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Tales from Candleforth - IndieDevDay Interview
We saw more than a hundred indie games at IDD in Barcelona, but this booth had a nice armchair and a spookily-flickering lamp, so our Rebeca had to sit down with Under the Bed's creative director Ángel Poulain to talk all things about this promising point-and-click puzzle adventure.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome to a super chill interview today. We're here again at IndieDevDay. Now I'm with Ángel. Thank you Ángel for joining us. And while we're here, it seems like Ángel is going to tell me a story today. He's going to tell me some creepy tales because we're here to check out tales from Candleforth, just as you're watching behind. Tell us, Ángel, what's this game about? So Tales from Candleforth is a point-and-click game that mixes escape room-like puzzles with folk horror narrative, which is different than usual horror. We are not that much about the jump scare and to scare people. It's more like to create an uncomfortable atmosphere and, yes, and making the player feel uncomfortable while playing the game. And with which kind of story are you going to make us feel uncomfortable? What's the main background or the beginning of this creepy story? So Tales is a story about heritage. We tell a story about Sara, which is a 16-year-old girl that is going to inherit a power that she didn't know that wasn't in her family."
"But as right as she's going to inherit it, her grandmother disappears. So now she wakes up and she discovers her grandmother is gone and then she has to follow some steps that her grandmother has left for her to find her and then be able to finally get her powers. And, well, in the video game, well, in the gameplay that we've seen a little bit that we have here in the background, besides these puzzle solving, we have like a tale, like a book open. Someone's telling us a story or is there actually anyone telling us a story in this game?
Yeah, so kind of. When you begin the game, you are not actually in the game you're seeing. You are outside. So this pumpkin head guy is like a collector, some kind of curator of content. He lives in this eerie space which has a lot of trinkets and curiosities. And the book is actually, he has one book that is actually called Tales from Candlefort, which is a compendium of tales. And so this first game is telling us the first story of that book. They are like those kind of alive stories where characters are actually alive inside the book, but they need someone to read the book to be alive. So we as a player are reading the book in front of this pumpkin head guy and then we are getting to know the story about Sarah."
"And as this is the first chapter of the first part, do you pretend to just develop more stories, more chapters?
Yes, but we don't necessarily want them to be continuous or related to each other. Our plan is to tell this kind of like goosebumps they did in their moment, like this kind of independent stories that doesn't relate to each other or maybe in just one little way, but they can exist independently, but also in the same universe, like they are all from the same book."
"What kind of puzzles can we find in the game? Like, how are going to be the mechanics of the puzzles themselves?
Okay, so in the game we have a few types of different puzzles. We have the more escape room like puzzles, which are more based on logic, more mechanical, if you can say so. And then we have some, this kind of tearing up paper space where we can find these kind of alternate realities then present us with more surreal puzzles. So they are also mechanic and sometimes logical, but the elements we are interacting with are more surreal and that's where we want to create the horror of the game."
"And how do you feel? Because if I'm not wrong, this is your first game. And how do you feel? How's people receiving the game?
So it's been really nice since we put the demo on Steam. This demo has been shown in Steam Next Fest, at various Steam festivals. Then games come and the, how do you say, like the people were so welcoming for the demo because we know we are aware that we are a niche. So Point & Click is a niche, a very big one, but it's a niche. So we need to get to the people that actually like the niche."
"So the experience we have up until now is like, if people like puzzle games and Point & Click, they love the game because they love the aesthetic and they love the atmosphere. And it's very satisfying when someone that likes puzzle games comes and plays and tells us all these kind of nice things about how they want the game to come out."
"Because, for example, in my case, I don't need anything else just besides the art style. I like puzzle solving and this kind of Point & Click adventure. So I fell in love at the very first time that I just saw it. And well, finally, besides all the compliments and all that. When are you planning to release it? Because as you said, we have an available demo on Steam and people have been able to play it. But do you have like any release date or more or less? And on which platforms are you going to just release it?
So there's no fixed date for releasing because we are very, very, very close to close the deal with the publisher and they are the ones that has the last word on it. But we are planning to launch on November, more or less. I think the mid of November. And then we are going to release the game in PC at first. And then we want to release a version in iOS or smartphone and Nintendo Switch."
"So you can just play the demo right now, just wishlist the game and wait for it and stay tuned for just playing it really, really soon. Maybe in a spooky season, more or less.
We want to take advantage of the spooky season, but maybe late October for the big scary games that people want to play and stream. And then we come after them."
"Yeah, it's like a chilling, spooky pace.
Like a more cottagecore kind of thing.
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Angel. It's been a pleasure. Good luck.
We're really looking forward to play it. And we'll see you soon, maybe with more spooky titles."
"Thank you so much. That's what we are planning to do. The studios go under the bed. So we plan to make lots of more games with horror being in the center of them.
And let's hope everything goes well.
Thank you so much."
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