Tattletail

Tattletail

Steam storefront header
Developer(s) Waygetter Electronics
Publisher(s) Little Flag Software, LLC
Platform(s)

Microsoft Windows

Mac OS
Release
  • WW: December 28, 2016
Genre(s) Survival horror
Mode(s) Single-player

Tattletail is a video game created by Waygetter Electronics. The player must care for their virtual pet toy, Baby Talking Tattletail, while avoiding the pursuit of its recalled predecessor, Mama Tattletail. The game was released on Steam on December 28, 2016.[1]

Gameplay

For the five nights leading up to Christmas, the player must tend to their Baby Talking Tattletail toy by feeding it, grooming it, and allowing him to charge while completing a set of objectives each night. While the Baby Talking Tattletail isn't a threat, it is prone to generating a lot of sound, which alerts Mama Tattletail to your location. While completing a set task, the player must avoid Mama by staying quiet when she is near (indicated by her mechanical noises and glowing red eyes). Failure to do so or going too close will result in Mama attacking the player in a jump scare, sending the player back to a random checkpoint in the night.

Players acquire a shake flashlight to navigate in the darkness, but Mama Tattletail has the ability to kill the player's flashlight when they look directly at her. Baby Talking Tattletail is afraid of the dark and is quite vocal about it, creating a necessity to replenish the flashlight by shaking it quickly. However, the flashlight's shake also generates sound, so the player must be careful about when and where to shake. Baby Tattletail also requires periodic recharging of the battery, feeding and grooming; failing to do so will also trigger loud complaints from Baby Tattletail, which in turn triggers Mama to attack.

Over the course of the game, a series of "Gift Eggs," presumably laid by Tattletail, are placed throughout the house. Collecting all 69 of the eggs will result in the player achieving the "good boy" ending of the game.

Plot

The game takes place from December 20–25, 1998. The player wakes up on December 20 to open their Christmas present early. The present is the new fad toy, Talking Tattletail. After playing with the toy briefly (which involves feeding and grooming while charging it periodically), the player puts it back in its box and goes back to bed. The next night the player finds the same Tattletail in the tumble dryer, with no indication of how they got there.

On Night 3, the player encounters the contents of an old nursery in the basement. In the corner sits the now-recalled Mama Tattletail, along with a cassette tape which can be played using the toy. The tape contains a snippet from a story in a read-along style, including prompts to "turn the page", about how "the children thought that Mama would never find them as long as she couldn't see them" but Mama found them nevertheless. After finding the Baby Tattletail, it asks to be taken to Mama. The player returns to the spot only to find that Mama has disappeared. During each of the remaining nights leading up to Christmas Day, the player is awakened by Tattletail's mounting mischief and demands, including a game of hide-and-seek with a yellow Baby Talking Tattletail. All the while, Mama Tattletail hunts down the player relentlessly.

On Night 3, after a lengthy hide-and-seek session with another Baby Tattletail, the player finds a VHS tape; it shows several interchangeable camera feeds from what can only be assumed to be a Tattletail commercial (which is actually footage from the trailer). After some time, some of the camera feeds' names turn red, the lighting changes from blue to green, and trash bags and obscured parts of inanimate or writhing human bodies appear.

On Christmas Eve, Baby Tattletail invites the player to the basement to join a "party" with a yellow and blue baby talking Tattletail, and two more that the player must fetch. After the player gets those, they must get some supplies from upstairs, such as lights, cupcakes and candles. The player then finds out that the Talking Tattletails made a pentagram out of the Christmas lights with the VHS tape in the middle, and have begun chanting in what seems to be a seance. After rewinding the VHS tape, Mama appears and steals the candles, and the player must find them in vases scattered around the basement. Once the seance reaches its climax, the tape begins to levitate, at which point the player must destroy it. The seance ends, and the player can go back to bed.

On Christmas Day, the ending of the game depends on whether the player has collected all 22 eggs laid out across the game: If the player fails to collect all 22 eggs, the player will obtain the bad ending; where the box under the Christmas tree is empty, and Mama Tattletail kills the player (implying that the ritual has failed), ending the game and rolling the credits. The good ending occurs if the player collects all 22 eggs, they open their gift on Christmas Day, which is revealed to be the same Baby Talking Tattletail the player retrieved when opening their present early. The Talking Tattletail will then proceed to give the player a series of gifts such as its birth tag and a golden flashlight. The player will then need to open the door of their mother's room and wake her up, which triggers a white screen. The game ends with the Talking Tattletail saying "Thank you", along with the player's mother yawning.

The Kaleidoscope DLC

In the free Kaleidoscope DLC, the player awakens on Christmas Day to find their present, the purple baby talking Tattletail; however, it looks slightly different, and talks in a bored monotone voice, and then glitches out. At the front door, the player finds a package and an anonymous letter claiming that Tattletail "wasn't like this" and "this isn't how it happened at all". Throughout the plot, the player is gradually taken back in time night after night and has to play through each night again in reverse order, with the events and circumstances of the nights being similar, however markedly different than as of the main game, with Mama being a friendly caring character. Each night "ends" with a letter explaining that something went wrong, and the final letter explains that a place called the Kaleidoscope, where all memories are stored, is what's causing the changes. The player is then offered the choice to go back to bed, or enter the Kaleidoscope to retrieve their memories - going to bed results in the "bad" ending in which Tattletail will stay boring forever.

Entering the Kaleidoscope, the environment looks like a glitched, warped version of the house lit in a bluish tint, and the further the player goes, the more glitcher it is, eventually finding a VHS tape with a letter saying that it must be played to restore the player's memories back; the tape contains a duller, less spectacular version of the Tattletail TV advert. Once the tape is done playing, night one is repeated, with Tattletail restored to its cheery self. As the player is about to leave with Tattletail, it tells a joke, but is interrupted by Mama and the player is transported back to the Kaleidoscope with Mama being aggressive again: This is the only place in the DLC where the original survival mechanics apply, as the player must traverse back to the entrance of the Kaleidoscope without being killed by Mama. After escaping, the player wakes up on Christmas Day again, and opens the gift. Once it's open, Tattletail gives the player a present with a final letter that says thanks, and Tattletail tells a joke again.

Development

The game was published under the name of the in-universe fictional toy company named Waygetter Electronics. In reality, the team was led by game designer Ben Esposito, and consisted of character designer/co-developer Geneva Hodgson along with lead programmer Tom Astle. Cartoonist Ryann Shannon also stars as the voice of Talking Tattletail.[2]

Reception

The game has received some criticism for its surface resemblance to the Five Nights at Freddy's series for featuring similar gameplay elements, but critics generally agree that the gameplay, which allows for free roaming, is distinctive.[3] The game has also received mostly positive reviews on Steam.

References

  1. ↑ "Tattletail on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  2. ↑ "Ben Esposito's web site". Torahhorse.com. Ben Esposito. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  3. ↑ "Tattletail Review". GameSpew. GameSpew. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
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