Twisted Toys Review (PC)

It isn’t as graceful or as therapeutic as I thought it would be, filling cardboard boxes with porcelain dolls and foam noodles. I figured, if it was anything like the other poster children of warehouse simulation games, it would be an easy, almost soothing way to spend a few hours whilst waiting for a new venture to embark upon. But Twisted Toys isn’t anything of the sort; it’s a different, somewhat disturbing affair that loses its wholesome charm and bottled vigor in the first few minutes of spinning its yarn and shaping its narrative.

Twisted Toys is your typical fulfillment center sim—a love affair that shares the same basic principles as perhaps the most mundane chore core experience ever conceived. But, given that it’s a horror, and that it substitutes contextless packaging loops for a wider spectrum of traditional mechanical tropes and thrills, it doesn’t settle for being a shameless emulation of a bog-standard factory sim. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a bit of a slog, and the tasks that you accomplish in the game are as equally repetitive as they are dull. Yet, there’s more to it than that. Here, there’s a catch: the products are sentient, and the graveyard shift is famous for its supernatural occurrences. If you can stomach that fitting synergy, then you’ll probably love stuffing bits of plastic into boxes in Twisted Toys.

The bad news is that Twisted Toys isn’t quite ready yet. Well, it is, but the current version (the demo, that is) of the project is still a few nuts, bolts, and fittings short of a fully assembled plaything. With that out of the way, let’s jump into the finer details of Kizuna Game Studio’s latest toy box thriller.

Restore to Factory Settings

Twisted Toys isn’t oodles of fun, but it is an unnerving endeavor that pulls on a lot of good loose threads. The game, although still without the full manuscript and box of instructions, features a short fifteen-minute episode, a preliminary jump scare to help whet the mood ever so slightly, and a series of rather generic warehouse-like objectives to give you a clearer idea of what it is that you’re working towards come launch day.

The demo itself is broken down into a rather simple tour of a factory routine, with the bulk of the journey being largely fetch-and-package-based, and the other areas being more focused on skirting the possibility of unveiling a much, much darker secret that lurks within the shadows of the fulfillment center.

The idea is pretty straightforward: locate items, and cram them into boxes before shipping them out to their respective destinations. It’s a bit like your usual shipping sim à la Ship Inc., only without the candy-coated visuals and gentle progression, and with more fleeting moments of uncertainty and anticipation. The job itself, though, doesn’t deviate much from the usual narrative: a player packages items into boxes, and the progressive nature of an imminent threat attributes to an otherwise smooth and somewhat peaceful process, all whilst working towards achieving an unsettling climax of some kind.

Your job is as simple as they come: explore a relatively small factory and its inner quarters, and locate toys to bring back to the workbench for processing, packaging, and posting. There isn’t a great deal to touch base on here, I’ll admit, more so given that the current version of the game only features a few tasks for you to shovel through and a single supernatural event to critique.

Going Above and Beyond

The gameplay features here aren’t what I would refer to as classically invigorating. Much like your typical packing sim, the experience is more or less condensed into two simple steps: venturing deep into the storage rooms and gathering goods, and frequently veering from the usual path to witness an unsettling event of some sort—a subtle change in the environment, or an ominous swivel of a doll’s head, usually. Aside from that, the gameplay mostly unravels in a linear fashion, with the objectives allowing you the opportunity to gradually uncover various areas of the warehouse, and disturbing phenomena peppering itself over certain beats in the timeline. Like a traditional A-to-B horror, then.

While I wouldn’t say that Twisted Toys is a naturally scary game, it does tap into some interesting themes—the purgatory between adolescent dreams and unconventionally distressing nightmares, for the most part. The ambiance is certainly creepy, as are the toys that host the twilight shift. However, the world itself is almost void of any intriguing features or points of interest. It’s a dark warehouse, and so, I suppose it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise — the sheer lack of notable assets. Even still, I can’t bring myself to say that it’s blessed with intricate details and compelling artwork. That’s an indie horror for you though, I guess.

Verdict

Twisted Toys certainly has the potential to broaden its appeal and find a place in a world that’s immensely difficult to navigate and establish a foothold in. It doesn’t give much away, though, to give credit where it’s due, it does make a solid attempt to enlighten the player and tease a somewhat captivating premise. And while said premise, much less the imminent dangers that it might pose, is unlikely to catch us off guard even in its full form, I do have faith that the next sneak peek will bring several well-orchestrated thrills and sequences to the surface. It won’t be the greatest of scares, or even a feast for the senses, but it will, if handled correctly, prove itself as a pretty decent indie horror.

To cut to the chase, if you enjoy eerie dollhouses and possessed toys, or better yet, games like I Am Afraid, Emily Wants to Play, or more generally, horror games that utilize the breadth of paranormal fiction, then there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy dipping your toes into Twisted Toys’ factory secrets. If you’d soon rather wait for the finished product, though, then I can assure you that there’s plenty left here to be unveiled.