Разработчик: Curtel Games
Описание
Мы использовали элементы игровых книг и визуальных новелл, чтобы разработать видеоигру необычного формата. В игре TBS вас ждет история в стиле фэнтези. Однако она еще не написана: сюжет меняется, реагируя на ваши действия. Благодаря этому вы сможете поучаствовать в 1700 историях и увидеть 40 различных концовок, ведь любое ваше решение повлияет на развитие истории. Каждая сюжетная линия и любая, пусть даже самая маленькая, побочная история подробно рассказана и иллюстрирована. В игре TBS каждое решение имеет значение.
- Четыре героя, каждый из которых может повести сюжет по-своему
- Асимметричные истории, переплетающиеся друг с другом
- Отправляясь на поиски приключений с одним из персонажей, вы будете всякий раз участвовать в уникальных битвах
- Ваши решения имеют огромное значения и могут полностью изменить судьбу героев
- Есть три степени сложности испытания. Обманите смерть и вернитесь в мир живых благодаря могущественным артефактам
- Игру можно проходить повторно: проходя TBS снова и снова, вы сможете увидеть последствия самых разных решений
- Domino System: решение, принятое в первые минуты игры, может иметь большие последствия во время последующих приключений
- Объемная история: более 400 000 слов и 40 часов сюжета
- Более 700 иллюстраций в высоком качестве
- Более 40 музыкальных композиций
- 400 разнообразных подробных смертей
- Смерть — это часть истории, поэтому игра не будет закончена сразу после кончины героя Когда герой умирает, вы начинаете путешествие с другим героем. Его ждут приключения в той же истории, однако в другой сюжетной ветви
Сколько дорог вы готовы пройти?
Поддерживаемые языки: english, italian
Системные требования
Windows
- ОС *: 32-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10
- Процессор: Intel Pentium 1.4GHz / AMD Athlon x4
- Оперативная память: 2 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: On-board graphic card
- DirectX: версии 11
- Место на диске: 6 GB
- Звуковая карта: Standard on-board sound card
- ОС *: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10
- Процессор: Intel Core i3 / AMD a8
- Оперативная память: 4 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: NVIDIA GeForce GTX / Radeon HD 5850
- DirectX: версии 11
- Место на диске: 6 GB
Mac
- ОС: Mac OS X 10.7
- Процессор: Intel Core i3
- Оперативная память: 4 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: Nvidia or Ati GPU with 512mb Memory
- Место на диске: 6 GB
- ОС: Mac OS X 10.8+
- Процессор: 2011 or newer Intel Core i5
- Оперативная память: 6 GB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: Nvidia or Ati GPU with 1GB Memory
- Место на диске: 6 GB
Отзывы пользователей
The game is both really good and really smart. A very interesting storytelling game where your choices do matter quite a lot, and an intelligent way of solving problems that sometimes call to the player's knowledge. You can choose your punition level too, from "I want to suffer every step of the way" to "I'm just here for the story lad please don't hurt me." You'll still be hurt a lot though, but able to come back faster.
Give it a try, it's a really good one.
As much as I would like to recommend this game, I just can't. I could say that it has beautiful graphics, is fully voiced, has an intricate story with 4 characters, who sometimes cross with each other, has nice soundtrack and several QoL features, like ability to double the speed of narrator's voice to speed up the game.
But all of this gets completely ruined by absolutely unfair death mechanic and BS choices. At the beginning of the game you're warned that you will die here, a lot, that's why developers created fate system. You have limited amount of fate points, every time your character dies you can either continue the game as other character or restart your last choice. Both of these options consume 1 fate point. Ok, so you decided to create a game that revolves around constant danger and death traps, fine. Surely, you will spend extra time making these deaths logical, so only if player actually made a mistake they would die, right? No. Most of choices in the game that lead to your death are absolutely random and, unless you already know which one is the right one, you will die not because you've made a mistake, but because you drew a short stick. Here are few examples, technically spoilers: I am an "elf" in the middle of the forest who needs to get to the cabin in the distance and sees two roads: a big, stone one or small, trodden one. She has to pick one. I chose small, trodden one. Game then tells me that I spend some time walking on that road and noticed that it leads in completely other direction from the cabin and that day is closing to the night. Now I'm faced with another choice - continue on this road, or go back and choose other road. I, thinking that this new piece of information is game hinting me that I chose wrong, choose to go back and pick the big road. And I died. Because apparently there's some shitty death trap on the big road. How was I supposed to know that? There were no hints, there was actually a fake hint that made me choose the wrong road.. Another example - I am a mage and am currently fighting a giant water elemental. She (yes, she has gender) creates a water wave and I need to defend myself. There are three options: make a tornado, create stone wall or create a flame shield around me. Now, the last one is obviously a bad desision as I'm fighting a water elemental who, surely, can easily fight fire (also, earlier in the game, we already used another water elemental to fight fire elemental, so it's logical even in game). This would be a logical death choice. Developers could choose other two choices as "right" ones - they will allow you to continue the fight, but give different texts or future options, because the fight would progress differently. That would be cool. But no. Only one of these choices is correct - tornado. Why? Why the fuck should I pick tornado, except by random? I picked the stone wall, because surely, the stone wall can stop water wave. No, you died, fool. And, despite me playing only for two hours, the game gave me tons of such choices already. They, aside from making the player angry, completely ruin the immersion. No, you're not a mage trying master the elements, you're an idiot, sitting before your PC and who was unlucky to pick the wrong choice, so now you have to reload and make the "correct" one and it's correct because developer said so. A death should be a result of either one very dumb and obviously wrong decision, or a series of bad decisions with hints that you're doing everything wrong. Not what we have here.
Let me preface this by saying this gets a recommendation by the slimmest of margins.
My Pros
The background slides are gorgeous, with several different variations of single scenes showing the changes happening as a result of your choice/s.
The voice acting is very well done, the different accents and modulation help add to the characters.
Four different protagonists (or antagonists, depending) to choose from, with the option to play entirely as one and keep yourself alive through fate points/loading a save and making different choices, or dying and picking a different character.
Replayability - see above.
That soundtrack is beautiful. I wish it was available to download.
The few controls are pretty intuitive, and are able to be changed to your preference.
Difficulty levels x 4 (appropriately) which change the amount of fate points, save points, etc you get at the start of a new campaign.
My Cons
You can't turn of the narrator. This may not bother you, but it's intolerable for me. An option to nix the narrator and just have the voiced characters would've been appreciated; unfortunately, they all fall under the one audio option.
The "loading" - which isn't actually loading, but it is disruptive. Whether you're making a choice, or simply continuing the story, everything goes black for a second or two before the next background/story slide appear. Even the music cuts off, and sometimes a different score starts playing regardless of whether you've changed scenes or not. Scene changes could've used a smoother implementation.
Four main characters. It can be done, I and I'm sure others have played games where there is more than one main character and it works. But in this game, unfortunately having four main characters doesn't feel like a good choice. None of them feel particularly fleshed out; I don't see them as people and thus aren't invested in them even slightly. I don't know how many times I got one or more of them killed and just went 'moving on'.
Secondary characters. Honestly, most of them are MacGuffins. Good voice talent, wasted.
The story is... eh. There's a good story in there, and parts if it even shine through occasionally, but it's just so choppy. You often go from one scene to the next with no context of how you got there or why you're there, because all of that context is in another characters route and apparently doesn't affect you? People die, people betray you, people kiss you, you kiss people and there's just... context? story? character development? where?!
The saving. Okay there is an auto save function, and I don't know if it's meant to work this way, but it always saved for me after I died. Like, reload on a literal death screen. Not helpful. There is a proper save function which is... not always helpful. Firstly, because you can't save whenever you like. If you're not paying attention to the icon and miss it lighting up at the bottom of the screen away from the wall of text then you'll likely miss your chance to save just before a big decision (and don't always assume what should be a 'big decision' is, apparently choosing between 'fight a dragon' or 'defend yourself' is minor league stuff) Secondly, no I didn't mistype early. You get save points. A limited amount of saving chances to use up in a game whose premise is all about the choices.
And of course, the choices. Some of them are great, and actually work the way you'd assume they would. Some of them are a bit iffy, but if you tilt your head and squint they kind of make sense. Some of them just left me thinking 'why would you give me choice a and choice b, make them almost exactly the same, leave no clue as to which is apparently the right one, and expect me to clairvoyance my way out of this death sentence?'
To sum up, is this game frustrating? Yes. Will I be playing it again sometime soon to finish up what I missed? Ha ha, no. But did I enjoy myself? Enough to say that I'll come back to this one day.
Nice artwork, "ok" story.
Reminds me a lot game/adventure books like Goosebumps and the old 80'-90' adventure books like Lone Wolf - War of the Wizard, War of the Princes - Path of the Warrior / Wizard, etc, etc...
My biggest gripes with is game are:
1. quick introduction to characters and throwing them into a heart-felt decisions you need to take without establishing a connection between the player and the character (aka, "Why i should care that X died, i know him for 5min...").
2. from the bottom of my heart i hate dying in ANY game to RNG without giving the player even a hint of what's going to come. For instance: "There is a door to the left and a door to the right, choose one" *player choose the left door* "you enter a dark room and fall to your death, GG". + do not excuse this very very bizarre and unfun mechanic with the fate system or 2nd life w/e. This is a very stupid design choice that makes point 1 above even stronger.
3. this ISNT an adventure game or choose your own adventure game, its an exercise in memory. in order to play you need to remember what killed you and what not instead of making an educated guess/move.
Would not recommend to buy even on discount.
This game has a great demo and the game itself is greater than the demo. Fascinating artstyle and interesting stories for each characters. ^^
The Ballad Singer
[table]
[tr]
[td]
Category
[/td][td]
Judgement
[/td][td]
Score
[/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Graphics[/td]
[td]Well done. It is clear that a good quality work has been put in it.[/td]
[td]8[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Plot[/td]
[td]I start by saying that I played only one character. The story is well written on the overall, and it has many narrative choices along the way that lead to different paths. Even your character's death (if it happens) has consequences on the development of the story. My playthrough lasted around 2 - 3 hours, but I believe if you play all four characters the total duration should be around 10 hours (or more if you decide to do experiments on every possible choice that can be selected). [/td]
[td]7[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Gameplay[/td]
[td]There are few imperfections, but generally the experience was positive. [/td]
[td]6[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Sound[/td]
[td]Well done both sound effects and voice acting on the overall.[/td]
[td]7[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Music[/td]
[td]Well done and coherent under every circumstance.[/td]
[td]7[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Overall[/td]
[td]On the overall I recommend this game to anybody who likes the genre. If you are the kind of player who wants to play just with one character, the experience could be short. On the contrary, if you like playing the same adventure with different characters (who live and act in different places and live different experiences), then the duration will considerably increase.[/td]
[td]3.5 / 5[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
If you came here with one thumb on your lighter, ready to lose yourself in some heart-wrenching ballads, I'm afraid I've got bad news for you. I didn't encounter my first ballad until at least 3 or 4 hours in, and it was pretty underwhelming when it finally arrived.
Yeah, their choice of titles doesn't make a lot of sense, and neither do most of the other choices in this game.
Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. They always told me not to judge a book by its cover, and that's exactly what I did. Can you blame me, though? On the surface it looks great. It's got that Extremely Fantasy, D&D manual sort of vibe. Everywhere you look you find fierce monsters and sharpened blades, towering dragons, fireball-hurling wizards and pots of stew consumed in shady inns full of adventures just waiting to happen.
Then there are the characters. You've got your glowering assassin with knives hidden everywhere, your green-clad ranger who must have a lot of trouble with mosquitoes out in the woods, your standard power-mad evil mage, and a crusty old warrior who could have stepped right out of a David Gemmell novel.
It's all brought to life with dramatic music and page after page of colorful illustrations. What more could you want, huh?
Quite a bit, as it turns out.
While they may hit all the familiar fantasy notes and wrap it up in plenty of glitzy presentation, you can only delay the inevitable for so long. Sooner or later a Choose Your Own Adventure story like this has to deliver an actual story, and that's where things go wrong in just about every way you can imagine, and some you probably couldn't.
The theory here isn't so bad. You pick one of those four characters and lead them through a grand fantasy adventure. Each one plays a different role in the main story and offers a different perspective on the events. They give you a limited number of second chances if you screw up and die, and once they're gone you can continue the story with one of the others, carrying over the consequences of your previous choices. That's the idea, but in reality it ends up being a complete mess.
None of the characters have any real personality and they're pretty much just defined by their jobs. There are a few token efforts to establish their various pasts, but for the most part you don't get to experience anything that engages you emotionally and helps you connect with them as people.
You know, there's a reason they burn down your village at the start of every RPG.
Genuine character development is replaced--in one of the most bizarre design choices I've ever seen--with the opportunity to abandon the main story altogether and go off on a random tangent that has nothing to do with the quest they've spent the whole time setting up.
I'm serious. You can just abruptly decide, "Ah, screw it. I'm going to ditch my army and go off and become a pit fighter."
It's crazy. At least half of the available paths are tied up in irrelevant stuff like this.
Even when you stick to the main plot, though, it's not much better. For all that they make a big show of allowing your decisions to shape the outcome, I never saw much evidence of it. All roads lead to you fighing the same major battle in the same place, with a few interchangeable pieces swapped around here and there.
To give you an example, your assassin takes on a mission to steal the magic sword, and you're thinking, "wow, great idea! This will make a huge difference in the final showdown!" Nope. It's a fake, and so the whole quest was a complete waste of time and accomplished nothing. The impression that you're really changing anything substantial seems to be mostly an illusion.
On a smaller scale your individual choices do have immediate consequences, but are just as poorly conceived. Maybe it's tricky to strike the right balance in an interactive story between writing strong characters and letting the player have meaningful input. In a game without detailed stats or character building options, though, you'd expect to be making broad moral or strategic decisions, thinking about the nature of your character and steering them in an appropriate direction.
Instead, you spend way too much time micromanaging things like, "Do you want to parry with your dagger and then deliver a high strike with your sword, or feint with your sword and then quickly dodge, jabbing with your..."
How the hell should I know?!
Look, I appreciate their high degree of confidence in my badass fighting instincts, but in a game like this I feel like my character ought to handle that sort of stuff while I play more of an executive role. They also resolve critical situations time and time again by making you answer riddles--including that one about the fish, straight out of The Hobbit--which seems really out of place.
That's the story of this game. Its various parts may be ok individually, but they just never fit together in a coherent way.
It's sad that it came to this, since it looks like they put a lot of work into making this game; although if you've been reading fantasy long enough then I guess you're already used to disappointment.
You can find more indie game reviews at oddlittlegames.com or visit my curator page. Thanks, and enjoy!
This is a very mediocre game that if it were not for the voice acting and the nice artwork I would consider it a bad game.
I do not recommend this game to anyone who is planning to buy it for full price but if there is a sale of 50% I guess it would be a good time waster.
I expected superb story telling and narration. But I do not have got the notion that a writer or something like that has been involved in the development of the game. What a pity! Unfortunately, the voice acting also is mediocre at best.
Love the story and characters. Art is spectacular and the voice animating is perfect. 10 stars from me. Make another please! :)
I would call this more of a "visual novel" or "choose-own-adventure" genre. It is very text-rpg like in that there's a lot more "combat choices" than most visual novels. The big difference between this and most visual novels is that instead of a sprite and general background, you have beautiful artwork describing most of the story.
I suck at D&D because apparently I really go off the story's rails. And guess what. I completely did that here and got the "explorer" ending, which was quite hard to get in as there was decent game-time for me to go off of the beaten trail. This did not disappoint. Had a stuck with the main story of adventure-- a rebellion, I'm sure I would have gotten the ending others did.
I appreciate the voice-overs, but a couple of the readers were a little dramatic. But, I'd rather have readers than none at all.
This game is a rhetorical masterpiece. The sauce is in the wording. You have to be able to read precisely in order to enjoy this game tough.
You have to interpret the meaning behind the exact wording and use the interpretation to make the right choice. If you die, you missed sometihng. simple. This game will not be for those with poor reading or English skills.
Well, I liked it!!! Good job :D
But what happens when I run out of faith?
I don't know... It's just virtual gamebook, nothing more and nothing less. So is it a videogame or a book? If they wouldn't communicate it as an RPG videogame, I would recommend it. But they are, so thumb down.
And on top of that there is not that much story paths how it looks like.
AN AMAZING GAME
Somehow I was about to lose this "little" gem. Fortunately, Steam, for once, did his job and recommended it to me.
THE GAME
Starting the game you can choose between Leon (Magician) and Ancoran (Ranger). After a short but useful tutorial, the prologue begins. The choices you make will influence the whole story. Little spoiler: who would not want a dragon ally?
At the end of the prologue the second phase begins, where you will be free to choose one of the four characters.
One thing I liked a lot is the alternative stories, discovering them and seeing what would have changed is really a lot of fun.
POSITIVES
- truly epic illustrations
- Music comparable to the soundtrack of a film
- History well written and full of twists
DOWNSIDES
- it's very easy to die, if you forget to use a manual rescue you're screwed
- some Steam trophies are challenging
In conclusion: The Ballad Singer is really a game to try, the experience is really good. Prepare a tea (in my case whiskey) and admire the illustrations while the narrator tells you the story!
so many references to fantasy books, and some creatures are way too similar to another games (i'm looking at you, elementals from HOMM) but game is ok, if you like the reading and fantasy (do not expect characters too elaborated, tho). Still, so far so good, it's not like every game in steam have that great writing.
Nice game!
Not just a VN, It's a VN with choice. Though once you choose certain paths your character has very little non-linear choices.
That's my only thing, I do wish it was less linear.
MY DEEP DISAPPOINTMENT
I am sorry to tell that I have been extremely disappointed by this "game". I am sorry because I can see there was a lot of work done and I appreciate that. But I am nevertheless extremely disappointed because it is neither a game (certainly not RPG) nor an e-book (as the story is mercilessly shallow). To react to another review, I estimate that this "game" is not at all as good as may have been the books in which you are the hero (and I read many). Here are positive and negative points.
POSITIVE POINTS
(1) Excellent artwork.
(2) I greatly appreciated the different voices reading (male and female) and modulating accents and tones. Beautiful voices, very nice rythm.
(3) Large number of appropriate musical themes.
NEGATIVE POINTS
(1) Why this is not an e-book? This story is very weak. Sentences are not badly written in the sense that most descriptions are appropriate and beautiful. But the story lacks consistency and is desperately shallow. The characters are empty and their personalities are oversimplified and cliché. The relationships are absent or genuinely simple. For an "augmented e-book", this is unacceptable.
(2) Why this is not a game? You need luck in 70% of the choices you make and you die on the wrong choice. So basically, when the story stops to leave you with a choice - let's say to open either the right or the left door - if you pick the left the story goes on but if you pick the right you die and you learn why afterwards (mostly for a ridiculous reason that was impossible to predict). In 30% of the cases, you have reasonable clues to choose well. A suggestion to solve that linear aspect in the story is that when you make a wrong choice, you are given a chance (another choice) to survive but by loosing something...
CONCLUSION
To remain within the spirit of the "game", if I had a destiny point to access the right of making again my choice of buying the game or not, I would not buy it. But I am short a destiny point...
I know I just started this adventure, but I already see this game as everything I've ever dreamt since I read about this game still at its early development phase. I love a good story, and now I have options to shape this saga according with my options. Genius! Awesome game!
I Love this game !!!!!!!!!!
I played few time and nevere use so much my brain to TRY to survive lol.
I suggest a lot this game.
There are "only" 4 charachter, and I hope they can share as soon as possible some DLC with other fantastics soryes.
I said "only" because each charachter have so many story and different line that create a unice story each time you re-folllow the story line (every time you died, save the game it was never important like in this game).
I suggest a this game, it s creazy
Played for a couple of hours and enjoyed it. If you was ever a fan of the choose your own adventure then this is the next step. Even for being early access the bugs was barley noticable.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Curtel Games |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 18.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 64% положительных (28) |