Tinykin Review

SplashTeam have served up an absolutely wonderful 3D platformer in Tinykin. So much so that I think you’ll have a hard time keeping a straight face whilst playing this one. Tinykin oozes charm and contains heaps of fun. From the skills and abilities to your little Tinykin friends helping you through beautifully designed biomes, over a house, this game is a gorgeously packaged platformer.

The Story

In Tinykin, you take control of Milo, bumping into all kinds of critters you’d expect to find around your average household. From ants to dragonflies and dung-beetles amongst many other insects. Milo arrives on earth to quickly realise that everyone has mysteriously disappeared, and time hasn’t passed. It’s still currently 1991!

You’re tasked with trying to help other critters around the house build a machine for reasons you’ll later discover. It’s certainly a short but sweet story where the main quest line is concerned, but it’s one you’ll definitely want to experience. It’s a story that doesn’t overstay its welcome and does what it sets out to do, I can respect that.

Tinykin

These adorable little critters will help you do the things that Milo can’t quite accomplish on his own. Red Tinykin allow you to blow stuff up to clear passages, whilst Green Tinykin allow to create a ladder to reach new heights, and the pink ones will manage all the heavy lifting for you.

Yellow Tinykin will bridge gaps for you, and Blue Tinykin will help you power up different household appliances by creating a “Tinykin Chain.” These littler critters are very useful and feel like they fit so well within the world of Tinykin. With this being a “3D Collect-a-thon” of sorts, you’ll of course need to collect Tinykin within each room to help you on your journey.

Gameplay

Of course, the aforementioned Tinykin are the main attraction here, but you’ll also be able to utilise these other weird critters spider-like webs to surf across parts of rooms already previously visited. Using these tidy webs, helps you to discover and unlock different ropes to help you easily retrace old steps should you want to “collect-it-all.”

There isn’t much in the way of danger, aside from Milo not being able to swim, so you’ll need to avoid water of course. The only other thing i can think of, is that sometimes you might bump into a ravenous plant, so be sure to think about your next move. You don’t want to get eaten!

Tinykin contains 5 levels, all within the same house, this does make the gameplay feel a bit same-y after a while, but the game certainly does enough to keep it fresh, to the point that I didn’t want to have to put the controller down.

Aside from escaping death, you’ll have to interact with critters in each room and complete the tasks they give you to be able to progress onto the next room. You’ll always find a generous amount of exploration and side content to sink your teeth into. Just because you’ve finished the main quest in a room, doesn’t mean you have completed the room.

You can also obtain a Soapboard in the game, this helps you surf around, which makes traversal a lot faster and fun, add a floating bubble into this and it really takes that tedious feeling away from a collec-a-thon. The floating bubble also has its benefits when it comes to collecting, as the bubble can be upgraded to help you glide even further to get to those out of reach places.

Level Design

Tinykin will have you explore 5 different rooms within a house from bedrooms to bathrooms. All beautifully crafted to make a dormant room feel alive. The kitchen has an amply placed waterfall from an overflowing sink, whilst the bathroom uses full up bathtub to host a boat party.

The interactivity with the environments really is quite something and feels very thought out, making a single room feel like its own little world to explore. Each room is themed fantastically well around the type of room that it may be, managing to use everyday household objects/items in the most creative ways.

The Verdict

Overall, if you’re a fan of platformers and you skip this one for any reason, then you’ll only be doing yourself a disservice. From the charming characters you’ll come across, to the wonderfully crafted biomes and very cute Tinykin, this is one not to be missed.

My only gripes with this fantastic game are with the bubble upgrade system, unless I missed something I only managed to upgrade 3 times, and it seems a little confusing.

Tinykin’s has also has a lot to say for a game that doesn’t contain voice acting, I didn’t personally find that too cumbersome, as it doesn’t interrupt your flow, and is executed really well

The game is available on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and yes, Xbox Game Pass. So, if you’ve got that subscription, do yourself a favour and try Tinykin at the very least.

DISCLAIMER: Reviewer has played the game for around 12 hours and has completed the main story line and small portions of side content. Reviewer currently sitting at 26/43 achievements for a score of 595/1000.