cowmanaaron
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Thoughts are still simmering.
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.
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.
Just a masterpiece.
The way the story slowly unfolds and reveals itself, how the tedious gameplay elements tie into the narrative to endear you to Arthur Morgan and the cast of characters surrounding him, and how fully realized the world is all make this an experience I won't forget.
I played this during the post-vaccine/Omicron variant era of the pandemic, Fall/Winter 2021/22, and this game took me on a journey through that time of uncertainty and intermittent quarantining.
The way the story slowly unfolds and reveals itself, how the tedious gameplay elements tie into the narrative to endear you to Arthur Morgan and the cast of characters surrounding him, and how fully realized the world is all make this an experience I won't forget.
I played this during the post-vaccine/Omicron variant era of the pandemic, Fall/Winter 2021/22, and this game took me on a journey through that time of uncertainty and intermittent quarantining.