Stuffed is a first-person shooter starring stuffed animals defending a young girl’s bedroom. Outside the door to the bedroom, creatures come out of boxes and try to break down the door. The only defender is a stuffed animal that the player controls. The gameplay revolves around upgrading your stuffed animal’s arsenal, protecting the door, and opening other doors to get better weapons.
Call of Teddy: (Almost) Zombies Mode
If you’ve ever played the original Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops, you’ll understand the mechanics of Stuffed pretty quickly. It’s the same, except that the zombies are scary creatures, and instead of protecting yourself, you have to protect a door. Although these simple gameplay mechanics are easy to learn, they become repetitive as the game progresses.
Related: Best Action Adventure Game In 2023
You’ll be presented with a new area every time you start the game, normally having an upstairs and downstairs. You are already faster than every enemy, so you just have to jump downstairs to avoid enemies upstairs. If you’re swarmed downstairs, don’t worry because you can race up the stairs due to the slow-moving enemies. This is made even easier by how long it takes enemies to attack you.
The game is so simple that you’d think it was effortless, but the girl’s door introduces a major difficulty spike.
The girl, Ellie, has a door that sometimes is a beacon for the more challenging enemies. Ellie’s door takes little time to open, so you’ll need better weapons, which means opening more doors.
Every door has a new portal for monsters, increasing the difficulty. That would be fun if the bigger enemies weren’t bullet sponges who never reacted to being shot. I am great at headshots, yet most weapons do minor damage, so you click repeatedly as Ellie’s door loses most of its resistance. There was a point when I questioned whether the weapons were doing any damage.
Related: 17 Underrated Games That Probably Skipped Your Screens
It feels more like a chore than exciting to defend the door, and repairing it feels like a waste of the money you get. Opening doors costs a lot of money, and weapons constantly run out of ammo, even if you’re a great shot.
I constantly felt like I had little money or couldn’t save up. I always had to get a new weapon or open a new door because some enemies eat all the bullets, even headshots. I went through full ammo clips and still wasn’t able to kill the tall silhouette enemy, which was annoying because it led to a game-over.
Less Than Optimised
The game’s sound wasn’t immersive in my opinion. Everything made noises (which they should), but they felt kind of like you’d find them in a sound pack. There’s nothing wrong with that and it didn’t take away from the game at all, but if they were trying to make it scarier, the sound didn’t help.
What added to the frustration was the upgrades, which come as you go through the waves of enemies. This sounds cool, but the upgrades I saw the most were speed upgrades and increasing ammunition size. In a game where every shot counts, I was really hoping for more powerful ammunition rather than constant speed upgrades. I did my best with what I had, but the gameplay didn’t feel well thought out.
The performance on the other hand was really good. It ran the way it should and I didn’t notice any lags or major glitches. What did stand out was a bug in the tutorial that didn’t let me kill the last big monster. That’s a small bug and I had already learned everything by then, so I think the performance itself was great. The game let me play through it smoothly and without issue, and I played at the highest settings.
It Looks Great
While the gameplay is okay, the look and animation are incredible. Whoever was in charge of the art definitely outdid themselves. When you lose, you’re presented with an animation of the door opening and Ellie waking up. She falls back to sleep with the door open as a red aura gets closer to her room. It does its job of being unsettling but looks stunning and is the best part of the game.
The stuffed animals look fuzzy, cuddly, and almost like heroes. Watching the enemies is inherently fascinating, as they’re both inanimate and threatening.
Related: 5 Indie Games That Changed The Industry
I stayed playing longer than I wanted to just to see what other creatures and weapons I could unlock and get a look at. They are modeled very well, and the animation appears as though it took a lot of time to create.
While the creatures may not have been programmed to do anything while being shot, I would have liked to see more of what the animators could do. Their hard work was evident in this product. This is not Triple-A quality, but it is definitely much better than you’d expect, especially at that losing cutscene I mentioned.
Once you return to the main menu, you’ll see Wardrobe, where you can customize your teddy and weapons. Whoever worked on it did a fantastic job. There are so many different things you can buy and modify that it is okay to lose because there is a lot you can customize after you die. Also, the amount of money you have after finishing a round helps.
There are seven teddy skins, and then there are over a handful of colors you can pick for those skins. In total, that makes 54 Teddies to choose from. There are 13 different weapons, each with their skins, too, most having five but two having six to pick. These weapons look like they were put together by a child, like a slingshot made from pencils, soda cans, and pencils. Other weapons look like they can be picked up around the house, like an umbrella and popcorn bag (that’s a grenade).
Verdict
Aside from the gameplay, the game’s look and features are the shining points, and there’s a lot to like. However, the meat of the game, which is the gameplay itself, could be more fun. It is easy to learn but loses its appeal because it’s so repetitive.
It also gets challenging really quickly because the enemies with the largest health tend to go for the door, making you focus on them. It needs a lot more balancing and would be better with better upgrades and more powerful ammo. This way, you wouldn’t need to hit around a dozen headshots to defeat a huge enemy with your strongest weapon.
I’d describe the game as a badly reskinned zombie mode from Call of Duty. This game just isn’t there yet, and it doesn’t feel like it’s very fun. Once you’ve played a few rounds, there’s nothing new to really do, and you’re just repeating the same thing over and over.
| Pros | Cons |
| The animation and models were visually appealing. | The gameplay became repetitive. |
| The game ran smoothly and had almost no glitches or bugs. | The upgrades could have been better. |
| Easy to pick up and learn. | Enemies just felt like bullet sponges and were unsatisfying to kill. |
Rating: 4/10
We received a review copy of Stuffed for Steam on PC.
