A platformer with a distinctive, melancholy aesthetic, Toby: The Secret Mine takes you on a 2D side-scrolling adventure. You play as Toby, the white-eyed demon-child, and your quest is a simple one: to rescue your brethren. They have been kidnapped by the red-eyed demons, and you must travel far to rescue them. It seems straightforward, but don’t be fooled.

You will die.

A lot.

A World Determined to Kill You

The gameplay in Toby is simple enough, beginning with the controls. You can run, jump, and interact with objects. The controls are responsive, which is a blessing as Toby quickly gets challenging. The game’s main difficulty comes from navigating the many traps and dangers present in this harsh world, as essentially everything is designed to kill you. Among the assortment of death traps are the obvious lasers, spikes, and grenades, as well as many invisible booby-traps that you will, without a doubt, stumble into blindly. With very few visual clues to warn you, you will inevitably walk straight into dragon-infested sand, set off a flurry of deadly arrows, or fall through platforms to drown in the water below. Mistiming a step, overestimating a jump, or even simple bad luck will lead to your death. The adventure also has a handful of puzzles scattered throughout.

Perhaps it was not meant Toby…

On paper, it sounds good, but the main problem with Toby is that gameplay is inconsistent. While occasionally there are environmental cues to guide you toward a solution, often there are none. Consequently, a lot of the gameplay comes down to trial and error. For a game that claims to be a puzzle-platformer, this is disappointing. Puzzles make you think, while trial and error is guesswork; they are not the same thing. Mixing observation puzzles with brute-force pseudo-puzzles makes gameplay frustrating, as there is often no way to tell if you have missed a vital clue, or if you are just supposed to try random solutions until something works. However, as mentioned above, this isn’t consistent. When the gameplay is good, it’s really good, and the platforming elements are a lot of fun. However, these moments are not enough to allow me to overlook the game’s flaws entirely.

Glitch or Poor Level Design?

Unfortunately, my criticism of the game doesn’t end there. A handful of glitches meant that I was often second-guessing my aims and actions. For example, in one level the spikes that ought to kill me and the underlying object that would trigger my death were misaligned. This meant that I would pass straight through some spikes, while others would kill me without me even touching them. In another, despite using a rock as a shield, arrows from a booby trap would still intermittently kill me. This was clearly a glitch, but it did make me wonder if I was missing an obvious solution.

These glitches might be relatively minor. However, combined with the inconsistent gameplay described above, it meant that in later levels I occasionally couldn’t tell whether the difficulty was from poor level design or whether it, too, was due to a glitch. “Glitch or level design?” is not a question that any player should ever have to ask, and it does reflect poorly on the game.

A Simple Story With Minimal Replay Value

I really wanted to love Toby, but another of the big drawbacks for me was its lack of story. Don’t be fooled by the developer’s website, which tries to convince you that there’s a plot. The game starts with you chasing one of the kidnappers – and that’s about as much as the plot develops until the last ten seconds of gameplay. Without giving away spoilers, the ending is an awkward attempt to give the story a meaningful narrative. In a game that otherwise more or less neglects the story’s development, it feels like an afterthought and is very out of place.

I finished my first playthrough of Toby in under four hours. However, you do not need to rescue all of the demon children in order to finish the game. If you finish the game without finding them all, this increases the replay value, if only by a little. The story, as mentioned above, is also lacklustre, and may not be enough to draw you back for another playthrough.

Toby’s Beautiful – but Partial – Redemption

Criticisms aside, Toby partially redeems itself in its dramatic, moody aesthetic. If it wasn’t clear from my review of Semblance, I am a sucker for minimalistic graphics, and the visuals are my favourite part of this game. From the characters to the platforms and the items, nearly everything in the foreground is the same colour for most of the game. As you move through the world, Toby’s small figure melts into the black foreground or, in the snow levels, stands out against the harsh white of a blizzard. The backgrounds are equally gorgeous, using a range of colours and effects to create simple settings ranging from the bleak, rain-swept countryside to the literal fires of hell. Throughout it all, visceral sound effects and an atmospheric soundtrack enrich the game’s aesthetic. From melancholy piano chords to steampunk-inspired tracks, the music was very well done.

A Beautiful Game With Some Critical Flaws

A game needs more than an interesting art style to be worth your time. Inconsistent gameplay, occasionally unreliable level design, and an awkward attempt at a story detract from what otherwise might have been a great game. Great in concept but imperfect in execution, it might be best to wait for a sale to add Toby to your collection unless you’re dead-set on appreciating its stellar graphics today.

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