Chronicles of Teddy

Metroidvania style strategy and action with addictive puzzles and has RPG style upgrades.
Started playing this with the intention of only playing for a little while. Got hooked and forced myself to stop playing after 3 hours to suggest this is well worth it. It's a bit addictive. There are strategies for combating certain types of monsters so if you can figure that out it really helps. The musical language unlocks things including hidden fireflies (you can tell when your nearing an area by the sounds you hear). You can continue your game but beware that you lose a lot of money if you die unless you buy a diamond for an extra life. Overall - it's fairly addictive and a fun challenge.

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Zelda II inspired Metroidvania, but just like Zelda II I find the combat to be irritating and unsatisfying. And exploring isn't as fun as others in the genre, it just feels too slow.

A beautiful game ruined by stupid design choices and quite possibly one of the worst secret worlds AND worst final bosses I've ever encountered.

It's fun!

First, please note that most of my gameplay on Chronicles of Teddy occurred offline and therefore I'm not sure how many hours I spent playing the game.

That being said, this is not a terribly long play for a metroidvania but was engaging enough to inspire me to complete it. Prepare to take notes and refer to them regarding the puzzles, which are not exceptionally difficult but will require being observant throughout.

Most negative comments seem to stem from the combat, which is almost a 1:1 recreation of the system from Zelda 2. However, there are some upgrades, like the ability to dash, double-jump, and dash-attack that improve the general movement and offensive options.

Overall, this game is a little masterpiece for fans of old-school gameplay and my only regret is that the devs have not produced a sequel.

A tragically underrated metroidvania heavily inspired by Zelda 2.

Beautiful visuals, tight controls, gorgeous music, and smart level and enemy design around every turn. Yeah, it's a bit obtuse and will require some out-of-the-box thinking, but so did the old NES games it's inspired by.

It should be noted that many of the older reviews are no longer applicable, as the developer added some key features in updates a few years ago, including a map and various tutorial texts explaining things.

A hidden gem, honestly. No, it's not perfect, but it's loaded with atmosphere and nails what it set out to do. It's an unassuming game that will stick with you.

Find more reviews and recommendations on my Steam Curator page, Indie Infinitesimal:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41769714/

I played this game many years ago, but only now I noticed that it was renamed from Finding Teddy II to Chronicles of Teddy. My bad.
This game is awesome and five years after the release I bought it again on Nintendo Switch.
It plays like Zelda II and feels like a sad fairy tale. The art style and atmosphere are unique, the sound design is perfect, the world feels mysterious and alive. All in all playing this game feels like walking through the rainy forest with a big umbrella in a beautiful summer day.

Lots of potential, but just doesn't hold up. After a half hour of traversing long, mostly empty rooms, and handling jumps and enemies more reminiscent of SMB1 than Zelda 2, I gave up.

Also, the default keymappings are BIZARRE and cannot be changed.

There are a number of design choices in this game that make it unenjoyable:
- Sometimes you enter a room and before you get control of your character, an enemy will shoot a projectile that will be unavoidable by the time you have control.
- The maps make no sense. Rooms connect to other rooms halfway across the map. A door to another room may mean that it connects to the square above it in the map or below it. There's no way to know. Some types of collectibles are marked on the map (with no legend to explain it), but some aren't.
- Room transitions are often slow animations through doors that ruin the pace of the game.
- There are rooms that are just corridors with nothing else in them. (See above two bullet points for why this is worse than usual)
- Hitboxes/collisions are poorly done. Sometimes when your character jumps, their head hits the ceiling (most noticeable when starting to walljump up narrow passages). Sometimes you don't get up to a ledge that it looks like your legs got on top of. Sometimes you run into spikes when the graphics aren't touching. Sometimes you can stand on the very edge of spikes.
- The above is made worse as well by the fact that your weapon has barely any reach.
- In some areas, enemies are completely obscured by large foreground bushes, so it looks like you can just walk but then you get damaged.
- Almost all cut scenes are unskippable.
- The final boss is tedious and poorly designed. That's as much as I want to say about it to avoid spoilers.
- There is barely any recovery time after being hit, but only by certain things. This can lead to life being drained rather quickly when it shouldn't.
There's more but mostly just minor stuff that's not worth getting into.

There are some positive and somewhat innovative aspects of the game, but the above design flaws kind of ruined the experience for me.

Chronicles of Teddy is not a good game.
It has beautiful graphics with wonderful backgrounds and top notch character designs and animation.
The music is also very good.
COT is a side scrolling action/exploration game in the spirit of Dragon's Curse and Monster world 4, even stealing the upwards and downwards slash from the latter. Some compare it to Zelda 2 although I have no idea why.
Unfortunately COT fails as a game in every single possible way other than the pretty looks and sounds.
The play control is so bad I can't understand how it got a release at all and after years of complaining about the control the devs just don't seem to care to fix it.
Imaging controlling a character who's hit box is twice the size of her actual sprite while trying to hit enemies who's hit box is the size of a single pixel. This unfortunate bit of lazy programing is combined with a weapon so useless and without range that you will wonder if your controller is broken. I assure you it will be if you subject yourself to this undercooked mess for very long.
A wicked set of sub weapons would have gone a long way to make this better but you are given none. Not one.
Instead of becoming empowered by power ups like a double jump and wall slide you are basically cursed one these are obtained. The wall slide alone will cost you your sanity as you will screw up jump after jump as your character sticks to walls when you don't want her to and randomly chooses to execute wall jumps at a slow or fast speed. It's like rolling the dice every time you jump. Their is no continuity. No matter how much you play you will never feel good at COT because the physics for jumping and platforming are never on the money.
Sometimes you will land a downward stab perfectly, then, same jump, same enemy, and you take a hit. It makes no sense. After 35 years of playing difficult platformers I can honestly say that COT is the cheapest and most under-designed of any ever made.

The last form of the last boss has one opportunity to hit him. You have to wait for it. He did this move on an average of once every 5 minutes. Making the fight last almost 30 minutes. An appropriate end to a horrible gaming experience.

I couldn't recommended Chronicles of Teddy even if it was free.

I wanted so much to like this game, but the movement feels terrible, bosses stunlock you to death and so many questionable design decisions just ruin this for me. There's a good game here, but I just can't recommend it. I'm also frustrated by the fact that there's no autosave. I lost over 2 hours of progress when the game crashed and I hadn't saved in ages.

This game starts easy, gets difficult, becomes hard as all get out, and then you find the secret challenges and it turns into a living breathing nightmare from the deepest pits of your imagination. Combat could stand to be better, but the puzzle element is unbelievably unique, and very well done. Have a pencil and paper on hand when you play though, there are a lot of things you need to remember.

Those who wanted a followup to the first Finding Teddy should avoid this game. Even without that, it's still rather mediocre. The review reflects my initial expectations and current feelings.

I owned this game when it was called Finding Teddy 2. I saw it thinking a new Metroidvania game to play would be nice, but I noticed this bundled with a prequel. I played FT1 through just to make sure I know everything for 2, thinking it would be a little more basic anyway. I was awestruck by the world, and excited for FT2 because of the secret ending. To my disappointment it was only a sequel in name. That ending of Tarant asking that little girl grown up for help somehow didn't happen. Instead you're some little girl that's probably unrelated, whose teddy becomes possesed by Tarant after being weakened or something. I wasn't far enough to know if the teddy had any true purpose in the game, but as far as I cared it was just there because of the title. I'm glad the name was changed to Chronicles of Teddy. That doesn't excuse the flaws the game has.

I'm not going to bring up too much criticism here because it's been stated plenty of times.
It was daring of them to try to change up the gameplay. Many people say combat is flawed. I don't find it too bad, though exploration and figuring out what to do without guidance a la FT is where the game suffers most. FT does this well because the worlds are small and you can't go backwards. With this being a Metroidvania, it's an open world. You need to go back to places. If you can invest the time you'll eventually figure things out, but the difficulty in doing so may cause more confusion than fun. At 18 hours I don't think I was even 25% finished with the game. I was awestruck by the beautiful world created by Finding Teddy only for all of that to be blanketed into the backstory introduction in Chronicles. There are a few worlds that seem inspired by FT, but I'll be honest: I'm glad they tried not to make direct references to the previous game. I'm tired of games being meta. It does look nice and the sounds are fine. The music system is a little awkward as well. Before I understood what FT's music system was truly about, it was foreign as well, but this wants you to use THEIR language. It feels unintuitive at times.

I hope this does not deter them from a true sequel to Finding Teddy. It doesn't have to be a point and click, but it could definitely use better gameplay than this.

Looking to save some people money:

PROS
+Map is very helpful and allows for easy completion and navigation
+Areas have a good distinction from each other
+Double jump and wall jump feel good
CONS
-No story
-HP orbs scarce after second book (world)
-Unresponive movements
-Coupled with terrible attacks
-Easily stun locked
-Enemy placement
-Skipping entire portions of game with guide

So, I had no hopes for this game one way or the other. I knew it was metroidvania and pixel. I thought I would give it a shot because I have been itching for one after Guacamelee.

The positives: You know exactly where you are and how to get where you need to. You know whether the room your in has treasure or not. This is really helpful for people that are perfectionists. You don't have to go through entire areas over again and comb it hair by hair.

Each area has its own flare and the "towns folk" of each story are cute and interesting. Each of the Guardians and some giant skeletons in the background really want to tell you a story (-but they don't). Angel (double) jump and wall jump feel very responsive and not forced and help out a lot when traversing.

The negatives: A positive is that each area is distinct and the first guardian I saw (not boss) made my eyes go wide. I thought I might have to fight the creature and got excited. Then it spoke in the language of the game, asked what I wanted and let me pass to the palace. Absolutely nothing after that, when I go by it, it won't even speak anymore, none of them will. They are just walls between you and your destination. They could be so much more. Why are they even gaurding the palace if there is an evil in there holding the key item you need to get to the end? Terrible guardians and none of it makes sense at all. Which is fine, if your game doesn't need a story. I love playing games like Risk of Rain and Rogue Legacy, not because the story is just brilliant! but because they have tight controls and pose a challange. The thing about this game, however is it doesn't pose a challenge. It doesn't do much of anything.

The "difficult" part is trying to move your asinenly awkward character and attacking. Which I would hope the developer did not do on purpose. So in order to dash in this game two quick inputs in either direction will get you going, great! right? No. Some portions of the game require you to platform jump with dash speed and trust me it feels so awkard and when adding the enemies into the game play? Just . . . wow, terrible, terrible.

Let's expand more on attacking. Your character has a toothpick and EVERY enemy has a hit box about 2ft all around them and you have a hurtbox about 2ft out from you. Result? If you want to kill something you need to be breathing on it. You will ultimately get hit in the process. The combat of this game is just better to avoid all together.

So, so far there is no story to engage the player, the movement is absoultely terrible, and the combat is garbage. I would love to go back through each area and collect all the items if I didn't have to move or fight anything, but I do and there is nothing saving the terrible interactions with enemies and platforming.

So why play this game? Well the instrument that lets you navigate the areas is actually fun to use. Oh, but there is the fact that if you look up a guide it will tell you the rune order you need to open doors in the game and skip a majority of content in areas. You can do the same on a second playthrough. Why even put these rooms in if you are going to make them absolutely skippable? You can tell which rooms you will never have to visit again. very flat straight forward with no thought put into them. It is so lazy to "add content" like that. Put more runes in so that you have to go get those first before you can cheat the entire game or better, have actual content in there that the player doesn't need to get but will help for tough enemies. Oh, wait you're not fighting the enemies in this game, rather the controls!

Quick points on attacking: Simple attack horizontal line that will leave you open to attacks of monsters above or below. No diagonal attacking, jumping up and down attack are terrible and will get you hit. If you dash attack you will probably left in distance to be hit by the enemy because of the long recovery time. Cannot do jump attack after double jump (what?!). Your character feels like a plank of wood trying to give splinters to wood chippers.

This could be fine with sufficient health for terrible combat, but once again this game fails. I had 9 orbs when I reached the third area and got killed over and over because of the lack of pots to refill health. This game gives more orbs as you get low as well, which is great, but when there is nothing to give you HP and enemies can stun lock you for 2 orbs, there is nothing you can do but run. Killing enemies (even with the ring that ups HP drops) with low health is a high chance of death because they may not drop anything or they drop the amount they took away.

TL;DR Do not buy this game. Want a Metroidvania? Try Guacamelee!

I'm genuinely disappointed I can't recommend this game, because there's a lot to love about it.

The pixel-art (ordinarily something a lot of people use to mask lazy art design) is exceptionally well done, beautifully animated and some of the creatures you'll find in-game I'd consider on par with the monster designs of someone like Guillermo Del Toro, or bosses from the Legend of Zelda series.

Sound is also a big plus: even though most songs are only short loops, the melodies are memorable and I never once got sick of them; again another pitfall common with more lazy developers.

The problem with the game, though, and the reason I sadly can't recommend it, is that the player-character is an absolute nightmare to handle.

First off, your sword, the only weapon you get in the game, is far, far too short. You will start to feel it almost instantly, like you're always just missing your target by a pixel's breadth. This is exarcerbated by the fact that a good share of the enemies you face have longer range than you, or attack in several directions at once; meaning you're constantly finding yourself exposed to cheap shots that you have no choice but to take, because your shield is extremely limited in its application.

Speaking of cheap shots, the invincibility frames you get after taking a hit actually shouldn't even be plural: they last less than a second and it's completely possible, with certain enemies that fire a barrage of thorns, to actually get stun locked to death as you are given no time to recover between each hit. This becomes even more of a chore in the precision platforming rooms, where enemies will be positioned specifically to stun-lock you down pits (thankfully not instadeath) but they'll be mixed in with randomly moving enemies who can also mess up your jumps, making sections that should be a test of player skill and patience basically a roll of the dice on whether you'll get favourable patterns or not.

If all this is making the game sound difficult, then rest assured it's really not. When you can actually manage to hit enemies, their patterns are extremely straightforward, even for the boss fights. For the most part, it's that extremely frustrating kind of difficulty, where you'll know what to do and be perfectly capable of doing it, but you have to wrestle with the game's poor controls in order to do so. One of my biggest bugbears, in this respect, was the fact that your dash is mapped to double-tapping the d-pad forward, despite there being a dedicated run button already present. Since, as I previously mentioned, your character has such a tiny hit radius with their sword swing, I frequently found myself accidentally dashing straight into the enemy I was trying to only move slightly closer to, again made worse by the fact most enemy's reach appears to be orders of magnitude larger than the areas where they can be damaged.

As you can see, in spite of all this I still put 14 hours into the game, finding all the collectibles and completing optional areas, but only because I really did love the visuals, the music and overall atmosphere of the game. I really hope the devs come out with a sequel in a similar vein, that finetunes the combat and general character handling, but I can't in good conscience recommend a game that's this frustrating to play.

My advice: buy the soundtrack and watch a longplay on YouTube.

+Stunning pixel art and effects
+Zelda II combat elements in a new system
+Combos, up/down-thrust, low-strike, jumping/running attacks
+Charmingly reminiscent of old school legends like Metroid, Zelda, Castlevania and even the more recent Fez
+Easy to get into
+Pleasant and relaxing presentation
+Good dungeon design (ik they're called temples)
+Doesn't drag out too long
+Not too difficult, but...


-...very, very FRUSTRATING
-A myriad of terrible design choises will ruin your experience only a few hours in
-Small pots breaking your momentum everywhere
-Enemies are frustating and boring
-Easy to get lost and have no idea where to go
-No way of getting all collectibles without a guide or a few weeks of tedium
-Controls feel slippery
-Inv frames after getting hit last way too little and get you stun-locked
-Game has no direction in recards to difficulty, many mechanics clash against one another:
A.If you die you lose your currency, marbles, BUT you can deposit all your unused cash in the shop
B.Constantly falling into bottomless pits, BUT you respawn a few pixels away with only half a peg of HP gone
-No matter how good the sprite work, much of it is wasted on huge things that don't really do much and you'll only see for 5 seconds and many areas have terrible colour work, making spikes and traps not pop out or seem harmless. In the first temple I kept forgetting the green blocks were spiked because they looked exactly like the vines and leaves that flooded the screen. If this was a deliberate desgin choice I'd appreciate it, but judging by the rest of the game's difficulty it wasn't.
-The sound design kinda sucks. The effects sound nice, but when you use your Musicom a lot it becomes grading on your ears and the music isn't much, I would've honestly prefered just ambience instead of it. Also there's collectibles that require you to listen in order to locate them, which is terrible because unless you're listening for it, the sounds will blend in with other noises, and that's whenever you don't just speed past them because you're constantly running.
-Speaking of running, the controlls for running are pretty terrible. You can either double tap a direction or hold either bumper. EVERYTIME you intend to start running. And you will have to do that a lot, since your runs get interupted constantly by combat and random knee high objects that have no bussiness being there in the first place
-Much in the style of the old game it borrows from, this sequel has very little to do with the first game in terms of gameplay. The first was a short point and click adventure, this game is a side-scrolling action RPG. They only share the story, which makes it feel very awkward since the athmosphere is completely different from the first. That is probably a symptom of the earlier entry being so much simpler in terms of how it was built. The first game's story, or at least one of the versions, since there are multiple endings to that game, is presented at the beggining of the game in an homage to Zelda I. Where I really want to rag on the devs is in the re-branding of this game. This is obviously not a reboot, but a continuation of the first game, yet they scrapped the "Finding Teddy 2" name for a cheap way to attract Castlevania fans. This is a terrible move since this game borrows nothingother than the double jump from the later Castlevania entries, where the series adopted this particular naming scheme.

>If it's on SALE and you want to spend around 12 hours on a gorgeously pixelated TRUE nostalgia trip, by which I mean it has a lot of the imperfections of the early days of game design along side the classic sidescroller elements we love, then by all means, get this game. Otherwise, unless you're a dev looking to study an okay game with plenty of problems to think about, I'd pass on this one.

This is a game that started with a cool gimmick and didn't quite get the design it deserved. The gimmick is that you can converse with npc's using a musical language. The design is a basic platforming MetroidVania.

I have to say that I do love the language. I found myself talking in this musical tongue while playing, even when there was no one to interact with (like in real life!): however, this is used as a secondary mechanic and remains unused in half of the climactic moments.

Aside from that, the hack and slash is mediocre, with a 0 range knife, enemies who jump around and explode at you, and some clunky movement issues, paired with a map that tells you little to nothing about the area and an omniscient partner who doesn't tell you anything directly. There's a big break in immersion when your guide tells you what to do for two areas, then the game stops using words altogether for the other 10 hours.

I can't recommend this game as a whole, but I did like the language element. Then again, I'm a huge nerd.

5/10: Some good elements, but too many bad ones

Look at: Momodora III, Reverie under the Moonlight, Ghost 1.0, Metroid (Fusion and Zero Mission esp.)

A mixed bag of good and bad that succeeds just enough to garner a recommendation.

Summary:
Chronicles of Teddy, previously known as Finding Teddy 2, is a game that has left me with very conflicting emotions towards it. It pleases with a charming art style, a soundtrack that adds character to the world, a sense of exploration common to Metroidvanias, and a unique feature called the Musicom that creates the opportunity for some neat puzzles. However, it also frustrates with a mediocre combat style, terrible boss designs, occasional unintuitive puzzle solutions, some poor level design and a very minimalistic story.

Full review:
Easily this game's best gameplay element is the Musicom. It is a musical communication and puzzle solving tool with 12 notes that you gradually find over the course of the game. The complexity in which you are required to use it also ramps up as you progress. The language of the inhabitants that you meet as you travel is a sing-song language made up of these same notes. All communication is constructed from a relatively short list of 80 words, each of which you are capable of singing. This imposes a limitation on NPC dialogue that greatly reduces the depth of conversations. It does, however, allow for many puzzles where you have to use clues to discover which words will unlock certain doors or chests, or convince a guardian to let you pass.

The Musicom is often leveraged in the way levels are designed. Early on it is used to great effect. Part of its first half effectiveness comes from how the game doesn't hold your hand and only provides hints if you seek them out. This makes the process of discovery more fulfilling. Unfortunately, the game's second half largely falls into a predictable pattern. It adds bulk to the puzzles in the form of more notes and locked doors, but the basic process of solving them is the same. It ends up feeling like unnecessary busy work rather than stimulating brain-teasers.

As you would expect from this genre, there are many areas early on that can only be accessed with an ability that you acquire later. These are mostly optional paths that reward you for backtracking. The first time you are required to backtrack in order to find a story critical item was the only time I ever had to use the hint system. Up to that point everything necessary for story progression was found within the region you were currently in. In this case, two of the three items you are tasked with collecting are in that region, but one is not. I found no indication that you might need to look elsewhere for the third. This particular puzzle made me feel like my time had been needlessly wasted by this unintuitive solution.

I am very glad that a map has been implemented by the time I played this. Areas connect logically in most cases but occasionally there are doors that link to areas that they are nowhere near. This helps by creating shortcuts for when you need to travel long distances, but without a map I could see them creating confusion. The map itself is well designed and once you've figured out what all the shapes and colors mean, it provides a great deal of useful information. The Steam store page estimates the main story length at "over 20 hours", yet I finished the main game and all optional side content in 18 hours. I suspect the addition of the map, as well as some exaggeration on the developers part, plays a big part in this discrepancy. Simply not getting lost, being able to see the quickest path to a location and having a general indication of where there is still treasure to be found makes for a less meandering experience.

Combat in Chronicles of Teddy felt archaic to me. You have a basic attack, a dash attack and can attack in the four cardinal directions while jumping. I think the developers tried to create challenge by making your attack reach very short. Because of this, it was far too frequent that I either bumped into an enemy accidentally while trying to make sure I was in range, or I stopped just too short and missed my swing. I did develop a feel for it over time but it never became particularly enjoyable.

The best enemy types were the defensive ones where you had to figure out how to damage them. The most annoying were the numerous types that explode moments after they die. This is dangerous the first time, but once you know to expect it, it becomes a tedious break in flow as you have to wait to continue past. One other baffling design decision worth mentioning is in an optional late game room. The final section of this room involves a leap over a chasm where you have to bounce on top of enemy projectiles at least twice to reach to far side. The problem is that the enemy's fire is entirely random, so there is no way to time it. You basically have to jump and hope you get lucky. I got a game over twice here before giving up and using a guide to get the door code that I would have gotten by making the jump.

Boss fights are another weakness in this game. The first couple are fairly average without much to complain about other than not being memorable. The third, though, infuriated me. It is a giant snake-like creature in a partially vertical room design. If you ever have the misfortune of falling into him you'll essentially get stunlocked by his massive body, causing you to take a lot of damage until he moves by. The subsequent bosses are better than the third, but still exercises in frustration.

The artists did a wonderful job with this game. The rich colors and relatively simplistic character designs fit well with the child's storybook theme. I'm usually not drawn to soundtracks that use as much ambient noise as this, but in this case it worked to help bring this world to life and give it more character. The free inclusion of the mp3 soundtrack in the game files is an appreciated bonus. I transferred more of the tracks into my music library than I expected to.

I'll wrap up with a few notes on replay value. First, the story is nearly entirely contained within the intro and outro. It's just enough to give purpose to what you do, but it's not anything you'll be dying to experience again. There are basic upgrades that can be purchased with marbles, the game's currency. These are kept in a new game+ mode unlocked after finishing the game. I only played a short period of new game+ but I was happy to see that levels had been redesigned to be harder in addition to the expected bump in enemy parameters.

For those that come across this game, I expect you can find something to like in it. It's far from perfect, but it's an adequate entry in the Metroidvania subgenre. If you haven't played Guacamelee!, Valdis Story or Child of Light I recommend taking a look at those before this.

6/10

Recommended for Zelda 2 fans, with some reservations

Positives:
-Fantastic art and animations
-has all the classic metroidvania staples, well designed levels, secrets, places that are locked until you find the appropriate items
-Puzzles and recorder device are smart and well implimented
-decent and fitting soudtrack, good sound effects

Neutral:
-Hard difficulty
-No guide or explanation, exploration and problem solving encouraged.
-You lose your currency upon dying. Some will appreciate this as a challenge. I f'n hated it.

Negatives:
-You'll need a controller as button mapping cannot be changed, and on a keyboard it's almost impossible to play. This should really be pointed out.
-No Map-Why???
-Your sword is tiny. It's more like a shovel. You have to be two pixels from an enemy to connect. I found this super frustrating when...

-THIS IS BY FAR THE WORST THING: The controls for the most part are fine and responsive, but pushing forward twice causes a dash. So when you are trying to get close to an enemy or platforming, you end up dashing into an enemy or off the cliff. When your sword is friggin tiny you find yourself getting hurt by otherwise easy to kill enemys. PLEASE CHANGE THIS!

-Its very easy to miss things, because the backgrounds, while beautiful, are very subtle. I didn't realize there was a store till after resorting to a walkthrough. By then I had died a few times reducing the $500 I had to a little over a hundred. Because...
-When you die you lose HALF your money. Saving for that upgrade? Better not kick the bucket!

Despite all those negatives, It's stll a lush, challenging, beautiful game. It's frustrating that some of the difficulty lies with the controls, but I'm sure I'll keep going if I don't break my controller first.
I'd say 8.5/10

If you like this game I highly recommend Elliot Quest. Very similar style and gameplay.

If you enjoy a good action platformer along the same lines as Metroid or the DS castlevania games then you'll definitely enjoy Finding Teddy 2. It has the same kind of style but puts its own little twist into everything..

It really seems like it would be those games if being seen through the eyes of a child. For example, in order to go in water effectively in one of the castlevania's, you needed a scale. In this, you need one of those water ring duckies.

The game in terms of text on the screen is quite bare. It doesn't say what an item is when you pick it up and the only time any dialogue text appears is when you meet with the inhabitants. You yourself don't speak..technically. Along the way, you pick up an object called the Musicom which lets you play 'words' and by words, I mean music tones which everybody speaks in. Think of it as the ocarina from Zelda but you're making words with the notes.

If there was anything I had to complain about this game, it'd DEFINITELY be the slime blobs in the third and fourth worlds. The ones that electricify themselves so you can't hit them. Now this is an enemy we know from every game. You just have to wait for it to be done. That's just the problem. Depending on how you move around him, he will just keep reactivating this 'shield' and basically make themselves unhittable forever. They should only do it based on a time limit. LIke they only do it every 10 seconds or something like that.

The other thing would be one of the doors in the star road place. (The place you can get to with all four orbs.) It's the top right door with all the spike balls, flame guys and stuff.

If the people who designed that area is reading this, I hate you. I would have slapped you if I was there when you made it.

Lastly the block pushing animation is pretty glitchy for me so it takes a while to push blocks and pots around.

Other than that, it's a beautiful game that I just found myself being absorbed into as I played. It's one of those games where you start playing and then before you even know it, several hours have gone by

A solid metroidvania platformer, with movement that feels good. My only complaint is that I wish there was a little more breathing room between the edge of my character's hitbox, and her weapon's attack range -- the enemies with shields are harder than they should be.

But, the bosses are excellent, and the music system is interesting. A+

If you like Zelda games, you should try Finding Teddy 2!
i haven't played a game like this for... many years. The atmosphere is gorgeous, puzzles are challenging and there's a lot (I mean A LOT) of secrets you probably won't find if you rush the game.

It seems to be a little hard at first: There is no tutorials, little assistance. But hey! It's like these old games you played when you were a kid in which clues were very rare and you probably spent a lot of time to find the solution. Once you will understand this, the game will be easier.

Hard to recommend in its current state.

I love the idea of the game: A strong girl running around Zelda 2 style collecting powerups and items that will help her navigate the world. The art and animation is wonderful. I love the idea of music/notes to pass through major unlockable areas.

However, the world makes no consistent sense, and there's no mapping.

Mapping: Many moden games like this have auto-mapping to help keep track of where all the twisting branching areas go. There's just too many areas and doors to simply "memorize" it. I'm probably less than 1/4 into the game but have already surpassed like 1.5 Metroids worth of maps and corridors. Knowing that now, it's okay; I've busted out paper and pen for when I can't seem to get any further, and carefully take notes. But this is jarring when you fist experience it.

Consistent Sense: Nothing seems to make sense. The hub-world doesn't make sense. None of the equipment you pick up or purchased is explained at all. I have a ring! No idea what it does. I upgraded to cute blue oeveralls; they seem to provide no protection bonus. I collected Eggplants, Scarabs and Snowflakes: I'm hours into the game but have no idea what they're for! In my inventory I have sunglasses and christmas ornaments, but no idea what they're for. And on and on.

The discussion boards are flooded with the same questions over and over: Using the shield, opening certain doors, how to use the books as warp gates (this is one of the most intregal features of the game early on, and there's no explanation given for it. The only way to know how to proceed is to check the answer in the Discussion board... What the heck??).

Ultimately, the above two points (complex maps that require hand-mapping; and no sense or guidance on objects or their uses) lead to far more frustration than fun. I've gone through The Talos Project without many hints, so I know my way around puzzle games... and yet I find myself stumped regularly, with no guidance as to where to go for the next hint/clue/action... Have spent more time backtracking in this game than making forward progress!

So, currently I'm about halfway through the game. I'm of equal parts joy and frustration. The art, animation, themes and sound have me going further instead of giving up. We'll see if I make it out the other side.

A GIRL SITS IN THE DARK playing a video game one summer evening. It looks a lot like another game you may have seen before, or perhaps even played yourself. Abruptly the strong glow of the television cuts out and shrouds the room and its contents into shadow. Upset by this, the girl tosses her controller to the carpet, stands, and roots around in a nearby chest -- eventually pulling out a small dagger and green coloured shield. Now so equipped, the girl traverses the disparate rooms of the nigh empty house with the resolve to find out the cause of this unwelcome interruption. In the basement she finds something strange... and peculiar. The nebulous shade of a teddy bear floating next to an open doorway full of bright light beckons the girl to follow it into the luminance beyond the portal. She renews her grip upon her dagger and shield, descends the basement steps, and begins her adventure.

Okay so, I will start by giving the obvious thing away. This is - through and through - a METROIDVANIA. So if you know what that phrase means and aren't put off by it but rather all-the-more intrigued, then I can happily report that you should BUY THIS GAME IMMEDIATELY!

Here are some reasons WHY:

The Music, Sound Design, Graphics -- basically anything aesthetically pleasing about a video game is done SO, VERY, well here. This game has Symphony of The Night mixed with FEZ levels of graphical splendour that just oozes over your eyeballs and coaxes your brain into telling you only to simply nod and go, "Wow...". It's a seriously gorgeous game.

It also has a very maze-like approach to level design and, without the help of a map, you really have to use your brain-box to sort it all out for yourself. Navigating can be a bit of a nightmare because of this mapless system, however I never begrudged the game this missing feature because it forcefully got me to explore things more than I already had and to also stumble upon the numerous secrets and to amass more currency via slaying monsters to spend in the vendor's shop.

As far as I can tell the game is made by non-english speakers, and as such, the whole thing has this theme of non verbal communication that is rather charming and it only ends up adding to the overall mystique of the world in general. The only downside to this is that when there is text, there are several typos and odd sentences that end up occurring here and there but, this is nothing that a patch won't eventually fix.

Finding Teddy 2 is exploration, it's combat, it's lyrical puzzle solving. All to the waxing of a beautiful soundtrack and stunning graphics. It's also pretty hard and doesn't hold your hand through the puzzles. I found myself getting stuck for small pockets of time and having the game test me to see if I had indeed been paying attention or not.

Seriously, if you want to relive the good old days and with a little bit of what contemporary PIXEL technology has to offer... what are you waiting for.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! A game of this type hasn't been done THIS well in some time.

Can't wait for the THIRD one!