Happy Monday, everyone! I hope your weekend was successful and you finally got rid of that “problem” you’ve been talking about. Anyway, for those of you who are interested, I wanted to make a quick $5 Monday Game recommendation: The fun virtual pet / jump scare machine that is Tattletail.
A bit like Five Nights At Freddy’s, Tattletail, which I’ll say a couple times is only $5 right now on Steam, uses late twentieth century nostalgia to recreate a cross section of childhood joy and terror. It, you’re a kid who’s very excited to get the hottest toy this Christmas: Furby Tattletail. Its an electronic pet that tells you to feed it and groom it and more!
Unfortunately, you decide to open your gift early, which causes a couple problems for your ability to survive the week. You see, like Furby, the Tattletail is designed to be large, expressive, and extremely loud.
So very, very loud. To the point where it attracts the “Mama” Tattletail. So, for example, if you don’t keep the Tattletail fed, it’ll whine about it until Mama finds you. But if you run across the room to grab food, she might see and hear you. Or turn on the flashlight at the wrong time.
Mama herself is a terrifying giant toy with bright red eyes. But the worst part isn’t the chase - it’s that she can shut down all the lights around you as she follows you. This itself makes running hard. It also scares the shit out of you as all the lights around you flicker off and you realize Mama is super fucking close.
Like Five Nights At Freddy’s, this game takes place over, uh, five nights. And while they share a similar visual style and dip into the horror section of the nostalgia pool, they play relatively differently. This game looks like it could just be a reskin; it isn’t. It may be inspired by the visual style success of FNAF, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. Tattletail is a little more active from the outset. A little more stealth, too.
That said, both specialize in putting you in a childlike place of fear. Yeah, I know that you play a security guard in Five Night’s At Freddy’s and here you play a child opening their Christmas gift early. But the vibes are childlike. And, come on, the reason we enjoy Five Nights At Freddy’s is because it’s a terrifying replica of Chuck E. Cheese.
Tattletail doesn’t break new ground, but at $5, you shouldn’t expect it to. It’s $5. Which you can afford. I will say this, however: As we approach spooky season with its holidays and whatnot, Tattletail is kind of a perfect Halloween/Christmas combination.
It’s also, as I said, only $5.