I’ll be frank, a lot of the time, when I’m searching for new games to review, I’ll find something that I think looks great. Then an hour later, I’m uninstalling it and cursing the gods for the minutes stolen from me. Now when it comes to Tinykin, I’d be lying if I said I went into the game with much enthusiasm. In fact, I went into Tinykin already thinking about what game I would review in its place, and then as if the universe was taunting me for thinking I could predict its mysterious ways, Tinykin turned out to be good. Really, good.
Stripped down to basics, Tinykin is a sci-fi adventure platformer. In this universe, Earth has long since been abandoned by any and all human occupants. You, the player, take control of a young alien scientist named Milo, who has re-discovered Earth to his utter excitement. Only when Milo tries to teleport himself to his planetary discovery he gets shrunk down to a couple of centimetres tall and is stuck in a regular human-sized house.
Players are trying to find their way home by collecting and putting together pieces of a spaceship, but they won’t be alone – all around the house are colourful little alien creatures known as Tinykin who will help you on your quest. The Tinykin are vital to your success, and Tinykin eggs are littered throughout the house. Every time you run past an egg, it will hatch, and the Tinykin will start following you around – joining your army, if you will.
Tinykins come in multiple colours, and each type of Tinykin can interact with certain things in the environment. In general, the pink Tinykin are the ones you want if there is heavy lifting; green Tinykin help you reach places you otherwise couldn’t, and red Tinykin are creatures of chaos and explode things around them. There are other colour Tinykinw as well, but let’s be honest, the fun is finding them and discovering what they do for yourself.
Once you’ve put together your little army (get it? because they’re tiny!), you’ll use them to help solve puzzles and navigate the world. Using your collected Tinykin is as easy as aiming and shooting them at the item you want them to use/move or explode. A lot of the navigation will be across things like houseplant leaves and inside draws, and for some reason, this type of vantage point is never not fun. It also helps that Tinykin is exceptionally well polished, and all of the platforming feels just right, as do the controls.
As you travel through the house, you’ll notice that each room is now home to a unique kind of bug which has turned said room into its utopia. They also each have a piece to the ship you’re trying to retrieve. To get the piece from them, you will have to help each kind of bug fulfil tasks. These are never super complex or likely to cause brain fatigue, but they are quirky and fun enough to keep you engaged.
Traversing is also slightly different to other platformers in that Milo has a soap board (exactly what it sounds like) and a bubble glider (again, what you’re thinking is what it is) to help him around the world while your army of Tinykin just bound behind you. Tinykin is not a deep game; there are no complex mechanics, no chilling plot twists or puzzles to stump you. But at the end of the day, the simplicity makes it great.
