Yeah, I kind of made a preview post with this game, but after playing longer, I felt like I had to say more, here I am just throwing this proclamation; this game is too quaint to skip out on. There's something about games that focus on exploration on top of everything, with an amazing world to trek and characters to meet, a whimsical charming adventure which keeps it consistent with itself even to the bitter end.
Yes, it borrows elements from other games, including one notably like Overlord, it keeps a cartoonish charm with it that I guess acts as a kind of relief for me, it's soothing to play. I never put much critical thought into all the experience, because anywhere I go, certain aspects keep getting me distracted, whether it's the critters that tag with me or just how well-build the level and environment designs are, or the quest structure.
It might be this year's GOTY contender for exploration games, though I am to believe other games like Stray might take over that spot. But wouldn't hurt to think this one comes really close. Because it pretty much does. Here's a game that kept me engage till the bugs kept me out.
From the start of the game, right in the first cutscene is a little humanoid introduced, that will travel to his "in-theory" homeworld, Earth. What happened? For some reason, the world has frozen, and it hasn't changed from 1991. Milo, the little humanoid, is now stuck, helping out a denizen of bugs, creating their own residence within a house, while Milo is trying to find a way back home. For that kind of help, he brings along the Tinykins.
What a whimsical adventure, you have a bunch of little guys behind your back, doing so many errands at your beck and call. There's not much of a reason why they do it, but they're drawn to you. And they do so also at the cost of their own lives, the rules around that is weirder more you get into it.
Calling Tinykin whimsical is one thing, because it is a quirky game with most of the inhabitants being insects, the guide for your objectives is a Silkworm moth, you're in this brightly colored room with great looking suburban decor and among all that are books used to build temples, stereo systems used to play religious sermons (not the sinister type ofc), and paper rolls used as walkway towards the ceiling of the room.
The game isn't really trying anything that fully immerses you into its world, but I never went further into it or thought of looking really much into because it wasn't attempting to be doing a lot. It made good with what it had. From every minute I played, there was something to be charmed at or pretty impressed by.
But there has to be a story, or reason why I kept playing, right? There isn't much of a story, you stumble across situations or paths being blocked to progress, simple as any other exploration games like Super Mario Odyssey. But there are puzzle elements to all this, that requires you to look explore more, look around for nooks and cronies or missing parts. I would have been easily bored with these chores, but the exploration felt so great, it kept me going.
Each level has missions, and collectibles to find. Doing these errands gets you rewards like museum artifacts to look, or some of them give you extra bubbles to float in midair, usually most games would treat this tacked on for gameplay reasons, but these actually were items of interests too, nothing felt like they were being redundant.
Despite each level seemingly large, they're easy to reach and explore thanks to shortcut like these little guys shooting ropes to zip to the other side. There's also the Tinykins, whom coming in different varieties often do things like explode, create electrical routing, act like climbing ropes, etc. Depending on the level, you have gotten access to. The pink ones are common, as they do labor work like taking giant items like cameras, and such, but also carrying small quest items as well.
This is build entirely to be just an exploration game, you just go about your business from here to there, finding lost items, passageways, hear some chatter between critters, it's a harmless, wholesome game where you get lost in the world, and Saturday morning cartoon shenanigans.
There are some shortcomings, like the fact that it doesn't always do a good job of being a platformer, as I had dealt with problems reaching from one point to the other without falling in the middle or having to move carefully due to how small the walkways are. The movement, with how fast he moves, can make him slip a bit. Regardless, there aren't big issues, and didn't take me out of the experience overall
I'd say give this game a try, not only does it have charm, it's also fun to play and requires minimum skill level to enjoy. Kind of like a game made for just anyone to enjoy playing.
