Fairy Tale Spotlight: Ghost of a Tale [Video Game Review]

"Ghost of a Tale" is an indie video game developed by Lionel "Seith" Gallat, and was released in 2018. I actually bought it while it was in its early access stage. I was basically playing an unfinished version for a while. Later, when it was fully released, I played it a little more and then got distracted sadly. Only now have I finished it, and I am very pleased with what I found.

The game is about a mouse named Tilo, who is a minstrel, who has been imprisoned by the rats for a false conspiracy against them. He spends the game trying to escape the place to find his wife of which he has been separated from. Not all the rats are bad, and there are even some other mice, and not all of them are good. It's a journey to make friends, make deals, and ultimately work your way out of the prison entirely.

From the very beginning, you will see that there is a heaping load of love put into this indie title. Not just love though: detail. Detail in design, story, sound, music, and pretty much everything. Although all dialog is handled through text only, it serves to read out like a well-written book, explaining what is happening during the conversation.

The graphical detail of the game is better than I have ever seen in any other game before or after it. The prison is ancient and falling a part. Most of the stones that make it up are weathered and eaten away by time. It feels like every single stone in this game was handcrafted to make the place feel alive and real.

Even the forests surrounding the prison have surprising detail. A fallen tree here, some moss growing over there, mushrooms of various types. The whole world looks wonderfully real. The closest I think I came to this sort of detail was the remaster of "Shadow of the Colossus," but I still think this game did better.

The characters look perfectly amazing. Apparently the one guy who developed this was a seasoned animator for Dreamworks and Universal Pictures. It shows. And it wasn't just good looking rodents; it was the story that surrounded them. I love the lore of this game. I sunk myself into it until I one-hundred-percented the entire game. It's brilliant from beginning to end.

"Ghost of a Tale" is a game you can get a bit emotionally involved with. The developer worked extra hard to help you fit into the feet of a tiny mouse minstrel. If you pay attention, you will learn what it means to be a mouse among some big, nasty rats. I whole-heartedly recommend this game.

This blog was written on January 14, 2022.

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