Pajama Sam: Lost and Found

Children enjoy playing with toys and transforming their room into a fantastical place filled with mountains, endless highways and brutal battlefields. However, they certainly do not like to clean up after the toy soldiers declare peace, which means that their rooms usually resemble an actual battlefield most of the time, with toys scattered everywhere.

Pajama Sam: Lost and Found is a simple arcade game that aims to help the kids enjoy themselves and teach them an easy lesson in the process, using a neat little story to do so. Hence, although it might not work all the time and the lesson is probably going to be forgotten quite quickly, it is admirable to see that the developers try their best to blend fun with responsibility and make children feel bad about their inappropriate behavior.

The story is the key element in the grand scheme, given the fact that it all revolves around Pajama Sam, a little boy who one days stumbles upon one of his favorite old toys under the bed. Curious about what else he might find if he keeps on searching, he starts cleaning his room and constantly finding other toys, while also having fun in the process.

In order to advance through the stages, you need to navigate the environment using platformer mechanics, meaning that you either have to jump and avoid the obstacles, or find the correct route and get out of a maze. Naturally, none of the levels is too challenging, especially when you consider that the age recommendation is for children between three and eight years old.

Finally, a decent amount of work went into the graphics as well, although they might look a bit sloppy nowadays, given the age of the game. However, the characters are nicely drawn by hand and the stages are pretty original, or at least different from each other most of the time. Sound-wise, there's nothing too memorable or annoying, although the tunes can get very repetitive after a while.

Pajama Sam: Lost and Found should definitely make the children happy, or even adults, in case they decide to stop being responsible for a few minutes and search for their toy soldier. Thanks to the likable characters and the mesmerizing level design, the illusion should be quite convincing in most cases.