House of Tales

House of Tales Entertainment GmbH, trading as House of Tales, was a German video game developer based in Bremen. The company was known for its point-and-click adventure games.

House of Tales
TypeDefunct
IndustryVideo games
Founded1998
Defunct2010
Headquarters
Bremen
,
Germany
Key people
  • Tobias Schachte
  • Martin Ganteföhr
Websitewww.house-of-tales.com (archived)

History

House of Tales was founded in 1998 by Tobias Schachte and Martin Ganteföhr, who had previously developed children's video games for the ZDF. The company's first game, The Mystery of the Druids, was published by CDV Software in 2001. The company initially lacked a corporate office and organized in a decentralized fashion online, a rarity at the time.[1] In 2008, House of Tales was bought by DTP Entertainment, but initially remained an independent development studio under the new parent company. At the end of 2009, tensions arose between the House of Tales management and that of DTP regarding the future direction of the studio and the poor sales of 15 Days. As a result, Schachte left the company in January 2010.[2] Ganteföhr departed in March. Thereafter, House of Tales' company headquarters was moved by DTP from Bremen to Hannover, the location of Cranberry Production, another DTP-owned development house. House of Tales was subsequently integrated into the Cranberry team, marking the end of the company.

In December 2014, the Swedish publisher THQ Nordic acquired the rights to House of Tales' adventure games and made them available via digital distribution platforms.

Games
Title Publisher Genre Date Platform Notes
The Mystery of the Druids CDV Software Adventure 2001 Windows
Black Hole elkware Adventure 2003 J2ME
The Paper Menace elkware Adventure 2003 J2ME
The Moment of Silence DTP Entertainment Adventure 2004 Windows
Secret of the Lost Link elkware Adventure 2004 J2ME
The X-Files: The Deserter elkware Adventure 2004 J2ME Part of The X-Files franchise
Verliebt in Berlin DTP Entertainment Adventure 2005 Windows Part of the Verliebt in Berlin franchise; co-developed with Radon Labs
Overclocked: A History of Violence Anaconda (DTP) Adventure 2008 Windows
15 Days DTP Entertainment Adventure 2009 Windows
The Mystery of the Ghost Ship DTP Entertainment Hidden object game 2010 Windows

For all of its games, House of Tales used a proprietary development environment called Inca ("Interactive Narrator's Companion for Authoring"), which includes a graphical user interface for building the infrastructure of a game and an adventure-specific scripting language.[3]

Awards

The Moment of Silence was voted Adventure of the Year in 2004 by PC Games and the website Adventure-Treff. Overclocked received the Innovation Award at the 2007 Deutscher Computerspielpreis.[2]

See also

References
  1. "Firmenportrait auf Mediabiz.de". Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  2. "Meldung auf Gamezone.de". 7 June 2010. Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  3. "Feature auf Adventure-Treff.de". Archived from the original on 14 June 2015. Retrieved 11 June 2015.
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