Update: More gameplay snippets from the alleged Stranger Things Telltale Game have surfaced on Reddit, showing a special surprise for Will and an unexpected change of playing perspective. Here's the first part of the scene, which you may have already seen in the original version of this article.
And here's Will discovering just about the coolest present a geeky kid could ask for in 1984.
Then here's a brief scene of Will looking at the contents of a junk drawer. It is full of junk.
Here's where things take an unexpected turn: it looks like the Stranger Things game was going to have first-person horror scenes, including a Demogorgon chase. This first snippet looks like it may take place in the Upside-Down-corrupted halls of the Hawkins Power and Light Company.
The setting for this next first-person scene looks more like a bedroom. I have a feeling we're actually looking at a nightmare sequence here - following dream logic from one disconnected place to another - which could explain the difference in perspective and the distant look on Will's face before he gets his birthday present.
The Reddit leak also offered up some concept art for the game, offering our first (and quite possibly last) look at the Telltale-ified versions of Mike and Lucas.
Original story: The Stranger Things project in the works at Telltale Games is unlikely to get an official reveal now that the studio is closing; though much is uncertain on Telltale's end, Netflix confirmed to Polygon that it's "evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium." But not all of the work the Telltale developers did will go unseen by the public, at least if this snippet of leaked gameplay is legit.
The snippet's surfaced in various places online after the studio closure was announced, including the Stranger Things section of Reddit. Given the timing, it's likely that one or more Telltale employees decided to leak this little bit of the game just to let folks see what they were working on before their studio fell apart, but that's just an educated guess - I can't vouch its provenance. That said, this would be an incredibly elaborate fake to produce, right down to the distinctly Telltale feel of its cartoonish character designs.
The scene starts with the player in control of Will Byers, the boy who went missing in the first season of Stranger Things. He walks past his mother Joyce as she's on the phone with Dr. Sam Owens, which (minor spoiler) puts the timeline for the game around or after season two, and she briefly greets him before asking him not to go into the living room yet. The camera returns to its place behind Will's shoulder and he walks on for a bit before the snippet ends.
Both Will and Joyce are easily recognizable as stylized versions of their screen counterparts. Their home is definitely the good ol' Byers residence in a rare state of not having stuff taped or scrawled all over the walls. And a little notification in the upper left tells players to consult Will's journal, which would probably serve as a reminder about your progress (while letting you look at some rad pencil drawings of otherworldly creatures).
The most striking thing about the demo is how huge Joyce and Will's eyes are. Though to be fair, Winona Ryder and Noah Schnapp have some pretty massive eyeballs in real life too. Stare deep into them and wonder what could have been...
Stave off the bitter sadness of wasted work and potential with this look at everything we know about Stranger Things season 3.
