A game like this is never going to be perfect, so it's kind of a shock it's as good as it is. A game from a fairly small indie studio, it still manages to meet fairly high ambitions.
It's very easy to get hung up on superficial similarities to Pikmin or Chibi-Robo, but this is fundamentally a platformer. You're jumping around, looking for stuff. It's Banjo-Kazooie, but far less technical and demanding. If you fall from too tall a height, you're instantly warped back as if nothing happened.
There's definitely direct Pikmin influence here though. You go about the big house collecting the titular "Tinykin" creatures, who all have different abilities based on their colour. Some lift and push objects, some explode when thrown, some create bridges. It's a fun system, and the game's easygoing enough that it's never too big an irritation when you find you don't have enough of one kind of Tinykin to fulfill an objective. You just go off and do something else, and you'll probably have found enough by the time you come back.
For its early moments, Tinykin's almost like old Tomb Raider. Exploring big, boxy rooms and trying to figure out how to get into each wee corner of it. This appeal's deflated somewhat when you discover a Tinykin that can stack into a makeshift ladder, and making vertical travel much less of a challenge. You also have an upgradable gliding ability. At a certain point, it becomes fairly easy to just build ladders to the top of the room and glide over to anything that takes your interest. I thought it made the game much less interesting, but it makes for a more carefree atmosphere.
In the six-and-a-half hours I've clocked on this game, I think a good ninety minutes were spent at a point that I had used up all my purple Tinykin and thought I'd made the game unfinishable. You see, when a group of Tinykin start carrying an object, they can't set it down or be recalled until they reach their destination. I had two separate groups stuck at the same time, and there wasn't enough others to get me out of the jam. I think the solution I found was tantamount to sequence breaking, but I did manage to bypass something that seemed to be a pretty major design oversight.
That's kind of the thing in Tinykin. It's not very strict, and if it seems to be, it's probably because you're doing something the designers didn't consider. You rarely feel like you're doing things the "correct" way. You're not given that sense of satisfaction. It's fine though. Breath of the Wild was like that. But then, Breath of the Wild wasn't conjuring up memories of Tomb Raider II.
It's a relaxing time, and also fiercely addictive. There's so much casual progression. So many little things you slip into doing that open up new areas and abilities. It's totally appropriate for kids. Putting them in front of Tomb Raider II would count as child abuse in this day and age.
It's good. Play it. You'll like it.
It's very easy to get hung up on superficial similarities to Pikmin or Chibi-Robo, but this is fundamentally a platformer. You're jumping around, looking for stuff. It's Banjo-Kazooie, but far less technical and demanding. If you fall from too tall a height, you're instantly warped back as if nothing happened.
There's definitely direct Pikmin influence here though. You go about the big house collecting the titular "Tinykin" creatures, who all have different abilities based on their colour. Some lift and push objects, some explode when thrown, some create bridges. It's a fun system, and the game's easygoing enough that it's never too big an irritation when you find you don't have enough of one kind of Tinykin to fulfill an objective. You just go off and do something else, and you'll probably have found enough by the time you come back.
For its early moments, Tinykin's almost like old Tomb Raider. Exploring big, boxy rooms and trying to figure out how to get into each wee corner of it. This appeal's deflated somewhat when you discover a Tinykin that can stack into a makeshift ladder, and making vertical travel much less of a challenge. You also have an upgradable gliding ability. At a certain point, it becomes fairly easy to just build ladders to the top of the room and glide over to anything that takes your interest. I thought it made the game much less interesting, but it makes for a more carefree atmosphere.
In the six-and-a-half hours I've clocked on this game, I think a good ninety minutes were spent at a point that I had used up all my purple Tinykin and thought I'd made the game unfinishable. You see, when a group of Tinykin start carrying an object, they can't set it down or be recalled until they reach their destination. I had two separate groups stuck at the same time, and there wasn't enough others to get me out of the jam. I think the solution I found was tantamount to sequence breaking, but I did manage to bypass something that seemed to be a pretty major design oversight.
That's kind of the thing in Tinykin. It's not very strict, and if it seems to be, it's probably because you're doing something the designers didn't consider. You rarely feel like you're doing things the "correct" way. You're not given that sense of satisfaction. It's fine though. Breath of the Wild was like that. But then, Breath of the Wild wasn't conjuring up memories of Tomb Raider II.
It's a relaxing time, and also fiercely addictive. There's so much casual progression. So many little things you slip into doing that open up new areas and abilities. It's totally appropriate for kids. Putting them in front of Tomb Raider II would count as child abuse in this day and age.
It's good. Play it. You'll like it.