Independant vs Mainstream

Tale of Tails

The endless forest:

The Endless Forest is a multiplayer online game and social screensaver, a virtual place where you can play with your friends. When your computer goes to sleep you appear as a deer in this magical place. There are no goals to achieve or rules to follow. Just run through the forest and see what happens.

The endless forest seems to be somewhat of a relaxation game Which involves activities that you can do to prevent the game from being completely monotanous. It has an interesting art direction with the deers that the player plays as having some human features, At first this style is unusual to look at.

The Path:

Storyline wise Tale of tales state this game is influenced by red riding hood. Although it very much seems to be red riding hood instead of its own creation. Marketed as a horror game it has a very tim burton esque art style behind it.

A complete downfall for this game is that T.O.T state that there are no enemies to fight and no puzzles to solve. As  lifelong horror fan the number one rule based on personal experience is that if there are no enemies to threaton you, you are not under threat. Feeling vulnerable and in danger is key to scaring any player. puzzles add to the games psycology. keeping your mind open to possibilities. while solving obstacles you're also more aware to horror moments like noises etc.

Vanitas:

From what i can gather you pick up and place objects in different positions. you can tilt them with your iphone or drag them with your finger. It has become apparent to me that T.O.T isnt really a game company so to speak ther is very little gameplay involved in all of these games. They're more artisctic than anything else.

Activision:

The main difference between Activision and tale of tales is the sheer amount of work that needs to be done. The games that T.O.T make are very small games based on their own creative ideas and they just want to get their games out there to be played. Where as the number one priority for activision worldwide is to make in as much money as possible. No worker within activision will have their own creative choices chances are they will simply be told to make something exactly as it's drawn. To make a full game is harder for tale of tales however. As a small independant company they need to work on everything where as activision have designated departments for different areas of the game such as art and 3d animation. whilst tale of tales would have a team of 10 people activision would have a worldwide team of thousands.

Activision owns games like guitar hero and call of duty. These games take real life things such as existing instruments and weapons and have to replicate them as accurately as possible where as tale of tales are able to just create what they want, especially seeing as the games they create are fantasy based.