Toby's Topsy Tale

Interesting visual experience on a person's mind, but locating collectibles that reveal more is a chore due to a lack of any visual hints or objectives. The game immerses you in the head of a patient who is sharing his life story with a psychiatric specialist. It all begins innocently enough, with a gingerbread man named Toby, a childhood memory of grandma baking cookies. Except for music volume, there are no additional options, so you will have to stick with the default graphical settings, resolutions, and controls. The explanation for this is a funny statement in the settings stating that you have no control over your life. Fortunately, the controls are simple and will be recognizable to fans of platformers and action games. Aside from the basic movements, your litle gingerbread man can jump, slide, and whack with his candy cane. A few extra moves, such as double-jump and glide, can be bought a few minutes into the game. The character's movement lacks polish. It moves fast and feels like it is sliding across the floor. Jumping is also slightly uneven, especially on non-flat surfaces; you can sometimes jump into vertical obstacles, such as a brick wall, and stick to them by pushing forward. Although you can’t exactly cheat the platforming challenge, most mistakes may be avoided provided there is some sort of solid ground beneath that allows you to jump. You begin in a little kitchen, which gradually extends into a similarly small living room. Both contain little doors through which you can enter stages with very distinct themes, such as a freezer world, yarn world, or fire world. However, to be able to play a stage, you must first locate the required number of cookies. There is one cookie at the conclusion of each stage. Coins are placed around the stages, although they can be ignored. These only matter for the first few minutes because you need them to buy skills. The remainder is spent on unlocking skins for the gingerbread man and his cane. However, in order to purchase them, you must first achieve a milestone in the game or find something. Coins respawn when you switch stages, so you can simply grind for them if you truly need them. Enemies are easy to defeat because they all die with a single hit. Boss fights are an exception, as they require multiple hits in a weak place. Stages also have some friendly characters that have something to say, but you can smack them with your cane as well. Some can be a bit disturbing, such as when you punch a donut’s eye out, but it’s mild overall. One major concern is that there are no subtitles. Although the patient talks in a comprehensible tone, it is easy to miss something, especially since the plot is such an important element of the game. Bits from his life are revealed when you collect candies hidden behind some things or in difficult-to-reach locations. The game's twist or best ending is based on keys. The first one is easily accessible via one of the little doors. The others are discovered in different stages, and they unlock special doors marked with a red giant X, which can also be found in stages. However, these extra stages differ greatly from the rest of the game in that they take place in what appears to be an abandoned and dark hospital that you explore in first person. The goal is to locate and interact with egg-shaped statues. Aside than candies and keys, there are a couple of other collectibles, such as trophies and pages. Unfortunately, the collectible menu is really poorly done because you can’t listen to memories or view all of the different trophies. The game also fails to keep track of collectibles, as you have no idea how many are hidden in a stage. This is a major concern because stages are not ideal for exploration. For example, the yarn world is a large landscape with trees and collectibles hidden at the far end. If you do not take the time to slowly walk to different parts, you will never discover them because there is no compass or other visual hint. Overall objectives are also missing so you're very lost towards the end because you don't know where to go or what's left to do.

I have to be fair to all developers and be honest with this game even though he spent 4 years of hard work (I watch his YouTube channel). The game is painful to play. With the platforming my jumps get stuck especially if you lean against the wall and try to jump and then move away and try to jump it gets stuck. Overall platforming feels clunky. The sound effects make my ears bleed because a lot of the sounds can go 0 - 100 really quick. And the sounds sound like something recorded with random items found in the house. Grabbing a coin feels wrong because bad sound effects. The voice acting feels cringe tbh and doesn't feel right. I had to stop playing because the game was giving me a headache. Also no controller support is a crime, especially because most people who played 3D platformers back in the day on the N64 used a controller. And no graphics options. This game needs some serious polish if I am going to ever pick it up again. -------------------- Edit : There is controller support apparently but that is after you leave the menu.

An interesting premise and varied environments make this a tentative recommendation! The average 3D platformer player will be able to tell if they are interested in this game from the trailer - it's far from the snappiest or more precise character controller ever made, but it gets the job done as you traverse multiple themed levels around a typical American suburban house (the kitchen, fridge, oven, living room, etc). The idea of exploring escapism and nostalgia as a coping mechanism *through the lens* of a nostalgic-inspired 3D platformer is a very good one. Unfortunately some spotty hit detection, jank boss design, and the decision to make the back-half of the game all happen in an agonizingly slow first-person game mode, make this hard to enthusiastically recommend. Worth checking out on sale, if the trailer interests you. To 3 Gnomes: congrats on the launch! I wish you well in your future game development endeavors.

Definitely interesting and engaging experience (with creepy moments), despite simple gameplay and story. I like the character designs and different worlds, sometimes requiring revisiting as you get more advanced. There are things to solve in this game, so be aware of clues, and be savvy in trying things that might get your further or uncover secrets.

I guess the easiest way to give this review is to list the pros and cons: Pros - Cute and fun levels and creatures, you can really feel the genuine care and creativity - Very simple to pick up and play - Nice amount of unlockable skins - The random NPCs and their messages really gave nice flavor to the worlds Cons - No collectathon-style gameplay, the coins you can collect in each world all just respawn each time you enter, deflating my platformer completionist excitement - Controls could be more polished. The airborne control is way too high, you can switch directions almost immediately. Also you can just jump into any vertical surface and you will often stick there and be standing in the air - Camera needs help. Playing as Toby feels like the field of view is around 50 to 60, very bad. If you press shift you go into 1st person and can tell the FOV swaps to a higher number and it immediately feels better, but I don't like platforming in 1st person. When you play as a human in some sections, the FOV is even worse somehow, like it's 40 and zoomed in along with the camera being too far forward from the player so turning feels very strange as well - I personally did not enjoy the dark narration story that goes on or the bloody psych ward as a human sections. I kind of just wanted to vibe and play a cute platformer but you are constantly fed depressing and dark lines about some person who is going through war trauma and psychosis and murder stuff, it seriously brings down the mood so much that I started avoiding the items that plays new narration dialogue. This is not a "con" because some people like this and it IS advertised in the game description, I still wanted to mention it though. How could the game improve? It could have a bit more platforming levels, the overall experience as Toby felt short. There could be better guiding to the player, I got seriously lost on what to do next and I never found the 5th cookie or the last 3 keys. There could be cookie or key amounts above each door and the level name above each level entrance so you know what to do next. The controls (mainly jumping stuff and wall collision) could be polished and the FOV desperately needs to be increased. Finally some more settings would be much appreciated besides just the one volume slider, and maybe a quick infographic on controls and collectables (I still don't know what some of the button collectables do that I was collecting; I'm assuming its health recovery but I could be wrong) Game was really charming in parts though, I especially loved the yarn zone. I think the creator has some good ideas and look forward to their next project

I'm honestly surprised on how the game actually is. After learning the development hell that you went through to get this game shipped. I would say the game has a really interesting premise that gets dragged down by the gameplay. The gameplay is fine, but the main issue I have is when the 'twist' in how the game is played comes too far into the game. Because if you aren't really jiving with the game you'll have dropped it before it gets interesting. The 'twist' is actually really novel for what I expected. Along with the story being interesting (just a bit dragged down by the gameplay) I think if you made a 'reboot' or a 2nd version of the game and then had the whole shakeup in gameplay happen sooner and more integral to both experiences you could actually have a really neat game on your hands. Like the puzzles you could make with this would go so hard. So keep at it, and I genuinely believe you can make it big now that you have all of this experience.

Honestly. It is pretty neat. You need to be in the mood for it though. It is a fairly bare bone indie title. Interesting enough, but fairly rough and very indie feeling. I would say that for the price it is indeed worth it if you are interested in a fairly simple and rough 'my first game ever made feeling experience'. The locations and setting is interesting enough to keep attention, but the systems are bare bones and not fully polished is all. If in the air falling you get stuck on anything you touch. Like falling against a wall and stuff like that for example instead of just falling naturally sliding against it. Instead you just get stuck on the wall. I also did not care for the weird mental therapy like story. Loved the candy land setting type of vibe, but was bored out my mind by the story aspects. I think some devs get too lost in the sauce of thinking they got some deep story or something that is too personal. In reality though it isn't very interesting to most other people and completely clashes and brings down the fun candy land style vibes. Should have just committed to a classic mascot character style n64 platformer and polished its systems. Game I would say is just fine, not super stand out or negative. Just know it is a rough interesting little experience. Do not expect mario level of quality platforming by any margin. I wasn't really in the mood, so I haven't gotten too far. Too depressing of narrating/story overall along with a rough unpolished platforming. Expected way different of an experience coming from the youtube devlogs it had. Can't complain really at the price though I suppose. About the price Id expect for it. xD

Short and sweet unique horror experience. Worth it just for seeing one of the best devlogs in YouTube come to fruition. The idea of a 3D horror platformer is very unique and its nice to see it put into good use here, with each level bringing a very distinct and creative look to the table. It mixes both very realistic and detailed graphics with more stylistic crafty decisions very tastefully. Some minor flaws I'd like to point out for the dev is that some levels feel way too open with a lot of empty space, making traversal annoying, and several areas are way too dark to be user friendly, with no in-game options to aliviate this. Something to take into account for patches and other projects.