.

I've got this game for 2$ on steam sale, and found out it's better than any coming out trash for 69$.

Life changing game fr.
Before I used to hate rats and mice, but now I wonder where's their armor when i see one lol

Ghost of a Tale feels like discovering a hidden gem. Its charming world and adorable hero, Tilo, hooked me instantly. The stealth gameplay is creative, and exploring the gorgeous medieval setting is so much fun! The story is emotional and meaningful, making me care about every detail. It’s a fresh, unforgettable experience for indie game fans!

Just finished the game prior to this review.
Story-wise, a lot to unpack by talking to NPCs (aside from a certain mission), and the mystery of the plot keeps you going.
Gameplay-wise, being a tiny character in a big open world has its pros and cons (previously played the Styx franchise so I'm all too familiar with the format). A bit tedious at times since majority of the quests are Fetch Quests (especially the Mushrooms/Apothecarist missions).
Minor issues include:
a. Hardware optimization since the game crashes at times for me (especially when I'm progressing thru a mission and it happens)
b. Got softlocked on a side quest since I progressed the Main and Side quests too much (Had to replay almost 3 hours worth just to catch up to my previous save)
c. Some characters only spawn at certain times of the day and when you're progressing on a mission and the NPC you have to talk to isn't there (had to double check and restart the game at first since I thought the NPC model didn't spawn lol)

Tl;dr I enjoyed the game despite some issues, and I hope the sequel addresses these issues.
And please, give Silas his justice aaaaaaa (No spoilers)

This was a great game! i couldn't stop playing! Looking forward to the next game!!!

I did not think to much about this game. I loved the visual from the first teaser, but god damn i could not even imagine how quickly and how much it would pull me into the game and its story. I finished it in two sittings and wasnt bored for a second. The gameplay mechanics are not hard to understand and player can quickly adapt to them. I loved each npc trough out the whole game. Dialogues didnt feel like a chore but very well written event and stories.
I hope more game like this one will appear in the future.

From a small company especially, I commend it. Recommend it. Beautiful and cute, adventure and lore. Love it. Just be wary of the search for whatever it is when you get stuck, running all over the map to find the next piece of the puzzle that continues the story is a bit tedious and arduous. I hate googling things for what to do next. I somehow ended up figuring it all out without googling, but you will get stuck a few times and most people should probably google how to get unstuck. I hate games that lead to google. I will just say the only way I figured it all out without google was many hours of hard headed efforts. checking notes, talking to everybody with different "fits" (annoying but it worked, should've been a clue for some of these). I got stuck in this game probably 6 different times and it was kind of annoying that it was basically just a search around the entire world of Tale for a single missed item in a random spot, not good for any developer to put in a game without clues to some of those. I'm not trying to spend 2 days looking for a single fricken item. if the game had been a fraction less cute, or if I wasn't obsessed with medieval times, probably would've abandoned this game. Also, not a fan of challenges like "go through the entire game without being noticed a single time!". To me that's a fishing challenge. A developer studio exec is making some decision to keep people playing this game as many hours as humanly possible, so make a challenge that will cause them to be stuck for over 100 hours. Nah, that's BS. In the end is was a nice game with some hiccups, I would only buy it on a 80+% off sale as it stands

Ghost of a Tale est un jeu dans lequel on incarne une souris qui se réveille dans la cellule d'un donjon avec peu ou pas d'explications. Le but du jeu sera donc de comprendre où on est, ce qu'il faut faire et ce, sans se faire remarquer par les multiples gardes rats. Ce que j'en ai retiré:

+ Les phases d'explorations sont vraiment bien. L'environnement est large et plutôt complexe, donc plein de trucs à voir. Plus on explore, plus on débloque des raccourcis entre les divers endroits.
+ Beaucoup de choses à collectionner et beaucoup de lore.

- La musique est très belle, mais on ne l'entend malheureusement que 25% du temps. La majorité du jeu se fera sans musique, ce qui est un peu triste.
- Les allez-retours répétés deviennent vite une corvée. La taille du château et les gardes à éviter n'aident pas la chose.

Je pense que ce jeu vaut la peine d'y jouer, mais il vaut mieux être averti quant aux points négatifs mentionnés.

Super cozy and fun game, can't wait for a sequel or something else set in the world of Ghost of a Tale.

Game will not start on my computer. I've tried reinstalling it 3x and it freezes on the opening scene with the flame. I have not had this trouble with any other Steam games I've played.

This game has the aesthetic of Redwall and an interesting story. Good gameplay and great design. I am thoroughly enjoying it.

I'm in awe with the worldbuilding of this game. They managed to create that feeling of the world being a huge place full of history, from which you are only experiencing a very small part. This made it super interesting to explore for me. Also, the characters and dialogs are so well written, cute and genuinely funny quite often. The gameplay with its mechanics is great too, and it all works to create a really wholesome and immersive experience. If you like well-built fantasy worlds and value a good story, you'll likely consider this a gem!

Heart-warming, amusing, and artistic . You can't but fall in love with the game. Very much hope there will be part 2...
There are certain technical issues, though. But the game is definitely worth playing.

Word of advice: try to finish secondary quests first. And the order you do it matters.

I loved this, evoking a dark fantasy vibe and finding out after hand it was a solo developer who was aiming for that.
Starts of small and humble, ends on an unexpected epic high, with all the cute goofiness of some of the characters becoming soberingly haunted ptsd issues.
Now I’m eager for part 2.

I’ve played through 3 times. 3rd time on the switch and noticed the downgrade in graphics and nerf of the sticks(?). I’ve recommended to multiple friends and still on the story high.

My recommendation is more to the developer than the player. One word:
Signposting :) (well playtesting would have led to signposts)

Signposts are physically required to point to the commander office, harbour, commission, northern shore.
I was constantly confused the lift-gate being the west gate and the only way to the harbour.

Signpost to from the northern slopes to the old watchtower, because spoilers.

A major issue for me was the “gating” of the armour, relying on picking the pocket of a very hard to get to guard, and very hard to steal from guard as well.

The armour unlocks the commanders quest line, Silas quests, and ergo finishing off Gusto and Fatale stealth skill set, which become pointless because now you have access to a disguise. First play through,
I had literally had brute forced my way into the commission and solved the spoiler before I even knew there was a quest line and a find the missing spoiler subplot which was accessible with suit of armour disguise. Figured that out on my second play through.

Rolo peppering the player to meet on the northern slopes and not the shoreline. As that line of dialogue is muttered once and never again.

Signposting the importance of the Ranger disguise by a comment from the other mice or Rolo that Tilo is running round the keep like he’s ranger.

Even on my 3rd play through I was getting hung-up on the gating of game-states denying progress, basically how main quests and side quests should dovetail together.

Game development gripes, but from a solo-dev, whose had this in their minds for years, it’s understandable,
the story and world building is amazing.

Patch in the signposts,
Move the armoury key to a guard inside the keep.

Ghost of a Tale is one of the most charming little games i've played in a while ,and even though you play as a little mouse , by calling it little i don't want to belittle it whatsoever.... well that was a mouthful.

This game is 'little' not because it is very short or there's a lack of content, it is 'little' because of the homey feeling it gives of. A lot of different things contribute to invoking that feeling . Art style is cozy and nice, soundscape as well. Overall theme of being a little mouse trying to sneak around giant rats you can't defeat works towards that as well.

But the main thing which makes this game so special for me is that sense of adventure and being lost in a best possible way. This will sound strange perhaps but Ghost of a Tale is first game since i've played Dark Souls back in early 2010's which gives me that adventurous sense of being lost and slowly but surely piecing layout,story and everything else together. It is a strange comparison to make i guess, but the feeling is that exact feeling i got from the DS back in a day.

Where two games are really very different is that Ghost of a Tale essentially has no combat hence you are a little mouse set against giant armored rats (imagine vermintide ) . Gameplay evolves around stealth and various tools to help you out. And that , sadly , is the weakest part of the game. It is extremely easy to be honest. There are save points literally every 10 steps and even if you get noticed you can easily run away from the danger because your assailants are not too keen on chasing you around for too long.

There are couple of nice touches like day and night cycle and certain npcs will or wont be in a place depending on time of day. I havent encountered any serious technical issues besides very little stuff, game is an Indie one so there's a lack of polish here and there but nothing to take away from the experience as well.

Overall a game for ones soul if you will. Strongly recommend for 'vibes' as kids say these days.

Fantastic, relaxing little game. Low tension, no combat, but lots to do and see. A great game for taking a break.

Very cute and challenging 10-12 hour game! Good story, memorable characters, lovely environment.

This game is incredibly charming! Right from the start, you meet the adorable little mouse, Tilo, with such cute expressions and movements. The art style is stunning, featuring a cute aesthetic that makes exploring the environment a joy. It's a truly heartwarming game that brought a smile to my face.
<3