"Buying the full version of The Graveyard adds only one feature, the possibility of death. The full version of the game is exactly the same as the trial, except, every time you play she may die."

That has to be the best incentive to buy a game ever : Kill granny.

Am I right in saying that Tale of Tales don't make "games", rather, they make "interactive experiences", because it would be crass to call their works "games"?

Sigh.

I take that back:

"We have just released The Graveyard, a very short game that we've been working on in secret."

Balance is restored. Shame on Mr Indie Gamer Blog for tickling my itchy trigger finger!

Damn, that bitch can moonwalk!

That wasn't very fun.

I kept trying to step on the birds but they would only fly away. :`(

I think 'interactive experience' is a fair name for it; there's very little which is traditionally game-like about it.

Anyway, not really worth playing, I think. There's just an awkward camera, a slow walk, and a quiet song.

"Anyway, not really worth playing, I think. There's just an awkward camera, a slow walk, and a quiet song."

Those are exactly what made it worth playing for me.

Here's a video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTsXv-sPlqI

... even the awkward camera, Paul?

Do you enjoy playing it any more or less than you enjoy watching the video?

Every game has problems in execution here and there. The camera didn't distract from the game that much for me.

And yes, I did enjoy playing it more than watching the video.

The camera is actually sort of central to what I don't like about the game; that they give you the pretense of a world you can walk about and explore, and then the inexplicably broken camera is the excuse that keeps you from being able to explore it at all. So I immediately fight with it, walking off the screen till I can't see the lady any more and am afraid I'm stuck on something back there. Then I find my way back, and aside from trying to wander off path a couple times, and an awkward moment of struggling with the interface to get the lady to actually sit down, the game is just like the youtube video, there's nothing I can do but watch it. So the camera is really not just a small problem, but to me a key sign of the stifling linearity of the experience. If you try to interact with it, it just breaks down and ruins the immersion.

I'm curious, what do you think made it more enjoyable for you to play as compared to watching the video?

I think the camera is fine if you only walk straight ahead; it only becomes a problem if you try to turn off the main path. So it's bad, but avoidable.

Mainly it was the feeling of wanting to get somewhere but only being able to walk so slowly. You can't really get that out of the video.

Hmm. It's avoidable only if you know it's there, and discovering it is what really breaks the immersion for me. There is no world logic that justifies why I should only walk straight, so everything feels really artificial when I find the camera trapping me on the path like that.

If I view it as "software" then I can say, sure, it's a bug with a workaround, not a big deal. But if I view it as an experience that is supposed to immerse me in this world or this character, then it is damning.

Anyway, thanks for explaining :) That is a good point about the walking. I think you get some of that from the video, but it's different -- I think with the video I want the lady to walk faster, instead of wanting 'myself' to walk faster -- so what I get especially is a sense of identity with the lady. That's definitely worthwhile, although undermined by the linearity. Also with the video I get the huge temptation to just skip ahead through the walking, where I can't do that with the game.

So yeah, there are reasons to try the game. I just found it a frustrating experience.

The whole deal is to 'participate' how an old lady goes to a graveyard, sits down, thinks a bit and walks out again.

She's old, it's slow. It's annoying for you, but it's also annoying for her.

My guess is that plenty of old women do this every single day. It's just a view on how such things can be both dull and yet emotional at the same time.

Just my 2 cents though ;)

The exact same theme could have been stated with a game about tipping over grannies. Watching them slowly writhing to get up would deliver the same premise. The player would think: "We can simply pick ourselves up when we fall, but why can't old ladies?", instilling large amounts of complex emotions in the 'interactive experiencee'. It would also allow the player to ponder their actions and consequences and would win accolades from serious art game developers everywhere.

Grawl -- yes, except that's not the part that was annoying for me. The part that was annoying was going off the path and finding I was no longer on camera and therefore couldn't see where I was or where I was going, and kinda getting stuck there and having to guess how long I needed to press right to turn her around and walk back on screen. Which doesn't correspond to anything, really, except struggling with a bad camera in a video game.

why in the jesus did you post this crap "game"? You just wasted 10 minutes of my life.