When I was at summer camp, for the weeks I was there, it was the most scary time of my life. ![]() ![]() And that mystery and uncertainty is what makes it such an important memory to you. "A lot of nostalgic memories are tied to some element of horror in the sense of experiencing something brand new for the first time. "When it comes to nostalgia, we tend to remember the lossy ways we recorded stuff in place of our actual memories. "When you watch the video, the whole thing is soaked in the VHS copy-of-a-copy filter, and the sound feels like it's been copied a million times," Esposito said. Regardless of how effectively it sells the game, the clip clearly establishes the game's grounding between nostalgia and horror. So we decided it would be a lot more fun, and probably effective, if we just put the trailer out and the trailer says, 'Available now. "To be perfectly honest, we were scared that if we put the trailer out too early, it would result in negative reviews," Esposito said, "because the production of the trailer turned out really great, and the reality of the game doesn't always meet the expectation. ![]() Despite the clip's effectiveness (Esposito used it to convince Astle to join the project), the developers decided against using it to build anticipation, and only released it as part of the official launch trailer. One of the first things Esposito put together for the game as a sort of proof of concept was a retro TV commercial for the fictional toy, complete with cheesy theme song and VHS audio and video degradation. While Waygetter clearly spent little effort on pre-release hype, that's not to say the team completely ignored marketing. "Since that's how we got the idea to make a horror game, we wanted it to be out when kids are home for Christmas break, they're hanging out and bored, maybe they're just looking online for stuff and haven't gone back to school yet." "It was really important to us to have it be around Christmas, but also to be available to our audience when they might be sitting around with their friends and have nothing to do," Esposito said. Playing through Silent Hill 2 and SOMA in that sort of environment got Esposito interested in making a game like Tattletail in the first place, and he was hoping others would experience it in similar circumstances. And it wasn't until last year I found that playing horror games with a group of friends was incredibly fun, like, that was my favorite group gaming experience." I was always way too scared to play them. Unfortunately, a rogue Mama Tattletail is on the hunt for her baby, so players will need to keep the chatty toy quiet by meeting all its demands, lest its noisy protests draw the attention of Mama.īeyond just having a game set at Christmas launch around Christmas, Esposito said the release window made sense given the game's inspiration. Tattletail is set during the holiday season of 1998, and casts players as eager children discovering the talking electronic pet under the Christmas tree a bit early. And we actually launched during a Steam sale, which seems like suicide."īut thematically, it made sense. "I thought it was crazy to do, because everything I've heard about indie games is don't even bother releasing in December or November because that's when all the big stuff came out. "We went against basically all common wisdom about releasing a game," Esposito said. ![]() In an era where indie developers are routinely encouraged to begin marketing their games and building communities as early as possible, Esposito and fellow Waygetter devs Geneva Hodgson and Tom Astle released Tattletail the same day it was announced: December 28. That was Waygetter Electronics' Ben Esposito, explaining for recently how he prepared for the launch of Tattletail, a horror game inspired by the creepy 1990s electronic toy fad Furby.
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