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If the workshop teaches kids about failure, the storefront dishes out another lesson on rejection and unrealistic expectations. When a customer comes in, you can see (via some kind of hi-tech brain scanning device, we're sure) what kinds of toys they like and how much money they have. Then, you must quickly arrange the shelves with stuff they like via clumsy stylus controls only to have them turn their nose up and walk out anyway.
Besides toiling in the shop, you're supposed to wander around town talking to people to gather info to help the game progress, like getting blueprints for new toys. The 3D graphics of the town are butt-ugly, and everything about it seems comically unfinished. Navigating with the stylus on the bottom screen, you can touch townfolk to initiate inane dialogue, which is displayed on the top screen with dialogue bubbles and the two characters talking in 2D form. The 3D character models on the bottom screen seem to be more plentiful than the 2D ones, because whether you approach a blonde, brunette, or green-haired girl (on the bottom green), the same brown-haired 2D character will confusingly appear on top screen. To make matters worse, your character will constantly come to a halt in middle of the screen at invisible boundaries where the town apparently comes to a stop although there's no fence or any kind of visible cue to indicate the edge.
We can definitely see aspirations of greatness here, so it's too bad Toy Shop is so unpolished overall. It's nice to see a kid's game that isn't overly-simplistic, and it probably would have been a lot more fun if the menus in the shop were easier to use and the town and its inhabitants were a more fleshed out or given even an ounce of character. Unfortunately, not only is Toy Shop just as generic as the title implies, its gameplay is near-broken to boot.
Apr 11, 2008
