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Genre: 3D action-adventure platformer
Developer: Splashteam
Publisher: tinyBuild
Release Date: August 30th, 2022
Edited by AlexKnight2005
Tinykin came at a crucial period for me. After years of dodging it, I had finally come down with the sickness that was COVID-19. I never knew that I needed a mostly chill and combat-free exploration platformer game, but here we are.
Yet again, tinyBuild needs no introduction. You know them from the probably millions of games they’ve published by now. So, let’s take a look at the development team behind Tinykin — Splashteam, which made the lovely Splasher a tight 2D arcade platformer with some interesting mechanics. Tinykin, in that vein, sees them expand into the realm of 3D platformers, though the characters are still in 2D, interestingly enough.
You play Milodane (Milo for short), a human scientist from a planet called Aegis. Upon research into history, he realizes that they originated from somewhere else. Discovering an ancient signal of human origin from an alternate galaxy, he travels to what appears to be Earth, stuck in the year 1991. Weirdly enough, he is incredibly small, and he now has to navigate the giant house that he ended up in to find his way back home.
The first level you start in is a tutorial level that sets the tone for what’s to come. Milo awakens in the house of Ardwin, a being regarded by the insect denizens of the house as some sort of god. A creature named Ridmi instructs you on your abilities and controls. You also end up walking near colored eggs on the floor, which hatches into the titular Tinykin, cute little creatures with a single eye dominating most of their body. For some inexplicable reason, they are immediately attracted and loyal to you.
As you’ll rapidly learn, you use each Tinykin for various purposes. You start out with the pink Tinykin, which helps to physically interact with objects by lifting or moving them. In the next area, you are introduced to red Tinykin, which is used to blow up specific obstacles. Each new area you venture into will gradually introduce a new kind of Tinykin with a specific use, and you’ll need to scour the area to find more Tinykin to clear an obstacle (as you cannot bring your previously amassed Tinykin between areas, having to start from scratch each time).
Though Tinykin does the brunt of the work, that does not mean Milo is completely useless. He has to maneuver himself into position for the Tinykin to work their powers. To that end, he is equipped with a soap bar surfboard that lets him travel faster along the ground or glide along Ridmi’s assistants’ strings to other parts of the level. He also can slowly glide with a bubble; this starts out with very little capacity, but by collecting a currency called pollen throughout each level, you can gradually unlock more “bubbles” so you can glide for longer, allowing you to cross longer gaps.
As I mentioned at this review’s start, Tinykin is combat-free. It is a rather relaxing experience where you have to complete an overarching goal in each area to gain an item to build Ardwin’s machine, a machine that could supposedly help Milo get back home. There are a few other quests to do in each area as well, and all typically fetch quests by nature.
All of this is split up over six main areas, designed incredibly well. Restricting the setting to simple objects you can find around a typical house gives the game a distinct charm. The attention to detail on how the world is sculpted is impeccable, and I am genuinely amazed at how each prop and placement feels rather natural. The aesthetic is married to a nice chill soundtrack that does fade into the background sometimes and, at some points, gets repetitive as you chase the final collectibles in an area.
Speaking of, Tinykin, at times, proved incredibly frustrating from a completionist’s perspective. Among others, there are achievements for lighting all the candles in each area, getting all the glider bubbles, collecting all the pollen in each area, and befriending all the Tinykin in the house. There are, unfortunately, multiple issues with these. A weird quirk with the game is that it sometimes won’t properly track your progress towards these unless you revisit each area, and even when it does properly track these, finding the last remaining pollen/Tinykin in an area is, as the cliché goes, like finding a needle in a haystack. These two aspects desperately need QoL improvements in these areas such that the process is more bearable. Though I finished almost all objectives in the game without much difficulty, I did not have a particularly fun time tracking down all the pollen in the process — and then further learned to my chagrin, that there were apparently Tinykin I had missed, my motivation to search the house from top to bottom all but gone.
On the whole, though, Tinykin is a fun game to play if you are looking for a slightly less challenging experience. It doesn’t last that long as I just got barely more than 10 hours out of it (with in-game time even smaller at nearly 9 hours). At $24.99 on Steam, the pricing on this also seems on the higher end, especially with the aforementioned completionist struggles I had with it.
Pros:
- Cute Tinykin with various mechanics.
- Unique level design and aesthetic.
- Intriguing premise.
Your mileage may vary:
- Not a particularly challenging game.
Cons:
- Mopping up collectibles is a horrendously tedious affair.
K3W3L gives Tinykin a Drastik Measure of 8.5 out of 10.0 (85)
Though Tinykin was perfect for the time I reviewed it in, it requires some QoL improvements such that I’d recommend picking it up if it had a discount at least. Here’s hoping that Splashteam releases these much-needed QoL improvements at some point down the road.
