If you press the X button, you can visit the beach, the business district, the town square (actually a circle, but who’s quibbling?) and the ‘residential area’ where Mel and Mark live. If you press the A button you can shift between playing as Mel (a girl) or Mark (her 17-year-old younger brother, which must make Mel, well, older — but both big-eyed pixel people look like kids). And what else? You wander. Wander around the beach, wander around the business area. Wander around the suburban residential area and bother the neighbors. You can tap on people and they will say one thing. You can't reply, because the game pushes you away from the person again.
So who can you talk to in town, since there is absolutely nothing else to do? A few people stand around - in shops, near the fountain in the town square, or on their front lawns. They always stand in the same place. They always say the same few things. They either coo over their pet dachsund, gripe about a sibling or kvetch about their spouse. But repetitive as that quickly becomes, what’s eerier are the townsfolk wandering the streets. Tap on them for a little conversation, and you’ll get one of two replies: “Hello, fine weather, isn't it?” or, “It’s gotten warmer lately, hasn’t it?” Between all this aimless wandering of Mel, Mark, the inhabitants of unnamed toy town, and the same few lines of conversation among them, it begins to feel like a Twilight Zone episode. But mostly, it’s just boring.
I stuck it out until Valentine’s Day — a few weeks' time in the game. A day in the game translates to about twenty minutes in ‘our’ time. At 7 PM in the game, no matter where they are, Mel and Mark are zapped back into their living room (another element reminiscent of Twilight Zone). They don’t have much of a social life even there: they watch TV or do jumping jacks with a half eaten box of pizza on the floor. Next morning, we see them eating cereal or staring out the window, and then another monotonous aimless day begins. This may be some Kafka-esque commentary on the futility of existence, but it doesn’t make a very entertaining DS game. And since the game is called Toy Shop I had hoped the majority of the game would be spent, you know, making toys? I had imagined choosing paint colors, constructing toys of my own design, and so on. Worst case scenario I had imagined a ‘tycoon’ game in which sales were the point, and I had to use the game’s prefab pixelated products. I never imagined a game that would turn out to be neither creative nor business oriented.
Article comments
1 - Jane
In the start of the game, they already supply you the $450 shelf and the $300 shelf along with the cash register. The 500 dollars comes along with all those three items. You have no need to stretch your $500 to buy these items because they are already supplied. Have you checked that underneath the items there is a "1" meaning you have it?