When you think of toys coming to life, you can’t help but think about Toy Story, either that or Child’s Play. Instead of going the serial killer’s soul possessing a doll route, Revulo Games decided to go with the more kid-friendly Toy Story idea. When the humans leave the house in House Fighters: Total Mess, the toys turn the building into their own battlefield.

“House Fighters: Total Mess is a PvE aerial arcade shooter where toy planes battle in everyday spaces. Engage in fast-paced dogfights in this nostalgia-filled world, take on clever foes, and fight to save your fellow toy friends!”

The trailer looks great, the game itself is slightly less enticing. Don’t get me wrong, House Fighters: Total Mess is far and away from being a terrible game, it’s just not a very interesting one. You have a plane and you shoot other planes, that’s about it. There are only seven main missions, and a small handful of side missions. Missions generally take around 4-8 minutes to finish and none of them are particularly challenging. You can finish the whole game in one pretty quick sitting.

Even the missions themselves are all too samey. Aside from the odd time where you might have to do an easy bombing run, you’ll mainly be getting involved in dog fights and picking up items in a fetch quest-style mission structure for the most part. The dog fights themselves offer zero challenge, just slow down, keep the enemy within your sights (which auto aim) and hold down the fire button. No skill required and you can take out all enemies the same way. There are a couple of weapon pick-ups, like missiles and a nail gun. Handy for some of the slightly tougher enemies, but you can still take them out by slowing down and letting the auto aim do its thing.

The flight controls feel quite loose and “flighty”, but that’s not a major issue because there’s plenty of room to manoeuvre and hitting scenery is surprisingly hard to do, unless you purposely try to crash. Not that it really matters as you just bounce off things with no deathly repercussions. Throw in some different planes, which you will unlock as you play. A bit of customisation with different paint jobs, decals and such. But that’s about it. There’s not a lot of game here and what is here is shallow, repetitive and way too easy. Still, House Fighters: Total Mess does come with a sub £7 cost and I have to admit to having some fun with it, even if it was very short-lived. Available now on PC and all the consoles. The aesthetic is great, but the execution needs some polish and depth.