Take on the role of a heroic teddy bear as you defend your playmate from nightmarish intruders in Stuffed, a new “Zombies” style wave-defense game with a uniquely cute (albeit twisted) take on the genre. While the game certainly has merit, there are a few areas I feel the title could improve to stand out beyond its unique presentation.
Stuffed takes place in the nightmares of Ellie, a young child being hunted by malevolent spirits in her dreams. As her trusted Teddy, it’s up to you to take up arms (mostly constructed of toys and household objects) to fight back wave after wave of demented toys, defending Ellie’s room each night from the monsters that would invade.
The cartoonishly terrifying Stuffed falls under the genre of “Zombies-like,” something I use to describe wave survival titles inspired by the Call of Duty: Zombies game mode that has become “oh so popular” over the years. It is a pretty solid game design, and Stuffed follows many of the traditional tropes: Waves of increasingly difficult zombies, weapons that must be purchased with credits earned from killing said zombies, perk drops, and the other standard expectations from the genre. Stuffed adds a bit with a level-up system and a distinctly tower-defense style play, but it really stands out with its presentation, retheming everything to uniquely fit a childish nightmare.
The biggest standout in Stuffed has to be its enemies. These “zombies” are rethemed to be various toys, twisted by the dark powers invading Ellie’s restful sleep. Rubber duckies with vampire teeth, little toy robots, and garden gnomes… for some reason. Many of these enemies also have unique behaviors, like the stuffed toys that only move when you’re not looking at them. However, despite being cool in concept, they’re actually incredibly easy to deal with if you just put your back to Ellie’s door and spray while they’re all on the floor.
The creepiest of all the enemies is, for sure, the nightmarish humanoid shadow creatures that occasionally spawn, boss-like enemies that rush straight for Ellie’s door and try to break in. I was surprised by how much animation went into these guys and I got lost a bit watching them jiggle Ellie’s doorhandle, knock on the door, and put their ears up to it to hear if she was inside.
The weapons are also very unique, taking up Kids Next Door’s level of “childish ingenuity.” Slingshot pistols, jelly bean shotguns, crayon machine guns—all are toy-like and very creative in design. I think it would be hilarious, however, if there was one top-tier weapon in the game that was just an actual Glock 19 pulled out of Ellie’s dad’s nightstand.
As conceptually interesting as the weapons are, they don’t feel incredible to use.
The game’s crosshairs are generally inaccurate, which would be fine if aiming wasn’t so sluggish. At least for me, it was taking a few moments longer than I felt it should to ADS and fire at the demonic toys in my sight.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to refresh ammo like you would in a traditional zombie game. It would seem that when out of ammo (and the ammo goes fast, with pretty small maximums), you have to hope to get an ammo pickup, grab one at the level up, or buy a new gun. Buying guns also completely ditches your old weapon, leaving you with just the new one and a stick as arms, which doesn’t feel amazing.
Some weapons are also just way stronger than others, which greatly reduces your play variety, especially as the waves get stronger. Some weapons just immediately lose all viability when trying to fight back the horde. An example of this comes from one of my matches, where I had to trade my jelly-bean shotgun for the magazine-machine gun, only to find that enemies I was clearing out easily a moment ago were now all but immune to my damage, and I near instantly lost the match.
I don’t feel like the combination of tower defense and Zombies-style map roaming really works very well in Stuffed. I think this is mostly due to how the map is designed.
Stuffed’s map is designed so that you spawn just next to Ellie’s door (the target to defend) with a dead-end to your right and openings to your left. As you expand the map to the left side, it opens the path to new guns as well as new enemy spawns.
The issue is that Ellie’s room is not in a centralized location, and while there are a bunch of teleporters that bring you right back to the hallway where Ellie’s room is, as you expand out to find new weapons, you are constantly moving away from the defense objective, as enemies continue to spawn right next to it. You can never really venture very far or make use of the map to take out enemies because you always end up returning to the tight hallway where the door is located to defend it.
On top of these poor design choices, Stuffed is generally not very well optimized. I was struggling to get over 50 FPS on the same PC I used to review Armored Core 6 with no issues.
Overall, I’d say that Stuffed has a lot of potential, with a unique presentation and cool ideas, but it has some work to do.
The Final Word
Stuffed is an interesting take on the “Zombies” wave-defense style game. However, despite its great presentation and potential, the state of the game itself could use some work. With the state of weapon balance, performance optimization, and map design, I’d say Stuffed feels more like an Early Access title than a full release.
Stuffed was reviewed on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Stuffed is available on Steam.
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