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

If you haven’t checked them out already, you can catch up on our reviews of prior episodes – one, two, three, four, and five.

We return this week with only three of our Intrepid Heroes at the table. Lou, Ally, and Siobhan started this episode in dire straits. Last week’s episode left Lou’s character Wyon in the water with the rat prince. Constance also took a last stand, taking to the sky with the remaining cherubs in hot pursuit. Even if she survives, our cursed doll will be behind enemies lines and all but doomed. Worst of all, Ally’s Calypso gave her life last episode. Half of our group face utter destruction.

The cherubs send forth their flames. Before she can be swallowed, Constance strikes back, taking them along with her. As Constance falls, she remembers young Charles hugging his beloved toy. The toy, lost in the woods, contains all the ingredients to defeat the Underlord. With this final vision, she fades to darkness.

Wyon and the rat prince fight as the current continues to drag them under. Without their prince, the ratkin will not fight in the Snuffer’s Crusade. Even if he cannot kill the prince, the longer Wyon keeps the rat prince in the water, the more delayed the ratkin will be in joining the fight. Odds of victory are low. His first hit fails. On his second blow, the rat prince loses the air in his lungs, breathing in water and dying under the lion’s relentless attack.

Faced with her recent death, Calypso somehow exists and doesn’t like Schrödinger’s rabbit. Aubrey’s faith and the time she spent with him gives her peace. While Aubrey never mastered the magic trick, he believed, and hearing his mother tell him that magic isn’t real, she appears in a reflection, showing him the last bit of the trick. His confused exclamation as he learns it causes his mother to call for the doctors, buying Aubrey more time with his sister.

With that, half of our brave toys retire, having given their lives to buy Adelaide more time and their friends a far better chance at saving the Toylight.

Ol’ Clyde does what he can to train those who remain. Faced with the final confrontation, he forces Cutie Pie to face the reality set before them. They approach Miss Eldine, exploring the possibility of giving her a glow spark.

As our remaining heroic toys set up for their last stand, they give a glow spark to both Miss Eldine and Calypso’s hat, hoping that some miracle might happen. Before the fighting commences, Eldine reveals that Adelaide’s favorite toy was a yarn doll who ran away into the garden to try to go with the young girl when she went to the hospital. Considering the bear we saw a couple episodes ago had a similar doll in the background, there is a gathering of older toys in the garden who may just save the day.

However, our heroes have no time to call for aid or do more than hope those toys may come as the battle commences. As the Underlord arrives with his dust bunny hoard, Cutie Pie rides upon King George, using his flame thrower.

More and more fall as the Underlord steps onto the field. Hair and dust spread in a furious storm. Toys and dust bunnies alike fall before his rage, and as he reaches to the closest glow spark, it dulls under his loathing. As the light dims, Calypso’s hat glows, and in a flourish, Cutie Pie draws Calypso from the top hat. She rises, wet and clean, the absolute antithesis of the Underlord. In her first move back, Calypso attacks, badly hurting the Underlord. She picks up Cutie Pie and runs toward the Toylight.

After Tinsley strikes him, the Underlord rages, taking Rabbity Racer’s wind up key, killing their most loyal ally. However, as Cutie Pie taunts Underlord, calling him “Charles”. The name echoes from the darkness, and our last two Intrepid Heroes rejoin the fight. Unlike Ally, their character does not return. Instead, we meet two new heroic toys coming to aid the Toylight. Lou Wilson returns as Pimploe, a pincushion themes like a clown which Aubrey left in the hall before leaving.

Siobhan returns as Baba the Bear, who once belonged to Aubrey and Adelaide’s father – the original Charles.

While the toys aren’t entirely sure of the spider-infested bear, Baba fondly remembers his boy and eagerly fights to preserve the Toylight alongside them. The Underlord is less than pleased, taking out a number of dolls, but he doesn’t manage to stop them from delivery a bucket of water to Ol’ Clyde. Furious, the Underlord nearly kills Tinsley, but a toy elephant jumps and sacrifices itself to save him. Baba casts a web, but the Underlord won’t be held. Swinging away, the bear attacks from above, managing to bloody the Underlord.

Not leave Baba fighting alone, Ol’ Clyde Horsey dips his arrows in water, shooting the Underlord and continuing the onslaught. Cutie Pie also rejoins the fray, dipping his weapon in Green Henry, adding some unspeakable fluids before attacking the Underlord. An action surge produces 65 points of damage. Finishing off with a protective taunt, Cutie Pie draws the Underlord’s ire, and the leader of the Snuffer’s Crusade is an absolute brutal fighter, knocking Cutie at death’s door.

During this onslaught, Baba and Ol’ Clyde coordinate in a desperate attempt to come to their compatriot’s aid. Calypso launches an attack as the Underlord prowls into the bright light of the Toylight. Deeply hurt, the bloodied Underlord pleads to be allowed to snuff out the light. While Calypso suggests he go be nasty elsewhere, he takes an attack of opportunity as she goes to Cutie Pie’s aid, downing the white bunny one more. Baba soon joins, leaving only half the group still up and fighting.

Barely on his feet, Tinsley moves toward the Toylight, using his last psionic move and upends Green Henry over the Underlord. The now soaked dust bunny leader strikes Tinsley, leaving only Ol’ Clyde and Pimpleo up. Pimpleo’s attack misses. Ol’ Clyde takes aim, taking one last desperate shot. When that proves not enough, he ups his attack, throwing caution to the wind. With the aid of the acid damage from Tinsley’s last attack, Ol’ Clyde destroy the Underlord and saves the Toylight.

As the sun rises, Ol’ Clyde Horsey sees Adelaide waking up in the hospital with Aubrey at her side. The doctor announces that the treatment was a success. Aubrey races to hug his sister. She pleads to write to their father. Aubrey reassures her, and when Adelaide asks to play with his toys while he’s away, he happily agrees. Wyon is found and recovered, returning to sit and wait at the foot of Aubrey’s bed. Constance respawns in the attic, terrorizing adults and amusing children while Calypso retires from magic.

When Charles returns home to visit his children, their governance shows him Baba. Overcome, he changes his ways, overturning his past demands that Aubrey give up his toys as he finds himself reunited with his own beloved bear. Charles goes even further, having his beloved bear repaired and bringing Aubrey back from boarding school. Everyone is happy, and all is well.

Highlights

Watching Siobhan steamroll Ally and terrify Emily as a spider-infested bear was great, but seeing how quickly Pimploe became Brennan’s nemesis despite everyone else loving him was great, but the true highlight was the agony as Murph managed 25 points of damage, Brennan revealed 32 remaining hit points on the Underlord only to remind the group of the 15 points of acid damage that takes the Underlord out at the beginning of his next turn before the villain can destroy the Toylight.

Final Score (4 out of 5 Stars)

This was a battle-heavy finale, and unlike most we’ve had from Dimension 20, almost every single person went down toward the end or had a character die ahead of time. Between Green Henry and the dust bunnies themselves, the gross was high, but I still think Aabria remains the unmatched master of body horror. Spiders inside a bear are something I would never want around; however, I’d know how to deal with it. Regardless, our Intrepid Heroes truly made them made the Underlord pay for every inch.

I remain a bit disappointed that the deaths were treated lightly. While the choices made and the self-sacrificed involved made sense in the context of the Toylight and Sacred Nursery, the other heroes seemed so numb to each comrade’s fall that it hit less than deaths in other seasons. Considering that there’s an episode of Game Changer where Brennan admitted he has most of his old toys, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d ensure there was a way for even the supposedly dead toys to be saved.

With the themes of this season, I could easily see this season transformed into a far less graphic picture book of an older sibling setting up toys to protect a younger sibling’s room and the sibling by extension while away at the hospital. It’s an exceedingly sweet gesture. If anyone knows of one already written, I’d be interested to see it and compare to how the idea transformed.

All in all, this was a sweet, short season that kept a quick pace without feeling too fast, and while some emotions were a bit shallower than I prefer, with the shortness of the season and the dedication that each character had to the cause of saving Adelaide over their own lives, the plot as a whole made sense with the portrayals as they were. Not one I’ll readily rewatch but wouldn’t be one I’d suggest skipping.

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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