Tinykin is a game of the year contender, and I think that more people should be playing this!
It’s an old-school 3D open world style platformer, commonly called a collect-a-thon, but I think it sells it short. Also, I think that calling it Pikmin-style is a huge undersell.
You play as Milodane, a human sent into space to find the true origin of humanity, but you crash land in a strange world… namely, someone’s house. You’re 2 inches tall and the whole house has been colonised by sentient bugs who now worship the home owner.
To get back home you need to build your space ship, and the different insects who live in the rooms have bits for it, so to obtain them you need to complete a series of main quest items in each room which unlocks the next room. It’s a mild platformer meaning you need to go around and find the items and figure out how to complete the quests from the bugs.
The key unique feature of the game though is the titular Tinykin! These a colour coded wee bugs who give you abilities - red are bombs, pink are strong, etc - and you collect them and go around undertaking puzzles using them.
Honestly, I’m in love - I’ve just unlocked the final area (I think) and I am loving the completionist ability in the game.
It looks amazing - the worlds are huge and have a massive field of view and lots of verticality - and plays great - there is a great surfing mechanic - and the music is catchy as hell.
Don’t sleep on this - it’s on Xbox and PC Game Pass right now.
I don’t disagree with any of this, but I will add that depending on your personality you may want to take your time with this one. Maybe limit yourself to one room/level per day or something.
I fell in love with it in half an hour of play and ended up binging it. But after two lengthy play sessions, I found myself kind of burned out on it before reaching the final area. Basically, once I’d experienced the base mechanic enough and had played a few levels, it got a bit samey. Although the new Tinykins you find as you go along does help with that.
But spacing the experience out even a little bit, I think could help with not getting burnout.
But yeah, amazing game. Definitely a GotY contender for me. Probably won’t beat out Sniper Elite 5 when push comes to shove, but it’s really high on the list.
I loved this game. I was going to review it but we got nowhere with getting a code. Rather annoyingly I played the demo first as it stated that I would keep my progress in the main game… It didn’t work.
Very true. First evening I was hooked and the next days I did one stage or so, and that was perfect. Maybe for a sequel they can bring in actual combat and enemies.
Dunno, I finished it between Thurs and Fri but did use a guide to help look for some of the pollen after I had finished all the levels so that may have helped a bit with how long it took me.
It maybe could be a little better at helping you find things toward the end of a level when you’ve done the tasks, maybe improve the binocular ability or something to make pollen and tinykin glow, but the concept and movement and level design and tasks all felt pretty good and it didn’t seem unnecessarily long just to make you go do more in it.
If you’re only focused on the main objective and don’t go for the side quests or pollen collecting, you can probably finish it in one or two sittings I would think. I chose the completionist route, and I’m guessing we’re at about the same pace.
I had over ten hours into that game and discovered it all. It was a very decent duration but I sure wouldn’t have said no to more worlds. That’s how much I enjoyed it.
I definitely would be open to more if they had it, maybe a level in the garage or something so long as it felt like it fits. Though at the moment that particular story seems wrapped up and there’s the thing at the end where I wonder if they did do more if it would be in a different… Place. Not sure how to word that.
Well, after 14 hours I’ve just finished this. It got a bit samey towards the end, so I took a bit of a break with Deathloop. But it was great fun to get back at it over the past couple of days. The gameplay and controls on this are top-notch.
I got all achievements except for Gotta Catch 'Em All. Since I looked high and low for all the pollen, I’m surprised I didn’t automatically end up finding all the Tinykin.
Not sure if I have it in me to re-search all the levels for the ones I missed…
Great game though. So far it’s in the top 3 of the year for sure. At this point I don’t foresee anything unseating Sniper Elite 5 from the top spot, but Tinykin has a real strong chance at #2.
