Title: Toylight
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Players: Emily Axford (she/her) as Tiddlywinks (a.k.a. Cutie Pie) (he/him). Siobhan Thompson (she/her) as Constance (she/her). Lou Wilson (he/him) as Wyon (he/him). Brian Murphy (he/him) as Ol’ Clyde Horsey (he/him). Zac Oyama (he/him) as Avery Augustus Archibald Tinsley (he/him) Ally Beardsley (they/them) as Calypso (she/her).
Streaming Service: Dropout

Our Intrepid Heroes return once more in a new season of Dimension 20, Toylight. If this season falls the trend, then the more innocuous the setting seems, the more dark and gruesome the story, but we’ll have to wait and see as six grizzled toys reunite to guard the sacred nursery.

With the warnings including childhood illness and a tag referencing the 1920s, we could be looking at the Great Influenza, a pandemic which some folks have connected to the idea of all 20s leading to outbreaks in line with the 1820s cholera outbreak and the 1720s Great Plague of Marseille (a.k.a. the bubonic plague).

That all being said, the 1920s weren’t a great time to be a child. Many of the vaccines that are taken for granted today, including MMR and other now common childhood inoculations, were decades from development. There were hospitals specifically dedicated to the isolation of patients with diphtheria or scarlet fever to mitigate outbreaks. The first polio vaccine wouldn’t be developed until the 1950s.

As if to assure us that this would be a tragedy in the making, Brennan opens with a young boy, Aubrey, preparing to go to boarding school, who is moving his favorite toys into his little sister’s room to protect her while he’s gone. While instructing the toys to protect his little sister, Adelaide, he mentions that Tiddlywinks previously belonged to Anna, a potential older sister. In addition to his own toys, Aubrey also brings Constance, a doll he perhaps found in the attic, to the nursery before mentioning that Adelaide is in hospital. His final instruction is to keep Adelaide’s light lit to ensure she makes it hope safely.

Once Aubrey leaves and our toys come to life, we learn that not only does Adelaide have consumption (a.k.a. tuberculosis), but Anna died from it, making it all the clearer how dire the circumstances must feel to Aubrey who has already lost one sister.

While the older boy’s toys are aware of death, the younger toys in the nursery have no idea and don’t understand that Anna had died or the risk of Adelaide dying. Tiddlywinks especially suffered, feeling the shadows encroach after Anna’s death. Per Rabbity Racer, a toy Aubrey gave his sister before her hospitalization and who serves as a liaison between the two groups, some dolls have already gone missing.

The group speak with a witness, a terrified Jack-in-the-Box, before making their way to the Toylight, a bright light that keeps the darkness and the dust bunnies at bay. Through the light, the toys can connect to Adelaide to sum degree despite her being in the hospital. Tiddlywinks, now under the name Cutie Pie, talks to Adelaide, telling her that they are here for her, that her brother loves her, and that her sister also loved her. From this emotional proclamation, warm passes into the light, and he overhears a doctor mention inoculating Aubrey against the disease to protect him from the infection that killed his elder sister and now has hospitalized his younger.

The reason behind the encroaching darkness, outside of Adelaide’s absence, and the true history of the toys now within the sacred nursery are slowly unfolding, but whenever all six of our Intrepid Heroes lock in, you know it’s going to be an emotionally ruinous season for all those watching. We can only hope the ending is less bitter and more sweet than what we faced with A Crown of Candy.

Highlights

I always love when Brennan plays children. He gives them the gravitas and nuance that often gets forgotten by those attempting to write or portray them. Though the young nine-year old boy speaks eloquently, something likely expected of a child of his economic background and age as he’s preparing for boarding school, but he has that faith and clear logic, tying the cowboy theme of his rocking horse into a suggestion that that Ol’ Clyde Horsey is capable and ready for the adventure of protecting his sister, Adelaide.

Final Score (5 out of 5 Stars)

This war for the light is going to be a heart-wrenching journey, and I’m locked in. While I always start out a season optimistically, this episode has already set high stakes, and our cast have one more created characters both unique and enthralling, offering comedy and tragedy in equal measure. While I’d like to cleanly say we can be assured that Adelaide will return home safely by the end, the backstory already has one child’s death, and Aubrey’s goodbye makes it clear that he firmly believes he has kept the toys as much as he can by giving them to his sister, so even if all ends well, that bittersweetness of growing up and being told you are too old to love what you do will be a feature we may not get closure for.

Then again, with a cast who’ve made something they loved (for some since childhood) into their profession, perhaps we’ll get a bit of reassurance that age doesn’t shrink hearts the way so many seem to expect it to.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens in next week’s episode of Toylight.

Let us know what you thought in comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Dimension 20

The Boss Rush Podcast: The Flagship Podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network

The Boss Rush Podcast – The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey, Stephanie, LeRon, and their friends from around the internet come together with other creators, developers, and industry veterans to talk about games they’ve been playing, discuss video game and entertainment based topics, and answer questions solicited on social media and the community Discord. 

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