Toy Odyssey is a Metroidvania style action-platformer that takes you back to a world made from the nightmares of your childhood. Join Brand, an action figure come to life. in his fight against the darkness to save his owner, Felix. Nightmares are only the start of his troubles. Brand needs to uncover the secrets of the house before it's too late. Explore the entire house, combat chaos, and save other toys in the battle against evil. Create a huge arsenal and upgrade any items you find. Build the ultimate bedroom fortress to keep the darkness at bay. Unravel the house's mysterious past, and learn to overcome all odds...

Toy Odyssey is fundamentally an action-adventure platformer. The player spends the night exploring a randomly-generated house, defeating bosses in each of the unique rooms, and then going up against the final boss.

Depending on your age and what games you're into, Toy Odyssey will either represent a welcome return to old school platform games, or be annoying, repetitive and rather dull. As I grew up in the '80s with platformers much like this, for me it was a loving nod to a bygone era. But while the rooms and beasties constantly change, there's no escaping the fact that the game play is very repetitive.

As you move from room to room in the house you can run past, or attack an army of different beasts. And should your energy be depleted the night is over and you are transported back to the bedroom the following night (you're a toy that can only come alive once everyone is asleep). Normally this would be as annoying as hell. You'd get so far before being transported back to the start to do it all again. One of the neat elements here is that instead of having to scroll through the same rooms and attack the same monsters, the house shifts (don't ask, just go with it) and the rooms you now enter have a different layout and different beasts roaming around. This element stops the game getting too boring. Yes, it's still repetitive game play, but mixing up the rooms makes it feel a little less frustration.

This game will also divide gamers depending on how they like to play. For example, if you just charge through each room in order to get to the next one, killing anything that gets in your way, but avoiding monsters that look like they won't bother you if you steer clear of them, then you'll probably get bored of this after 20 minutes. What you need to do, to get the best out of this, is explore every are of each room.

Back in the bedroom there are a number of very important areas that you'll need to familiarise yourself with. You can check out your inventory, visit the workshop (this is where you can craft things with the items you've collected) and there's a build station.

This is a game that will divide gamers down the middle. You'll either love or loathe it depending on whether you're a fan of sideways scrolling platformers.

7

Nick Smithson