Family safety features

This page describes the safety features that are built into TATAZO, for grown-ups and for players. No game can promise that nothing will ever go wrong, so the best protection is still a grown-up who plays along and talks about it. Here is what the game gives you to help.

Talking to other players

• No free-text chat. Players talk with preset phrases (quick chat) and emotes. Nobody can type a message, a phone number or an address to your child in the game.
• Names are filtered.
• Mute and block any player from their card on the Players screen.
• A password for your world: when you host, you can set a password on the Play with friends screen. Only friends you tell it to can join.
• Report any trade from your trade history (unfair, a trick, unkind, or something else).

Fighting and places

• On most worlds players can't hurt each other except in a duel both agreed to. Cozy and Creative worlds turn it off completely. Only the Hardcore preset, marked for teens, lets players fight freely. A duel starts only when both sides agree, from a player's card or the Players screen, and it never lands a hit inside the village. Practising is always safe: the training yard's dummy near the plaza takes hits from anyone with no risk at all. See Friendly duels and the training yard.
• The village is protected: no creatures, no fighting, and nobody can dig or build there.
• Land claims: a Home Totem protects what you build around it; only friends you add can build, dig or open chests there.
• Visitors: in a new world, players who join are visitors: they can dig and build only on their own land (a Home Totem of their own) until the host picks Make member on their card. A child whose grown-up approved the host as a friend joins as family, with no waiting. So nobody new can flood or dig up your valley. The host can switch this off in the world settings.
• Creatures are never hurt for good: they are cleansed, and animals run home.
• A Survival world can be made with One life, where a knocked-out gator is retired for good. It never applies to a child's profile: a child's gator always gets up again.

Worlds for everyone, worlds for teens

Every world says who it's for: everyone or teen. A child's profile doesn't list teen worlds, and if it's sent to one by address it steps back out before anything loads.

The Family screen

Open Profile, then FAMILY. It's protected by a 4-digit parent PIN (five wrong tries lock the pad for 30 seconds, and longer each time after that, up to 15 minutes, even if the game restarts). From there a grown-up can:

• mark the profile as a child's profile;
• set trading: off, the market board only, or the board and approved friends;
• set a daily limit on trades and coin purchases (no limit, 3, 5, 10 or 20);
• show or hide the store (hidden on a child's profile until a grown-up shows it);
• turn real-money purchases on or off (off until a grown-up turns them on);
• set play time a day (30 minutes to 3 hours): when it's used up the game says it's time to rest, and 15 more minutes need the PIN;
• turn on the take-a-break reminder;
• turn on questions at dusk: when the sun sets in the game, a little card asks a question for everyone playing to talk about together, like "What should we build next?" (on by default for a child's profile);
• approve friends (on the Players screen, with the PIN);
• see play time for the last 14 days, the trades and purchases of the last 30 days, and the real-money purchases.

While a child's profile plays, "Parental controls on" shows in a corner of the screen. The Family screen and the store's texts are in English or Brazilian Portuguese, following the computer's language.

Before a child's first face-to-face trade, they answer a short trading quiz with pictures. With a child on either side, a trade needs both to be approved friends, trading set to allow it, and the daily limit not yet reached. Anyone else simply sees that the player "isn't taking trade requests right now".

Healthy play

• A take-a-break reminder after 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes of play (Settings, or the Family screen). It's off by default, and set to one hour on a child's profile. It only shows a friendly note.
• Each new morning in the game, a short card sums up the day before: a natural place to stop.
• Daily goals have no streaks, and nothing is lost for skipping a day.

Privacy

• The game has no third-party analytics and no ads. Game data only goes to the worlds you join.

Your privacy and game data

TATAZO can send small anonymous play numbers to help us fix the game. It is off until you choose Yes on the HELP IMPROVE TATAZO? screen.

When it is on, we send the game version, broad device type, class, level band, choices you make, coarse area name, crashes and whether a step was hard. We never send your name, chat, account, Steam ID, IP address, exact map place, camera or webcam data. The game makes a random install ID only after an adult says Yes. We keep raw numbers for 30 days.

Choose No, thanks to play without it. Change your mind any time: open SETTINGS > FAMILY & PRIVACY > Game data. Choose Forget game data there to switch it off, remove the local random ID and drop unsent numbers.

Child profiles send nothing by default. A parent can choose anonymous totals only after entering the parent PIN. Those totals have no install ID.

• Land claims protect what you build. A Home Totem guards your plot: only friends you add can build, dig or open your chests there.
• The forum asks for no email and no real names (see its rules).

Money

• Orange coins are the game's money. They are earned only by playing and trading, and are never sold for real money.
• Store looks are extra outfits sold for real money, one at a time, at the price Steam shows in your own currency. They never make anyone stronger, nothing is random (no loot boxes, no timers), there is no currency to buy, and they can't be traded, given away or turned into orange coins.
• Convenience items are sold too, each a one-time purchase that can't be traded: the Vault Key (opens your Home Vault from afar; the craftable Vault Whistle does the same for free) and the Travelling Pedlar (a shop that comes to you, at exactly the town shops' prices: it saves the walk, not coins; see The Travelling Pedlar) — neither works in Survival worlds — the Raccoon Helper (a bag-carrying companion; see Meet Your Raccoon Helper), and Hero's Health/Mana Potion (two potions that never run dry, on their own cooldown, but not during a friendly duel or a ranked APOCALYPSE run; see Hero's Health and Mana Potions).
• Real-money purchases are off on every profile until a grown-up turns them on with the PIN, and every purchase asks for the PIN. The checkout shows the price, who sells the look and a box to tick before paying; each purchase leaves a receipt, and REFUNDS AND HELP opens Steam Support.
• On a child's profile the store stays hidden until a grown-up shows it. (Selling is not switched on in the game yet.)
• Building packs unlock decoration for your own town, with no fighting strength. A free starter set stays available to everyone. Owned packs also work in Survival.
• Shop and paid items lists every paid item, its limits and the free alternatives. The Skins gallery includes the optional paid looks and their pictures.

If something goes wrong

• Block and report the player.
• Talk about it together, and tell the world's host (the person who runs it).
• On the forum, every post has a Report button, and moderators review reports.