Tinyfolks is a very simple game, but an extremely interesting concept with awesome gameplay. It's a well crafted RPG with a great learning curb. I enjoy it so much.
Pros:
- Delicious Gameplay
- Goofy Ahh Moves For Certain Characters
- Good Looking Beards
- SO MANY ACHIEVEMENTS TO COLLECT
- Satisfying Upgrades
- A Time Limit That Feels Tense But Not Stressful

Cons:
- Some Odd Menu Choices That Make Certain Settings Hard to Fix
- Can Be Dull If You Try To Play The Same Mode Multiple Times
- Is Pretty Difficult (ofc that could be a positive depending on who you are)
- No Garlic Bread Domain Cleric, 0/10 Do Not Recommend

Tinyfolks takes the Darkest Dungeons formula and condenses it down to a bite-size 4 hour package, maintaining most of the fun and losing all of the tedium. Despite the small form factor, there are enough options to explore to warrant a couple of playthroughs, which is exactly what I'd look for in this sort of release. It may not have Wayne June delivering banger lines one-after-another, but the audio and visual design manages to be very charming nonetheless. Highly recommended - it's a great way to spend an afternoon or two.

TinyFolks, as the name suggests, is a tiny experience, but that doesn't take away from it being a charming game fully worth the time.

I first heard about this game through a recent Into the Aether, and there were three things from the episode that made me want to check this game out: the minimalist yet modernized Gameboy™ aesthetic, the quick and easy gameplay loop, and lastly, the price - for four dollars, I figured I'm either spending that money on a coffee, half a sandwich, or something else that couldn't possibly give me hours of enjoyment, which this game definitely did. And if I didn't like it, I could always just make my coffee at home an extra time this week.

Preamble out of the way, I enjoyed this game a lot. It was my unwind game from Persona 5 Royal, so its bite-size nature both mechanically and content-wise was much appreciated. I played it on Steam deck, which was a fantastic place to play it - something about RPGs that you can hold in your hand, especially ones with the "tiny" look going for them, just melds perfectly.

The game plays sort of like a rogue like, with you going out into the world on runs with your TInyFolks to collect resources, return to town, upgrade the town and your folks, which helps you get back out there and get further. It's easy to pick up but there's a handful of things to explore more deeply when you get into it, mainly around upgrading your folks. You can upgrade them up to two times, investing twice as warriors/magic users/faith users/criminals, or dipping once in two different classes, and you'll end up with a multitude of different RPG archetypes - your rogues, knights, monks, etc. It's fun to figure out what combinations of characters work best for you, and the risk of perma-death adds some drama to the otherwise light-in-tone game, and lets you inject your own imagination to the story that's going on.

I had a successful run after about 4 hours of play, and in that run, I had fully upgraded all the town's resources. There might be more to explore in terms of how I could spec my folks, but for now I'll be saving that for another time when I need this game as a palette cleanser between larger ones.

What if Darkest Dungeon were more adorable and approachable? That's what Tinyfolks' pitch boils down to. The entire design, from the town to the dungeons, is a streamlined take on that 2016 masocore RPG. But while Tinyfolks is certainly less frustrating than Darkest Dungeon, I'm not sure it learned all the right lessons from its bigger brother.

Combat, for one, feels much less strategic. While you can use characters that focus on bleed and poison, they're usually less effective than pure DPS-centric options. Positioning is another area that seems like it's there just because Darkest Dungeon had it. One big difference is that position only affects which enemies can attack you, but not which enemies your character can attack. This means that there's no glass cannons -- weaker characters can always hide in the back. Moreover, many bosses can attack all five of your positions, so hiding characters in the back isn't guaranteed to keep them safe.

Then there's the matter of the 45 day limit. I suppose it's there to keep your run from going on forever, but it feels a bit too arbitrary. What's worse is that the world is static -- nothing changes between Day 1 and Day 45. Why am I so worried about Day 45? On the flip side, the time pressure does make sure you won't sit around grinding easy dungeons too long.

In fact, it was Day 45 when I finished the game. I could've finished it a few days earlier, but I accidentally mis-outfitted my party not once but twice, and had to retreat to the village, which wasted precious days. It's a good thing my final assault on the castle was successful, too, because if I'd failed and had to start from the beginning I'm not sure what I would've done. I suspect I would've tried again and spent the two or three hours it would've taken to grind to the end for another chance, but I'm glad I didn't have to.

Tinyfolks is a very short game. If you turn up the battle speed, I bet you can beat it within two hours. Speedrunners could probably do it in less. And for that reason, I can't be too harsh on it. It's flawed, for sure, but at least it doesn't demand too much time. And it's cheap. So if you're looking for a little RPG to pass a couple hours, especially on mobile where options are limited, it's a decent choice.

I gave this one a shot recently but the first hour feels like it will be the same as the next 8. You have a set number of days to adventure, generate resources, hire other adventurers, level everyone up, and beat the big bad - however each adventure brings with it recovery time and fatigue, and all the village buildings require constructing and upgrading.

The combat encounters are turn based affairs with each character having 1 or 2 abilities, so it's all very familiar. It felt like a very minimalist incarnation of darkest dungeon, the gameplay simplified down to it's most essential mechanics and visuals. I can see this being good fun for someone, but that person is not me.

Take away the timer and I might spend my time having fun with it but seeing that timer tick down tells me there's a limited number of 'winning' moves I can make here and I don't have the patience or interest to learn what they are. Cute art and aesthetic but bigger games have done the same thing better and I'm not even interested in replaying those.