Ten years ago today, on 10 September 2005, the first phase of The Endless Forest was launched at a fine art exhibition entitled "Tardis" that took place on the ruins of a medieval abbey. The gothic Saint Salvator church that was part of the abbey served as the floor plan for
the well-known ruin in our deer Forest.
The game was actually based on a prototype that had been made in response to a commission from the Museum of Modern Art in Luxemburg in 2003. This prototype was presented in its
online gallery in 2004. MUDAM would continue to host the server for the game until 2012.
The Endless Forest is the first game released to the public by Tale of Tales. Over the years that followed, the game has been expanded to its current form. Each iteration of its development has been supported in part by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund and Design Flanders. Additionally, Phase Two was created with
the support of the STUK Arts Centre in Leuven and released in 2006. And Phase Three with
the support of Rasa in 2007. Since then a few smaller additions were added such as
Halloween for the Velocity Festival in 2007 and
De Drinkplaats for an exhibition in the Broelmuseum in 2009.
As the game continued to draw players (20,000 registered deer by 2007, 50,000 by 2009, and almost 170,000 today), we've had to add new generations of pictograms to identify players in this wordless game.
