Character select in Buzz.EXE Remake shows five faces from Andy’s toy box, but only one of them answers the controller. Woody is the sole playable character in the current demo; Rex, Hamm, Mr. Potato Head, and Rocky sit on the same select screen, greyed out, waiting on a future update to unlock them. That detail says a lot about where the project actually is: an extensive remake of an earlier 2015 fangame called Buzz.exe, rebuilt from the ground up around a premise now labeled The Cursed Cartridge of Toy Story (2005).
Woody Alone in Buzz.EXE Remake’s Roster
The pitch is simple and a little cruel to genre fans who love a full cast: a corrupted Toy Story cartridge from 2005 turns a beloved platformer into something that watches back. The remake keeps that framing but strips the playable side down to one figure. Woody carries the whole demo on his own, running, jumping, and eventually hiding through levels that were never built with a horror pacing in mind.
The character select screen is where the game quietly tells you what’s coming. It lists five names, but four of them are locked silhouettes rather than menu options.
- Woody — playable in the current demo
- Rex — visible on the character select screen, not yet playable
- Hamm — visible on the character select screen, not yet playable
- Mr. Potato Head — visible on the character select screen, not yet playable
- Rocky — visible on the character select screen, not yet playable
Fans who track the project treat that locked row as a roadmap more than a tease. Every update thread ends up asking the same question: who unlocks next.
That Old Army Game and the Hide and Seek Level
Two levels make up the current build, and both borrow their layouts directly from a Toy Story game originally made for the Sega Mega Drive. The first is built on the bones of That Old Army Game, one of the stages from that older platformer, repurposed here with new sections tacked onto the end that push it from cheerful side-scroller into something with actual dread in it. The second level is Hide and Seek, which drops the platforming entirely in favor of a stealth setup.
Reusing real level geometry from a Genesis-era game is a deliberate choice, not a shortcut. Players who grew up with the original platformer recognize the rooms instantly, which makes the added horror sections land harder — familiar space, unfamiliar rules.
New players often expect the whole demo to keep the pace of a normal platformer level. It doesn’t. That Old Army Game plays fairly straight until its final stretch, then the added content shifts the tone hard right before Hide and Seek takes over completely.
Hiding From Buzz.exe
Buzz.exe is the antagonist chasing Woody through the Hide and Seek section, and the mechanic built around him is the demo’s clearest setpiece. Woody has to duck behind cardboard boxes and banks scattered through the level to break line of sight, waiting out patrol patterns instead of running or fighting. Getting caught in the open ends badly.
This isn’t a mechanic the remake invented from scratch. It’s reportedly inspired by TOOLATE.EXE, another horror fangame built around a similar hide-and-wait loop, and players familiar with that game clock the resemblance fast.
What makes it work in context is the mismatch. A cardboard box is a toy-scaled object, appropriately sized for a six-inch cowboy doll to crouch behind, and that scale logic is exactly what earlier Buzz.exe fans remember from the original 2015 game — small objects doing double duty as hiding spots in a world built for toys.
Blood, Jumpscares, and the TOOLATE.EXE Playbook
The listed content warnings are blunt: blood, jumpscares, sudden loud noises, and flashing lights. None of that is subtle in execution. The demo leans on sharp audio stings and sudden visual hits rather than slow-burn dread, which fits the .exe fangame subgenre it’s part of.
Horror fangame regulars tend to treat jumpscare density as a genre expectation rather than a flaw, and Buzz.EXE Remake sits comfortably inside that expectation. Where it earns some extra credit is in pacing the scares around the Hide and Seek section specifically, rather than scattering them evenly across both levels.
The flashing lights warning is worth taking literally. Sections of the demo push contrast and strobing effects hard enough that it’s listed as a standalone content flag, not folded into the general horror-content note.
Five Endings, One Secret Route
Update 1.5 expanded the demo’s ending structure significantly, adding up to five distinct endings plus a secret ending on top of that. One of the tracked paths is a Bo Peep route that resolves in a bad ending, distinct from the other outcomes players have mapped out.
The same update also introduced a secret glitch level along with unused file content that showcase videos have picked apart piece by piece. None of that is signposted in normal play — it surfaces only for players willing to dig through the build looking for what wasn’t meant to be found yet.
Completionists chasing every ending are the ones keeping the update alive in community discussion months after release, since getting all five plus the secret requires deliberately working against the obvious path through Hide and Seek rather than just surviving it.
What the Buzz.EXE Remake Demo Leaves Unfinished
Two levels and one playable character is a small footprint for a project explicitly billed as an extensive remake. That gap between ambition and current content is the most honest criticism to make of the demo as it stands right now.
The locked character roster amplifies that feeling rather than softening it. Seeing Rex, Hamm, Mr. Potato Head, and Rocky sitting right there on the select screen, unusable, makes the current scope feel more like a proof of concept than a finished slice.
None of that undercuts what’s already playable. The two existing levels, the ending variety added in Update 1.5, and the Hide and Seek setpiece specifically show a project that knows what it wants to be, even if most of it hasn’t shipped yet.
Questions Players Ask About Buzz.EXE Remake
Is Woody the only playable character in Buzz.EXE Remake?
Yes, in the current demo. Rex, Hamm, Mr. Potato Head, and Rocky all appear on the character select screen but cannot be selected or controlled yet.
What happens in the Hide and Seek section?
Woody has to break line of sight from Buzz.exe by ducking behind cardboard boxes and banks placed around the level, waiting for the right moment to move rather than confronting him directly.
How many endings does Buzz.EXE Remake have?
Update 1.5 brought the total to five main endings plus a secret ending, including a Bo Peep route that leads to one of the bad outcomes.
What sticks after finishing the demo is how confidently the Hide and Seek section commits to its one idea, letting a stack of cardboard boxes and a patrolling Buzz.exe carry an entire stretch of Buzz.EXE Remake without a single platforming beat. It’s a small, focused horror sequence bolted onto a much bigger promise, and right now that promise is still mostly locked characters on a select screen waiting their turn.
