Some people make toys for a living. Others apparently spend their working week dismantling life-sized dolls in a room that looks increasingly unsuitable for employment. Welcome to Toycrafter, a first-person horror game that follows seven days in the life of a particularly unsettling craftsman. Unfortunately, it takes its time getting going, and by the end you’ll be wondering whether the real horror is the game itself or the fact you’ve spent your evening playing it.
Gaming Heaven
The atmosphere is undoubtedly the strongest feature. What begins as an ordinary working routine gradually becomes something considerably more sinister, with strange occurrences and unsettling changes appearing around the studio. The first-person perspective helps sell these moments, occasionally making you question whether you’ve actually seen something or simply need a decent night’s sleep.
There are some effective psychological horror touches, and the gradual escalation gives the story a reasonable sense of progression. The darker elements towards the conclusion also demonstrate that the developers had some interesting ideas.
Gaming Hell
Unfortunately, playing Toycrafter mostly involves completing workplace chores. Move dolls on a trolley, cut off limbs, paint them, attach pieces with power tools, close doors and switch off lights. Repeat until something spooky happens. It’s less a horror adventure and more an exceptionally grim health-and-safety inspection.
The gameplay offers practically no depth, with objectives doing most of the thinking for you. Even moving dolls becomes irritating when carrying one through a doorway isn’t permitted, because apparently the laws of physics have been replaced by office procedures.
Worse still, the story’s big revelation is painfully predictable. The clues are so obvious that the eventual payoff barely registers. When the most frightening thing is how little surprises you, something has gone wrong.
Final Judgement
Toycrafter has a creepy atmosphere and a handful of effective moments, but its limited gameplay, tedious routines and predictable conclusion leave it struggling to justify its existence.
It’s short, at least, so you won’t lose an entire weekend. Think of it as an evening shift at a haunted factory, only without overtime pay.
