Tinykin Review: Not Just A Collectathon

3D platformers are in a weird place. While the genre had been on life support for some time, they’ve had a resurgence the last few years, but mainly by looking to the past. It feels like the majority of recent 3D platformers are trying to recapture the genre’s peak during the N64 collectathon period instead of looking forward to what lies ahead. As if all a modern 3D platformer can hope to be is an echo of a gameplay style that was most popular more than two decades ago. I’m delighted to see the developers of Tinykin dream of doing more. While there’s definitely a lot to collect in Tinykin, there are also attempts to try genuinely new things.

You play as Milo, a human living on a distant colony world who are so far removed from Earth that they don’t even really know where they come from, though they do know it’s somewhere else. When he gets a lead on the origin of the species, Milo hops in a rocket and heads after it, landing on a version of Earth where everything is enormous, talking bugs are the only living creatures in sight, and they all seem to worship some long gone human named Ardwin.

A New World

Tinykin takes place entirely in what was once Ardwin’s house. While that may not seem very big, when you’re no larger than an ant, a single home can be an enormous world to explore. You’ll visit different colonies that live in various rooms with very different ways of life. One room has bugs who just want to party all day, even if their neighbors are tired of the noise. Another has a near-religious leader subjugating the rest of the bugs living there. Others fall somewhere in between, but each room has a different challenge.

Because your ship crashed upon your arrival, you need a new means of transportation if you’re ever getting back home. Luckily, Ardwin left behind a diagram for a ship, and you quickly meet a bug who knows where the pieces are. Getting them will be no easy task, though, requiring journeying all over the house and winning over the people of each room. Along the way, you’ll collect pieces of the ship, artifacts for the Ardwin museum, and tons of little bits of pollen spread throughout each level. So yes, you’re still collecting a lot here.

Your Friends The Tinykin

How you do it, though, is quite different. With many of these items being far larger than you, you certainly can’t just carry them around. That’s where the Tinykin come in. Tiny creatures who, prior to your arrival, were completely out of control, they want to follow your commands. You start out with Tinykin, who can only carry things, but over time, you’ll find more and more varieties, such as ones who blow things up, others that can conduct electricity, and more. As you have more types of Tinykin available, you’ll find levels grow more complex with more and more challenging puzzles for you to figure out. The final level, in particular, has puzzles where the pieces are spread all over the room, with you unable to focus effectively on one goal. Instead, it becomes about exploring the world, finding things, and putting pieces together as you go. I loved it.

Controlling your Tinykin is easy. While you can easily compare them to Pikmin, in practice, they’re even easier to handle because using them is context-sensitive. You never have to worry about picking the right one to throw. Moving around also feels great with tight controls and a great skateboard-like piece of soap you can ride around on.

The look of Tinykin is mostly fine, with a bright visual style and cool animated sequences when you find a new Tinykin. However, I wasn’t crazy about Milo’s character model, which is 2D, with Milo always staring at the player no matter what direction you move. It’s clearly a stylistic choice and a bold one, but it didn’t quite work for me. It also never hurt the game, though.

Conclusion

Most players will finish Tinykin in only a matter of hours. It’s a small game that provides a bit of fun before you move on to something else. There are certainly elements of it taken from other games in the genre, but it brings them together in a way that is new and shows a great deal of imagination, and it really doesn’t do much wrong. So if you’re craving a 3D platformer that doesn’t just feel like all the other ones you’ve played before, you should absolutely check out Tinykin.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available on: Switch (Reviewed), PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC; Publisher:  tinyBuild Games; Developer: Splashteam; Players: 1; Released: August 30th, 2022; ESRB: E10+ for Everyone 10+; MSRP: $24.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Tinykin provided by the publisher.