What do you get when you combine Pikmin with Super Mario?
A game that's not quite as good as either, but is far from a disaster.
Tikykin is a 3D platformer with large open spaces to explore, you play Milo a teeny-tiny human-like person stranded away from home where you are tasked to find parts from a blueprint of a ship you hope to get you home.
Where you are stranded is simply in a house, living here are a whole civilization of bug folk who have turned each of the rooms into their own unique biomes.
Finally it's not just you and the bug folk but also these strange creatures, the titular Tinykin who follow Milo about and can do tasks from carrying things, blowing things up and more dependant on their colour.
So again, the short explanation is it's Pikmin but rather than strategy it's an exploratory 3D platformer and rather than outside you're living your best Micro-man life.
This does come together well, the exploration is fun and the areas are inventive.
Tinykin abilities being more based helping your own traversal than their own (as Pikmin do) means that there are some great ideas. My favourite being the green ones which can stack to form a ladder - which in a game that does have a lot of verticality comes in very handy.
If I had to describe the game in a single word it would be; Pleasant.
Death really isn't an issue, if you fall to far you reappear where you started, there's no combat and the platforming rarely involves any challenge it's just more about exploring and doing tasks for your bug pals in the world.
Sadly though pleasant alone means the game can at points feel lacking, the main challenges end up being collecting things and while entering a new biome the gameplay loop is perfectly addictive when you're finished with the game you're just searching nooks and crannies for "pollen" and not much else.
Personally I also found the game didn't feel quite right, the way Milo controls doesn't feel terrible but sometimes would glide too much and the bubble float mechanic having to tap jump again whilst in the air felt really unnatural to me.
We've had gliding and flutter jumps in these games for years and yet Tinykin felt new but not nice.
There's also a strange mechanical decision with the Pink Tinykin who do the simple act of carrying, either small items individually or as a group much like Pikmin, in that once a group are carrying something they will not let go until they get to their destination.
This is a minor gripe but for a game that feels very free and easy I found this mechanic actually had me worry I'd locked the game.
Even more minor, if you are going to use the mechanic also borrow the idea that using more Tinykin than you need could increase the speed as several times I ended up just waiting on them.
Overall Tinykin is a lovely little game with a nice world to explore and check some lists off. It doesn't really break any new ground but does a good job of making a new cocktail of previous ideas without making it taste disgusting.
If you can get this for "free" via Game Pass and the like it's definitely worth your time - I completed it over a weekend.
If you want it for the Switch I'd possibly wait for a sale, although at time of writing it's basically Christmas so why not use a voucher if you got one as a present?
A game that's not quite as good as either, but is far from a disaster.
Tikykin is a 3D platformer with large open spaces to explore, you play Milo a teeny-tiny human-like person stranded away from home where you are tasked to find parts from a blueprint of a ship you hope to get you home.
Where you are stranded is simply in a house, living here are a whole civilization of bug folk who have turned each of the rooms into their own unique biomes.
Finally it's not just you and the bug folk but also these strange creatures, the titular Tinykin who follow Milo about and can do tasks from carrying things, blowing things up and more dependant on their colour.
So again, the short explanation is it's Pikmin but rather than strategy it's an exploratory 3D platformer and rather than outside you're living your best Micro-man life.
This does come together well, the exploration is fun and the areas are inventive.
Tinykin abilities being more based helping your own traversal than their own (as Pikmin do) means that there are some great ideas. My favourite being the green ones which can stack to form a ladder - which in a game that does have a lot of verticality comes in very handy.
If I had to describe the game in a single word it would be; Pleasant.
Death really isn't an issue, if you fall to far you reappear where you started, there's no combat and the platforming rarely involves any challenge it's just more about exploring and doing tasks for your bug pals in the world.
Sadly though pleasant alone means the game can at points feel lacking, the main challenges end up being collecting things and while entering a new biome the gameplay loop is perfectly addictive when you're finished with the game you're just searching nooks and crannies for "pollen" and not much else.
Personally I also found the game didn't feel quite right, the way Milo controls doesn't feel terrible but sometimes would glide too much and the bubble float mechanic having to tap jump again whilst in the air felt really unnatural to me.
We've had gliding and flutter jumps in these games for years and yet Tinykin felt new but not nice.
There's also a strange mechanical decision with the Pink Tinykin who do the simple act of carrying, either small items individually or as a group much like Pikmin, in that once a group are carrying something they will not let go until they get to their destination.
This is a minor gripe but for a game that feels very free and easy I found this mechanic actually had me worry I'd locked the game.
Even more minor, if you are going to use the mechanic also borrow the idea that using more Tinykin than you need could increase the speed as several times I ended up just waiting on them.
Overall Tinykin is a lovely little game with a nice world to explore and check some lists off. It doesn't really break any new ground but does a good job of making a new cocktail of previous ideas without making it taste disgusting.
If you can get this for "free" via Game Pass and the like it's definitely worth your time - I completed it over a weekend.
If you want it for the Switch I'd possibly wait for a sale, although at time of writing it's basically Christmas so why not use a voucher if you got one as a present?
Angry_Kurt
1 year ago