Stuffed Game Review on Xbox

Stuffed is a procedurally generated, horde first-person shooter, that takes place in the dreams of a little girl.

The premise is you take control of a teddy bear and fight waves of nightmares as you defend your owner. Defeat a variety of nightmares in endless waves, to earn points and use them to unlock new map areas and weapons.

The game boasts Procedural maps, unique weapons, and the ability to level up and customise your teddybear.

Accessibility

With regards to accessibility, there is none with only aim assist available. Button re-mapping is not here and neither is there any options for difficulty, or changes to the visual elements. So should you have visual, sound or hand mobility issues, this game would not be for you.

Gameplay

What would if you took the Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops and remade it with your typical household toys from your childhood? Well that’s exactly what the developers of Stuffed have done, but with some tweaks of their own, such as the protagonist is a child’s Teddy bear. The gameplay loop is simple, protect your owner from a hellish collection of toys and boogey men trying to break into her room, with unique toy based weaponry.

The game starts in new are ever time you start, with you outside your owners door. Most areas that you start in have an upstairs and downstairs, and within these is a variety of doors which you can unlock as you progress. Within the starting area, is a small selection of purchasable weapons, such a slingshot, your starting pistol, and popcorn bag, your homemade grenade. There is also a repair box which you will need for when your owners door gets damaged.

Enemies will appear in waves from cardboard boxes littered around the level, and at first will directly go for you. Thankfully you are faster at the beginning than enemies, and it becomes a cat and mouse game as you rush about avoiding them, whilst shooting and attacking. Each hit, regardless of weapon, generates cash which you can then use to purchase more ammo, more weapons, and access to other rooms. However, depending on the hit and location on the enemy, the amount of cash you receive will be different. Punching gained me 300 whilst headshots only got me 180, so getting the most cash early one is paramount.

Once you have enough cash, its time to purchase more ammo or open up another door. Opening doors is essential as these then open you to not only different areas to curtail the enemies, but also options in terms of more damaging weapons. There are also teleportation boxes in other rooms, allowing you to warp back to the starting point at any time, which is useful for quickly upgrading your teddy bear. This is needed more than you realise, as the more kills you get, the more you progress in level Experience you attain. Levels will give you permanent upgrade points, which can be used at the workstation near your owners door. Each level, you are given a point, and a choice from three permanent upgrades, such as more health, faster speed and even health for your owners door.

Waves of enemies get harder with each subsequent round and its around wave 6 the boogey men start to appear. These towering black monstrosities slowly make their way to your owners door and can reduce its health in a matter of minutes. Its at this point you are forced to forgo attacking the mass wave of enemies and focus on the brute, as this will end your game quicker than the loss of health by its minions. 

Through out the waves, enemies types will vary and get faster in their ability to close in on you. They will also start to provide special drops, which will give you power-ups that activate when walked over, or special abilities to use when required. My favourite so far was mass freezing power-up, and the special ability to turn into a grizzly bear for close quarter mass murder..

Should you die, and you will, your then be treated to the owners door opening and the owner waking up. She will then fall back to sleep, as a red aura gets closer to her room. Once done this will then provide you stats and coins you have earned, before choosing to restart another run or quit. The coins are there to help you purchase customization options for your teddy bear and are worth doing, if only seeing what you look like in the title screen.

The game itself is hard and to get to the end of all waves will be punishing, as things grow steadily worse with each wave. The biggest issue for this game is that you can see this is built as multiplayer game thats baked into every element from its wave difficulty to it teddy bear customization. Why have the ability to customize your teddy bear, if you cannot show it off. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t come with multiplayer, unlike it’s pc counterpart. Whether this is to be added on xbox later will remain to be seen.

Graphics

Graphically, this game is superb with its smooth animation and striking visuals. Weapon design follows a template of what it would look like if a child made it and has some amazing creations, using a variety of materials like pencils, soda cans, and toilet tubes. Aiming down the sights are almost perfect for those long shots, but is equally tight when firing at close quarters.

Enemy design is equally well done from Gnomes, bath ducks, sock puppets and toy robots, all hell bent on taking you out. But the big boogey men at the end are what sells that nervous feeling as they slowly make there way to the door to undo all your hard work..

Customization options are perfect, with seven teddy bear skins, and a plethora of colours. A quick calculation I worked out it was in total about 54 variations to choose from. Combine this with the 13 different weapons, and about 5 to 7 skins as well, and you have more than enough to deck out your teddy bear how you want.

Levels are procedurally generated, and from what I have seen there is enough variation to the tiles to ensure good variation in all levels. Overall framerate and stability was good in all of my gameplay, and I saw no tearing or had crashes during my time.

Sound

Stuffed has no voice acting, with the premise and control being told using subtitles. This plays nicely into the whole toy aspect of the game, with its main emphasis the music and gameplay sound. The music is slight blend of orchestral and circus top music, with its wacky sound effects being used to ensure that your always on the edge of your seat looking for the next enemy to pop up.

The sound effects are the highlight of the game, with the variety of weapons and gadgets all providing that quirky toy effect or squeaks and pops when hitting a foe, that would take you back your own childhood. Environmental sounds also are atmospheric and depending which room you are in does provide a different vibe.

My recommendation here, is a good quality headset to ensure you enjoy the pop, crack and bang of toys being destroyed.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-
Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Stuffed is a "On Sale’’.

This game is fun to play and it does entice me to keep coming back to play another round, but you can tell there is a big chunk of the game missing and this did have an impact on my enjoyment.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £10.49 or approx. $13 and depending on skill and patience would give you about 30+ hours worth of gameplay. Due to procedural generating levels and upgrades, vast customization options, there is some replay value here should you wish to do so.

The biggest issue with Stuffed is that this was clearly built for co-op and whilst the game is fun in solo, having no multiplayer has severely hampered its playability and engaging experience.