Tinykin Review
Tinykin
Publisher: Tinybuild
Developer: SplashTeam
Genre:
PEGI: E
Comments:
So, Nintendo may have finally announced and given me a timeframe for Pikmin 4 after many, MANY long years. But in the meantime, something to help quench that thirst came along my way called Tinykin. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a fan of the quirky games and some of my favorites of all time include Pikmin and Chibi-Robo (from the GameCube Era). Tinykin is heavily inspired by both of these games, and I couldn’t be happier with the end result.
t’s the far future and Milo has re-discovered Earth! He’d go down in history, but as he lands on the planet, he encounters a problem… He’s as small as a penny. And everybody’s gone. And it’s still the ’90s. Explore a giant house as a tiny astronaut and meet the society of insects that built a sprawling city inside!
Discover the stadium in the bath, revive the nightclub inside the couch, and win big at the casino under the bed! Milo can jump, hover and skateboard (on a bar of soap), but the true hook is the mysterious tinykin! Hundreds of alien creatures with special powers to become ladders, build bridges, carry large objects, activate machines and explode!
At the surface it seems like it’s a knock off of Pikmin, but in reality, it’s VERY different. Tinykin each have a very specific purpose and can do only that function, depending on their color they can perform their special talent, making each one critical to your mission but for very different reasons.
While there is no combat in Tinykin, the puzzle solving is much more complex and the focus of the game. The game has a great sense of verticality as you get further and further in making it much more complicated to figure out how to do your objectives in each biosphere you find yourself in.
The other comparison I drew was to Chibi-Robo which the game put you as a tiny inhabitant of a normal sized house where you would complete tasks and similar puzzles do to things for the characters you encountered, that game had such charm and humor that Tinykin captures perfectly all over again. I had a smile on my face the entire time, while relatively a short game this was everything I wanted in a game, humor, fun, relaxing, made me think and made me smile.
The games graphics are bright and inviting, the characters and Tinykin are all 2D like in a Paper Mario game but live in a 3D rendered world. Which creates a unique and fun look not seen too often in games.
The developers Splashteam are comprised of many ex-Ubisoft creative teams who worked on Rayman and Rabbids games so you can really feel the quality here. Their previous game Splasher was also a really fun game to play taking some inspiration from Splatoon. The game is currently available on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox (including Gamepass), and Nintendo Switch. I highly recommend checking this one out as it’s not a big investment time wise but pays off tenfold.
Trailer
Article By Kevin Austin
Kevin Austin has been in gaming journalism in one way or another since the launch of the Nintendo Gamecube. Married and father of 3 children he has been gaming since the ripe age of 6 when he got his first NES system and over 30 years later he is still gaming almost daily. Kevin is also co-founder of the Play Some Video Games (PSVG) Podcast network which was founded over five years ago and is still going strong. Some of his favorite gaming series includes Fallout and Far Cry, he is a sucker for single player adventure games (hence his big reviews for Playstation), and can frequently be found getting down in one battle royale or another. If it's an oddball game, odds are he's all about it.
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