E3 2018: Telltale Announces Stranger Things Game
Telltale Games have become world-renowned experts at taking story-rich properties and mining them for their full potential, whether the property is as obscure as Fables or as permanently zeitgeisty as Batman. Now they’re going back in time (no, not Back to the Future…they already did that one) to the early 80s — the era of creepy creatures, mirror dimensions, children with destructive psychic powers, and shoulder pads. Ah, the memories.
Yes, Telltale announced a Stranger Things game this week. Just the announcement was made, with no other information. If it’s like their others, then it will probably be a point-and-click adventure game released in chapters, and at some point you will read the words “Eleven will remember this.”
There’s more: Telltale is working with Netflix in more than one fashion, developing a series of “interactive narratives” for the streaming service. They’re half-shows, half-games where you decide what happens next with your remote. There already exist a few of these on Netflix, with titles like Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile. It’s a technique only Netflix can take advantage of, but these things haven’t really caught on with kids. Maybe Telltale’s expertise is what they need.
They’re staring out with a bang by porting the popular Minecraft: Story Mode to Netflix. “We can confirm Minecraft: Story Mode is a licensed 5-episode interactive narrative series coming to our service this fall,” Netflix said to Polygon. “It’s an extension of our other interactive stories we have on our service…There’s a broad spectrum of entertainment available today. Games have become increasingly cinematic, but we view this as interactive narrative storytelling on our service.”
There is no current release date for any of the projects Telltale announced this week. If you want a Stranger Things game NOW, though, there happens to be an 8-bit-styled RPG free to play on iOS and Android, and it’s really good.