With characters straight from the 90's Tattletail aims to bring scares to the 21st century.

More Than a Toy

Something is unsettling about talking toys. Sure, they're fun when you are a kid - but as you grow up, they seem a little sinister. Tattletail takes that feeling and runs with it, combining a fuzzy toy with all the horror that's prevalent in games like Five Nights at Freddy's. It's an exciting mix to be sure, but one that relies a lot on the players to make it work.

Your Very Own Freddy

Conceptually, it feels like Tattletail wants to be a combination of a few different games. The most significant influence by far, though, is Five Nights at Freddy's. It's very much the kind of game that's made for Twitch streams, one with enough floating objectives and jump scares to provoke good reactions.

At its core, Tattletail is a by-the-numbers survival game.

It might have a very specific coat of paint over it, but anyone who has played a game like Five Nights or Slender is going to feel very much at home here. That's not a bad thing, but it blunts the originality of the game.

You've Seen it All Before

The most important thing to note about the graphics in Tattletail is that they aren't bad. They are actually fairly serviceable for the most part, but therein lies the problem - it's the same kind of serviceable that you've already seen in countless other games in the genre. If someone were to say that there's a specific generator for this kind of look, it'd be hard to call them a liar.

The audio is a bit better, though. It's not exactly inspired, but it's got some great sounds that help to build the atmosphere. It's a game that you might want to play with headphones, especially if your goal is to frighten yourself during a more extended play session.

Tattletail Says

Tattletail's game-play loop is pretty simple. You are going to find the titular Tattletail doll, and you're going to do what it says. If you fail to do what it says, you're going to alert Mama Tattletail - and doing that is going to lead to your bloody demise. Think of it as the world's most violent game of Simon Says.

An awful lot of this game's charm relies on the player's general feeling of unease when it comes to the Tattletail doll.

If you didn't grow up in the 1990's or you have never encountered dolls like Furby, you probably won't be quite as creep ed out as this game hopes to make you. When you don't have the necessary connections to the content, this feels like a half-baked Five Nights clone.

Return the Dolls

Tattletail is less of a game that's meant to be played and more of one that is to be watched on streams. There are absolutely enough jump scares and elements there to make it great for a good content producer, but it's not going to be quite as much fun to play on your own.

If you like this kind of survival horror and you don't mind the fact that it gets a little repetitive, though, the game might be worth a play through or two. This isn't the game that's going to reinvent the genre, but that doesn't mean that you might not have fun.

TL/DR

Tattletail is a survival/horror game based around frightening Furby-like dolls.