An Everyday Story

A toy soldier, origami bat and wooden ship walk into a burning house. No, that’s not the start to a very strange joke, but rather it’s the setup to An Everyday Story, a brand-new narrative platformer from first-time developer Cactus Production. It’s an emotional journey through a man’s life, showing us both the good times and those moments we wish we could forget. What do the three toys have to do with it? That’s just one of the questions we’ll answer when I review An Everyday Story.

Some games want to show you a fantastical world where people go on impossible adventures, but not An Everyday Story. As the name suggests, this is a grounded tale with real people that have relatable problems. It’s built around the conceit of a father telling his son about the pivotal moments in his life that made him who he is. We learn about his childhood as the son of a war hero, about how he moves to Italy, the little toy shop he opens up and the cute way he met his wife, along with some of the darker moments, like the inherited alcoholism and that one time he accidentally caught the house on fire.

These stories are told through a series of platforming stages where you play as one of three types of toys – an origami bat, a toy soldier and a small wooden boat. Each level is built around the different toy and their abilities. For example, the toy soldier can shoot a gun to clear a path, grapple up to hard-to-reach locations and parachute down to safety. The origami bat can double jump, glide through the air and flatten itself, allowing it to slide under doors. And then there’s the boat, which is good on both land and water, capable of using its anchor to solve a bunch of simple puzzles.

That’s the key to all of these stages, no matter which toy you’re controlling. While the father narrates why this memory is important, we’ll explore the surrounding looking for items to pick up that we can use to solve puzzles. Sometimes that’s as simple as just grabbing a bullet and loading a gun, while other stages will have you controlling a big magnet and moving multiple objects around the room. While none of the puzzles are especially difficult, you’ll run into a nice variety, keeping the game from becoming too repetitive.

It helps that the backgrounds tied to the memories are often really exciting and fun to look at. Because these are small toys, you’re often trying to overcome everyday objects that tower above the character. One of the most exciting parts of the game has your toy soldier taking part in skirmishes with the enemies, which includes a lot of blowing up LEGO walls and watching the tanks roll through the streets. All this takes place as the father narrates what he was feeling at the time and how it impacted his life going forward.

You can tell right from the start that this is one of those games that wants you to cry. Even when things are going well and everything is working out, you just know that the other shoe is going to drop at some point. There’s always that feeling that trouble is just around the corner. And because the problems are so realistic and relatable, you’ll be able to guess a lot of the gut punches that you’ll take. The back half of this game is pulling at every heartstring you have, with some of it feeling a bit manipulative.

For the most part I’m fine with the predictability and melodrama, because it leads to a number of interesting stages that are fun to play and explore. Although it’s using 3D polygons, this is strictly a side-scroller. Sometimes you’ll need to walk in and out of the screen, but there’s always a prompt for that. This can be a little confusing in some of the larger stages, especially when you’re being asked to complete multiple puzzles before you can move on. It’s not always clear where you’re supposed to go and some of the objectives end up getting lost behind objects. It takes a little while to get the hang of navigating the admittedly cool looking stages.

One thing that puzzled me throughout the entire game was the choice in toys. For example, the toy soldier and origami bat are surprisingly similar. While the soldier will parachute down, the bat can glide. Give the soldier a double jump and ability to crawl on the ground and there would be no use for the origami bat at all. The boat is also confusing, as you’ll spend very little time on actual water. There are lengthy levels where you’re on the dry ground with no water anywhere in sight. Once again, I feel like a lot of this could have been given to the toy soldier. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that both the origami bat and wooden boat play important roles in the story, but they simply aren’t as much fun to control as the toy soldier.

The other problem with this game is that it just doesn’t feel very polished. Everything from the animation to the stage designs is a bit rough. You’ll clip through a lot of the platforms and obstacles, and all of the movement looks stiff. The game gets away with that because these are toys and they don’t have to have lifelike animation, but it still looks a little awkward. There are also a bunch of technical problems, like getting stuck in the backgrounds. Thankfully, the checkpointing is liberal, so even if you do get stuck, you won’t lose much progress.

One thing I liked about the game is that all of the problems are the types of things you see in your own friends and family. There’s nothing crazy here, just the kind of relatable problems that many adults are forced to deal with. In an era where most games have you trying to save the world, there’s something comforting about having more realistic stakes. And that’s the point. This isn’t an outlandish or unbelievable story, it’s An Everyday Story.