We all had nightmares as young children, and finding protection in words, people, or an inanimate object is what would help us through the night. Coming from a family of six brothers and one sister, sleeping right through the night was quite the task my parents would have to undertake, and before you ask, yes, we did have a television. It was used to keep all of us kids entertained so Mum and Dad could spend some time together.

My parents, as ingenious as they are, would find ways to help each of us cope with our nightmares, and this way everyone could get a good night’s sleep. One of my brothers, for example, was obsessed with lambswool. He never went anywhere without his lambswool protector. I’m not sure what nightmare he was having. I’ll have to ask him one day. For myself, my nightmare was a panther living under my bed, and the terror I would feel in the dark of night, knowing it was under there, fearful of it coming out to eat me kept me awake. Concealed in the darkness, it would sneak out and I would never see it coming. My parents helped me by getting me a pet black cat. I soon learned black cats were not all terrifying, and soon afterwards, I was sleeping through the night with my new best friend to watch over me.

Developer, Waving Bear Studio, and publisher, TheGamePublisher.com, have tapped into this protector of nightmares scenario by bringing us STUFFED. It is a game about a teddy bear tasked with keeping the nightmares at bay while a young child gets some sleep.

The plot is very minimal for STUFFED. A young girl called Ellie is attempting to sleep through the night. You, playing as her teddy bear, are tasked with protecting her from the nightmares. As these nightmares approach Ellie’s closed bedroom door, you must destroy them before they break it down.

The gameplay loop of STUFFED is a lot of fun. Being a first-person horde shooter, the nightmares of angry garden gnomes, fanged rubber ducks, and laser-shooting robots are just a few that will try to stop you. As you attack and defeat these nightmares you will earn points, the in-game currency used to unlock doors, purchase weapons and ammunition, and boosters, such as more speed, door repair kits, and instant revives that will sometimes make a run a dream or a nightmare.

Choosing when and what to spend your points on is just as strategic as defending Ellie’s door. To access more boosters and weapons you must unlock doors, further adding to the mayhem, as the more doors you open, the more access points the nightmares get. Weapons are fun and inventive, and you will start every run with a marble shooting pistol and a stick, but you can only carry two weapons, so it’s up to you to choose which weapons you want to carry. It could be a jellybean shotgun, a soda cannon, or an umbrella sniper rifle, but you are rather spoilt for choice with the 13 weapons to choose from.

All this nightmare defeating also earns you experience points, and like the enemy defeating points, they are spent in the game only. At the level-up stations, you can enhance yourself or environmental factors to increase your survivability versus the nightmares. Increases to your health, maximum ammunition, door repair kits, and Ellie’s door health are just a small number of options. When accessing the level-up station, there will always be three choices randomly allocated from a pool of options, and it will be up to you to choose.

The biggest nightmare in STUFFED, for me, was that the hit detection was very hit-and-miss. Some action commands either required multiple command inputs, or they just wouldn’t work. The most egregious of them all was when either aim-down sights (ADS) or melee would work, but the other wouldn’t, and completing runs when ADS would work, but I’d have no melee, or melee worked, but I could only shoot from the hip was very frustrating. Apart from that, the game would randomly crash without warning, and this, unfortunately, happened multiple times.

With each game map being procedurally generated, you will have to adapt new tactics each time, and there is no guarantee as to what boosters or weapons you will find behind a door. With each new wave bringing more and harder nightmares, you will have to balance the risk versus reward with every decision.

With all these points being spent in the game, only to be lost at the start of each run, the rouge-lite elements can become very frustrating for solo play.

STUFFED, in my opinion, is very strongly designed to be played through co-op, with you and up to three other teddy bears, where you can strategically plan and get further into the waves than you could do solo. Either way, at the end of every run, you will earn bear coins.

These can be spent on cosmetics, and just like the weapon choices spoiling you, the cosmetic choices are just as vast. With seven bear furs and ten outfits, you can give your teddy bear a unique look, and each of those furs and outfits comes with more colour options. The weapons also get colour customisation, so you can enter every game tailor-made.

With all the customisation for your weapons and teddy bear, the game is very bright and colourful, and the environment is as realistic as possible, without losing its charming cartoony vibe.
The music is upbeat with a hint of spookiness, but I swear I have heard this same music recently in another game, and as much as I thought about it, I could not put my finger on it. The sound effects were great, capturing all the individual weapons and nightmare sounds.

STUFFED is a lot of fun, but it’s so much better when you team up with other teddy bears. As it stands right now, STUFFED is an average game, but it’s worth your time if you like horde shooters. Once Waving Bear Studio and TheGamePublisher.com iron out the hit detection, the command fails, and crashes, STUFFED will be a well above-average game that I could easily recommend to friends to join in on the nightmare-banishing fun.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove