Your Toy

Your Toy is a game on the American market that showed up on an easy achievement list thingy and as it was pretty much free in the grand scheme of things, I thought why not give it a go?

I have to say from the moment I started playing, I thought that Your Toy was a horrible game. The basic premise is that you have thrown away a toy bear, perhaps by ripping it in half or something, and the entire game appears that this wonton destruction has created this nightmare you now face. You spend the majority of your time running from a bear monster thing that chases you, and the rest of the time solving puzzles that are so obscure that only the diehard trial-and-error enthusiasts will see out without the use of a guide.

In terms of gameplay, the most frustrating part of it is the ridiculously slow and laborious movement speed of the game’s protagonist – or teddy bear killer with no soul, whatever you want to call him. Getting from room to room, and even getting around the same room, is sheer frustration. There’s also a zoom function where you can look at stuff, and sometimes this is the only way to interact with things. That’s pretty much it for the controls, the whole thing is a just a bizarre adventure game, if you can call it that.

Another note on the puzzles, as well as being convoluted they also change from one game to the next and several people have reported that their puzzles have become incompletable. When this sort of thing happens, it makes the convoluted nature of the puzzles look more like bad game design.

Looks wise, it’s not easy on the eyes. It’s very gun-metal grey and shitty brown for the most part despite being about an angry decapitated bear in what appears to be a nightmare situation. It wouldn’t have killed them to introduce some colour here and there.

Music wise, it goes out of its way to be creepy in keeping with the nature of the game, but due to the poor gameplay and unengaging ‘story’ the background music becomes more of an annoyance that atmospheric.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 22 Achievements

The achievement list for this one is a mixed bag between story related achievements, stuff that’s totally missable and some real luck-based bollocks that all games could live without.

You can get nine achievements from playing through the game without worrying about what you do and another 11 are missable. My favourite of these missable ones is the luck-based one for finding a key in the cave on your first try. The achievement is even called Good Luck just to really rub it in. To get the achievement, you must break a light with a hammer and the key is randomly in one of these lights. However, you can restart the checkpoint when you don’t find it and go through some of the longest stupid menu loading and loading screens I’ve ever had to sit through. At least it felt that way.

The last missable achievement is the big one for picking up all the items in the game. Obviously with this being missable it means that there are several items in the game that do not have a use. And looking everywhere in this game is slightly less fun that ripping out your own teeth.

I also experienced some achievement unlocking issues throughout but considering the shocking state of the Xbox One achievement system at present, I don’t think I can blame this on the game.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Essentially, unless you have OCD and a tendency for self-harm, use a guide when going for the 100% here. Better still, don’t play it at all. I can’t consider a game to be truly easy if it’s only easy with a guide as well. It’s difficult to find a recommendation here so I will just stick this one in the ‘avoid’ pile for all time.