Ghost of a Tale

My teenage daughter and I have just finished the game. I want to thank the developers for giving her and I so many hours of great memories together.

This game is a unique experience. It's kind of a medieval stealth game in a tiny world (literally, you'll have to play the game to know what i mean lol), which is actually kind of immersive. There's some RPG elements but not too much to make you feel overwhelmed with stuff.
First, let's talk about the positives. Like, I said, the game is very immersive considering it's only ~20 hours long (including beating all side quests). Characters are well designed. They sometimes react differently to different things you say, and you might not get some of the side quests if you don't offer help. Your choices don't matter all that much compared to games like Life Is Strange, but I didn't mind it. The story was well written. It's the strongest aspect of the game in my opinion. The plot advances smoothly and there are some really interesting twists. There is no real combat in the game, aside from the spiders in the catacombs. If you get spotted by an enemy, you'll have to run away which makes sense since you're a prisoner escaping. Navigating the maps was pretty annoying at first but after you get used to it and unlock some secret passages , it becomes more fun. I really wanna see a fast travel option tho, in the sequel (if they ever make one).
Now the negatives. Escaping from the guards is fun, but they're REAAAALLY stupid lol. Rats are your enemies, and as long as you're wearing their armor, they won't care at all. Even when you're not wearing the armor, when they come after you, losing them is way too easy. Hide in the nearest cupboard while they watch you do it and they'll come and be like "what? where'd he go?". Game performance is not good at all. Frequent stutters and fps drops, and overall a bit clunky. The real issue with the game I had, tho, was this. The first time you run it, using the mouse in the main menu is a nightmare. The cursor won't click where you want. And you can't navigate using the keyboard. Why? I don't know. You can fix this by Going into Options>Video, scrolling all the way to the bottom, and turning on Vsync. Then, scroll back up and select the proper resolution for your screen. It was fine for the period i had the game open. BUT, the next time i launched the game, guess what? It crashed on launch. Verifying integrity of game files did nothing, neither did reinstalling the game. What i had to do was to go to the "cog" on the game in my library > Manage > Browse Local Files, and run the file called "GoaT_ClearPreferences.cmd". That opens up a command prompt. Press Enter and after it's done close it, then you should be able to run the game again. This resets everything (except your save data) so you'll need to turn on Vsync, fix your resolution, all over again. This will reset your key bindings too so you'll need to modify them again if you don't like the defaults. You essentially need to do this every time want to play the game. Very annoying.
Overall score: a very generous 7/10. The game is fun but the main thing that knocks it down is its performance and instability

Almost a fantastic game.
The art style is wonderful, the world building is top notch, the lore is enthralling, the writing is solid and leaves a lot of subtle hints for you to work out certain lore details yourself like what happened to King Rodrik.
The gameplay.... is okay. The enemy AI is incredibly dense, Although it's funny how the game justifies this by making how stupid the guards are part of the world building, it leaves a lot to be desired.
The movement is quite good for what it is. It took me a bit to figure out jumps don't carry your momentum from the ground but instead are affected by whether you're holding sprint while airborn or not. But once I did, I never had issues missing any jumps. The running animation is absolutely fantastic and everything except climbing feels really responsive. Climbing is a little fiddly but not really used or needed often.
The gameplay loop of stealthing around and exploring to find the items you need to progress is not going to be to everyone's tastes but it's not awful in concept... in execution however it has some serious issues. The game is very, VERY bad at conveying where you're suppose to go, and in some cases even what you're suppose to be looking for, leading you to just constantly aimlessly wander around the map for hours until you get so frustrated you have to look up what you're suppose to do... only to realize you walked past the thing you needed 17 times and didn't notice cus it just looked like a bit of decoration or was hidden in some dark shadows.
This game's limitations on light are pretty frustrating. You're rarely given a means to restock on oil or candles where it matters, including locations where enemies carry around lanterns which is really odd both from a level design and world building perspective. This creates a feeling of scarcity that makes it feel like you shouldn't use it just because you don't wanna run back through half that section, or even to an entirely different section, just to restock your light sources. And this can lead you to missing quite a lot of stuff because it was crammed in a dark corner somewhere and you didn't wanna waste fuel checking it or spend too much time exploring a dark space you can barely see anything even with a light source out. You have two sources of infinite light you can obtain through side quests but one is significantly dimmer than the lantern and candle, and the other replaces your headwear meaning you can't wear it with a disguise and drains your stamina to use which....
Stamina management is endlessly frustrating. Stamina drains quickly while sprinting and barely replenishes at all while walking. It goes up fairly quick while standing still but it takes about as long to fill up as it does to drain so you ether deal with the minimal stamina regen while walking, or spend half of the game standing still waiting for your stamina to refill. Yes if you walk "really" slowly with an analogue stick you can get it to replenish at max speed while still moving but this is it's own kind of frustrating and requires a controller. On top of this you later get a much needed ability to highlight intractable objects, and using this ability also consumes stamina. On a second playthough of the game when you know where everything is, the stamina issues are barely noticeable. In fact I think the game makers specifically balanced it around this experience because, as the game makers, they knew where everything was. But in a blind playthough, given the earlier issue of how unhelpful the game is at telling you where to go and what you're looking for, you end up spending hours running around in circles through the whole map at several points in the game, and this is when the stamina limitations are really egregious. It really feels like there should've been some secret outfit in the game that just gives you infinite stamina to make exploring the map and cleaning up unfinished tasks before ending the story much more manageable...
Which should have been the gilded armor. This is effectively the secret best outfit in the game, obtainable just after you get locked out of a few side quests unfortunately, but they're all fairly easy ones you'll probably have done by then. It does still make completing unfinished tasks fairly trivial, but having it also eliminate the stamina issue would've been grand... Until you do a second playthrough to get the ghost, untouched, crash diet, and/or scholar achievements, where it suddenly becomes unobtainable for some reason. A bug that's been in the game since it's release as far as I can tell and been reported several times.
Despite that egregious bug, the game's actually surprisingly replayable if you really enjoy the story. There's a lot of dialogue trees that reveal different lore depending on what you say to who, and the order you do some quests in can lead to you having different knowledge at different points in the game leading to dialogue you wouldn't otherwise get. Through a second play through I learned a lot more lore, clues to certain mysteries, and the direction the currently-in-production sequel will likely take, that I hadn't gotten in my first play through due to different dialogue paths. And I found navigating the game much more enjoyable once I actually knew where I was going.
Overall, despite it's flaws, it's a pretty lovely game. I just wish the development team put a bit more long term support into ironing out some if it's issues.

Ghost of a Tale has both it's charm & it's flaws so here is a short review:
PROS: The gameplay was great! Stealth focus & saving your energy is crucial in this game, making it a great challenge, because you are forced to think when is a good time to do what at given situation. There is plenty of disguise with outfits here that each gives you certain perks like higher poison resistance or walking among guards. Lore is both rich & interesting. Main and side quests were all really fun to do and they weren't that easy to finish. Visuals were really cute & the characters were great to interact with.
CONS: Poor PC optimisation. I who have a really great gaming laptop, had issues with overheating which is uncommon with other games, including the ones that are modern and way more demanding in specs compared to this one. I have encountered many bugs connected with environment like walking inside a rock and out, but at least they were not game crashing.
CONCLUSION: It's a really cute crowdfunded indie game that is well deserved of praise. Hope to see a sequel one day of this cool stealth/adventure game!

The game starts amazing, around a 9/10. However, as the game goes on, it becomes increasingly more tedious as you're forced to backtrack through the same areas while needing to manage the poorly thought out stamina and gear systems, all while hunting down fetch quest items.The second half of the game drops down to a 6/10 for me. It still averages around a 7.5 because of how immersive the first half of the game is, but the second half really was a chore.

Its has been a good while since a game had the ability to make you feel emotional multiple times, well done. Its been a while where a game makes you feel not stupid by actually exploring and are rewarded with progress, well done again. Left me wanting more with all these wonderful characters and the world build for this game, triple well done.

-Beautiful game
This is frankly the most glamorous and wonderful RPG I've played. The story is OK and I would really love to see more of it.
The gameplay is simple yet fun. And I like the characters. You get fond of them quite easily.
There are two aspects that carry this game. The Environment and the Freedom/Exploring.
The visuals are stunning especially for a Unity game. Props to the developers for such an amazing job.
On the other hand the Freedom that the game gives you is limited and progression feels extremely good once you start solving the puzzle and explore around every part of the map. It's very well done and feels just right.
The story and the world of the game is the only thing that needs more to them. There's so many hints around the game about towns and places that I wish I could explore. After playing the game and experiencing the ending, I only want more.
A sequel is most likely in the making, there's not really any information about this expect for some teasers on Twitter.
I believe the developers will expand this story and freedom further in a sequel if there will ever be one.