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| | Publisher: Toybox Games  Genre: Puzzle & Trivia | | | Min OS X: 10.2 |
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Teddy Factory is a game obviously designed for children. However, it can be quite entertaining in short segments. The premise behind it is that you are a kind and caring person who wants all children to receive teddy bears. You decide to go about this by working for a teddy factory and giving the extra bears to the children. Throughout the game, you'll be faced with a simple task that becomes more complex although it rarely becomes more challenging. You must combine left arms, right arms, left legs, right legs, bodies, and heads in order to make a complete teddy bear. You must also separate them by color (no rainbow bears for you!), which can be frustrating on occasion. In general, the only way to raise the difficulty is to increase the number of colors you have to construct your bears with. However, there are a few extra bonuses, such as a cog that reverses the conveyer belt and rainbow parts that can be put on any bear color.This game was an unusual one for me to play. Aside from a few games like Pepper's Adventures in Time and Playroom, I've played almost no casual games. When deciding how to score it, I decided to refer to a few local children whose parents were only too happy to allow a little playtime. Along with their input, I also played it myself for a few hours for a couple weeks. In order to properly enjoy it, I restricted myself to playing it for a single hour every couple days. You won't need to worry about performance issues with this game. Even on an older eMac it runs with perfect speed and no lag. Gameplay There's something special about teddy bears. Often a source of comfort for young children, they hold a special place in most people's hearts. One thing I never expected to see, however, was a game where you took dismembered bears and assembled them as fast as you could. This is the main challenge of Teddy Factory, and it isn't that large of one. Your job is to click on a part of the right color and then click on each other part of the same color in turn. This is extremely easy, and gets tedious quite quickly. The only challenge is if you try to get a perfect score, and that can become frustrating as the parts you need often do not appear before time runs out. A thought bubble above a child's head determines the time you have. If it empties, that child goes away unhappy and you won't get the score required for promotion. The game does throw in a few curve-balls, but they generally do not add to the challenge in any way. For instance, as you progress from level to level the conveyer belt speeds up. This actually helps you win, as you only lose if you can't find the right parts in time.There are a few unlockables in the game. One of those unlockables is a trophy room that fills as you construct rare teddy bears from the rare pieces that appear on the conveyer belt. In order to get all the pieces, you have to hold off on finishing your last bears and wait for them to arrive. It's not that challenging, but it does relieve a little boredom at times. Another unlockable is the full quest mode. As you go from factory to factory, you have different style teddy bears and a mildly entertaining difficulty level. The only problem with that level, is that you have to play for a few hours before you can get to it and most people will simply stop playing before then.
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