Finding Teddy (2013)

Finding Teddy is a traditional point-n-click adventure/puzzle game with a great art/atmosphere and a slight gothic horror theme. The premise of the game is simple: you're a little girl and a weird spider monster sneaks out of your closet while you're sleeping and steals your teddy bear. So you climb into your closet and find yourself transported to a surreal fantasy world filled with strange creatures and puzzles as you commence your quest to find teddy.

The puzzles in this game seem to fall into two categories: either it's way too simple, or it's very frustrating. Most of the puzzles are inventory-based: you explore the world and pick up various items, then you use the items on hotspots to open new pathways or to remove obstacles. Most of these solutions are pretty obvious or you can quickly solve them with trial and error. The other type of puzzle uses a music system not unlike the system from Lucasarts' Loom (1990). You find little sequences and tunes throughout the world and use them also on obstacles and characters. These puzzles become a frustrating towards the end of the game when they don't give you any clues and you're left guessing different combinations of notes.

My favourite thing about this game was the art. It has a very nice simplistic pixel design with careful colour choices and each scene feels a bit like a piece of interactive art. The animations are really well done too: the world is filled with big creatures and traps that are fond of killing you or eating you if you get too close. Similar to Another World (1991), a fun part of the experience is getting killed by different things and seeing the gruesome death animations: in fact, you get an achievement for each death. You aren't punished for dying, so it's just part of the experience. It works really well in providing contrast: the horror of this little girl being eaten juxtaposed with the overall cute theme of the game. During the game you also unlock little helper animals: a cat and a fly (with a tophat) who follow you and help you with certain puzzles. I really loved these little guys; I feel like they were underused and could have made the puzzles much more complex and engaging.

My problem with this game is that it's kind of broken. There's clearly something wrong with it and I had a lot of technical issues throughout the game. It would often crash, or else there would be a memory leak which would slow down the game or cause the sound to bug out. The game doesn't let you alt-tab out, it doesn't have any options and full-screen mode will act strangely. Furthermore the hotspots/hitboxes are really bad and often it's difficult to click certain objects. Basically the game lacks polish and it often feels like one of those old Flash games that you could download.. for a game this simple it's surprising; one would think such issues could be easily patched.

Ultimately it's hard to recommend this game. I did enjoy it and I completed it because I liked the art, the sound, the atmosphere, the animations and the adventure. But the puzzles are disappointing and the game is extremely buggy. But the game is rather short and it only cost me a dollar so I can't complain to much.