[GAME PREVIEW] Tinykin Alpha

Some games stand out for having a quirky, standout graphics style. Some stand out for smooth, natural feeling gameplay. Some stand out because you can zoom around a room on a bar of soap, kickflipping and grinding your way over obstacles. Tinykin is a game that manages to encapsulate all of these.

Tinykin, from developer Splashteam and published by Tinybuild is a puzzle-platformer that puts you in the role of Milo, an astronaut from the future who re-discovers Earth. However, when he is beamed down from his spaceship, he finds the house stuck in the 1990’s, and he is now only an inch tall. And to top this off, no humans are to be seen, but the house is inhabited by a civilisation of a variety of sentient insects.

The graphics are immediately gripping, with a unique blend of fully 3D environments, with 2D cartoon character models. While not like anything I usually gravitate towards, I found them charming and kept my interest throughout.

The alpha demo that we played gave us a short tutorial to get the hang of transversal, then introduced us to the titular characters, the Tinykin. The Tinykin are minion-like creatures with different abilities. The full release is planning on five varieties, but we got to use two in this demo.

The pink Tinykin are useful for moving objects, either by commanding enough of them to lift something heavy, or by throwing them at a coffee mug, for example, until it is no longer blocking your way to another area of the level. The red Tinykin are explosives that will destroy objects around the level to unlock shortcuts, or to get collectables. Solving puzzles with these guys is very reminiscent of Nintendo’s Pikmin, but I found this more instinctive on how to use them.

Exploring the levels is made quite enjoyable with the inclusion of a “soapboard”. This is literally a bar of soap Milo uses like a skateboard to cross terrain quickly. Jumping while riding makes you able to jump over or onto objects, and while it has no impact on gameplay, the little kickflip Milo does is super adorable. All hard edges are also grindable. While I did not find anywhere this was necessary to reach a part of the level, this may be different in the final game and would make for some interesting platforming.

The length of the demo was quite generous, taking me 2-2.5 hours to complete. While this was for just one room of the house complete with sidequests, the final release looks to have five additional rooms, so you should be able to get a decent amount of playtime from this game.

Overall, I am looking forward to getting more time into this when the full game is released later this year.