Tinykin has me fully addicted. It's been quite some time since I've had a game just totally grip me to the point where I'm thinking of it all hours of the day. I've always enjoyed stories or games centered around ideas like this; whether it's the timeless Disney film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or the iconic video game franchises: Pikmin and Grounded. Microscopically tiny people contending with navigating a normal sized world, and how mundane, everyday things like a dresser or a spider, become massive obstacles. The playful concept of reimagining our surroundings as massive items is always fun and sends my imagination running wild. What if my bathtub was like a gargantuan lake? What if my couch was an enormous plateau that took me hours to trek across? The 2022 video game, Tinykin, takes place in one of these sorts of stories and I'm just loving my time with the game.
On its nose, Tinykin is incredibly similar to Nintendo's renowned Pikmin series, which is sort of an real-time strategy adjacent franchise. This is a largely unexplored genre. In fact, the only other series that I can think of to take a stab at the Pikmin style was Overlord. Tinykin foregoes combat though, which sets it apart from both Pikmin and Overlord. While I enjoyed the simple, yet engaging combat in Pikmin, I think it's quite novel that Tinykin doesn't feature any violence (beyond the red Tinykin who are used as bombs to blow apart various objects.) Beyond the Pikmin-like mechanics of commanding a horde of tiny guys, the gameplay similarities cease there. Tinykin combines those RTS-lite mechanics with 3D platformer gameplay, where you're being able to run, jump, glide and surf all over the game world. The visual style is also quite unique. The game pulls graphical inspiration from the Paper Mario franchise, yet the characters all have a vaguely cartoonish aesthetic, replete with vibrant colors and slightly exaggerated features. So while the game may look like a Pikmin ripoff or like it apes Paper Mario's graphical style, Tinykin quickly proves that it can stand on its own two feet and establishes its own distinct identity.
The game follows Milodane, a microscopic human who lives in the far future, on the distant planet of Aegis. He wants to discover the long-lost origins of humanity. He travels all the way to Earth, where he crash-lands, and explores an enormous home that has been completely overtaken by different civilizations of intelligent insects. Milodane also encounters a diverse species of critters called Tinykin, who follow him around the house and follow his orders. Across the myriad rooms of the house, he speaks to and works with the various bug societies, solving their problems, learning about their distinct cultures and the gargantuan home in which they all reside.
As I was indicating above, the real magic of Tinykin comes with the endlessly fun, unique gameplay. Striking a perfect balance between a 3D platformer and a Pikmin-esque RTS title, Tinykin carved out its own niche style, not unlike its predecessor in the genre, Overlord, which innovated by marrying those Pikmin style mechanics to action-based, hack-and-slash combat. This title eschewed combat completely, opting to focus on navigation and environmental puzzles. Each massive room of the house serves as a stage, where you must converse with the bug denizens of that room, try to fix their problems and utilize the Tinykin with their helpful abilities. The titular microscopic critters come in a few different forms and colors. Pink Tinykin form the core of your horde, as they're used to move and carry objects. Red Tinykin are explosive, and bravely commit suicide on your behalf to blow open locked doors or blast apart environmental blockades. Green Tinykin stack on themselves like the zombies from World War Z to build a ladder for Milodane to climb. Yellow Tinykin have wings, and can stack on each other, interlocking their wings and create bridges for you to cross wide gaps or ravines. You'll often have to use Yellow Tinykin to create bridges for your Pink Tinykin to lug items across. Lastly, there are Blue Tinykin who can conduct electricity.
The process of exploring each stage is a total delight. The soundtrack is incredibly catchy and pleasant and provides a great backing track to your voyage. Since there aren't any enemies to contend with, the world has a laidback charm to it, and it always feels like you're rewarded for venturing off the beaten path. Besides the Tinykin, Milodane also has a couple of different abilities that aid with exploration, like a bar of soap that he can glide across the ground on, or an air bubble that he can summon at will to glide across vast distances. It was satisfying towards the end of the game, once I had everything unlocked, to be able to employ all of the available abilities and Tinykin to freely adventure across every inch of each level and look for hidden items and goodies.
Tinykin is a short game, I beat it in around seven hours. There isn't a ton of content, but if you're seeking a fun, tight experience that you can beat in a weekend, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better game of this caliber. It feels polished and thoughtful, and an altogether refreshing video game. And as if the gameplay wasn't solid enough, the adorable art style and presentation kept me smiling throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment with this game, and I earnestly hope that the developers aim to make a sequel.
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