Tinykin (Xbox Series X)
I love to see game designers approach a relatively underrepresented game style, and taking the minion management of Pikmin to new places seems to be the goal of Tinykin. However, while you’d expect some fundamentals to be carried over like ordering a small group of creatures to do tasks, Tinykin borrows quite a lot from its inspiration’s setting too. Taking place on Earth after humanity has abandoned it with a main character from outer space who is barely as tall as a golf ball seems like its trending a bit too close to Pikmin’s setup, but Tinykin does make a few important choices that help it stand apart quite well. Not only does it set the whole game inside a single house to set itself apart from the natural settings of Pikmin, but it has no combat whatsoever, focusing entirely on using your Tinykin to explore large platforming spaces.
Milodane is an archaeologist from the planet Aegis who believes humanity didn’t originate on that planet, and when he goes off to investigate the idea in his spaceship, he ends up teleporting down to Earth without any real way to get back to his ship. Luckily, the house he ends up in belonged to a brilliant human inventor named Ardwin, and while he seemingly disappeared many years ago, he’s managed to elevate the insects of his house to the point they have human intelligence and have developed little societies. Each room of Ardwin’s home ends up providing some new fascinating setting where you see how the specific bugs residing there have chosen to interpret what was left behind or build using common household items. In the kitchen, an overflowing sink provides a river to irrigate crops grown out of sponges while the shield bugs have constructed a temple shaped like a tardigrade as they try to worship Ardwin based on old scientific notes they don’t actually understand. Almost every character is a little bit goofy and even when there’s a squabble between the silverfish and dung beetles, it’s actually about noise levels from the silverfish’s partying rather than something serious that would threaten the game’s generally pleasant vibes. Near the end it does start to touch on a few sadder ideas, but mostly you’ll get a delightful tour of a house recontextualized into multiple societies for many little critters.
Milodane doesn’t have to settle in and accept this home as his new home though thanks to a moth named Ridmi who has the blueprints for a device Ardwin made that should help him out. Each piece of the device is found in one of the rooms and it seems each place has a set of problems they need help with, but Milodane unfortunately can’t do too much on his own, only really able to use a bar of soap to grind on silk strands and a bubble to glide across long distances. This is where the Tinykin come in though, the player able to find them around the house by touching eggs and each coloration of the tiny round cycloptic critters able to assist in different ways. The simplest are the Pink Tinykin who can be used to carry objects where they need to go or can be thrown into objects to activate them, this skill unique to this color as there is no overlap in Tinykin abilities. Instead, if you are using a Red Tinykin, it’s always going to be to blow something up, and interestingly enough there are some Tinykin that leave your growing group of followers. The Reds literally blow up so there’s no chance of reusing them, but others like the Blue Tinykin end up becoming conduits for electricity to power appliances and gizmos around the house and they have to stay in place to keep the electricity flowing. In a nice touch, even if they struggle to follow you, they’ll always be there and available the moment you’re ready to throw one, eliminating any concerns with the unwieldiness of your growing Tinykin workforce. The Tinykin that follow you are specific to each room though and there’s always more Tinykin then you’ll need to complete all the tasks in that area so there’s no actual concern you’ll mismanage your minions.
In fact, while they follow behind you in a gradually growing crowd, the Tinykin really are just there to be used in their prescribed ways. When you’re exploring a space you’ll identify an object that requires a specific Tinykin for one reason or another, and there’s not much thought into how to use them. You throw them, they perform the task, and you move along, the only one that really breaks that formula being the green ones who can make a tower you can climb anywhere you’d need it so gathering more of them gives you access to higher places. While this does mean there usually isn’t too much thought involved in how you use your little helpers beyond whether you have enough to meet the quota for the current action, Tinykin still remains interesting because how much focus is given to searching every nook and cranny of the expansive household. You’re usually pretty free to head off in any direction when entering a new room and there’s plenty to find, from the Tinykin eggs to the floating golden pollen you collect to upgrade your bubble glide to secondary objectives like artifacts you often get for helping the bugs with their problems. Some platforming skill will be needed at parts but even if you die you’ll reappear wherever last you safely stood so you can try again until things work out, the only real major test of ability being in the time trial races added in a post-release update.
Most of Tinykin really is just about walking into a new interesting area and looking all about for everything you can find. The joy of discovery is at play as you can find amusing insects living their lives, nifty structures built from household objects, simple interactions like flowers you can help bloom, and situations where you can quickly use your Tinykin to set something into motion or open up new routes about the room. Besides the races, finding everything that’s hidden around the world of Tinykin is a fairly approachable goal and save for some sneakily hidden pollen clusters you can usually clear all there is to do in a room in a reasonable time frame. With some areas having more advanced goals like needing to collect the ingredients for a cake in the kitchen the game remains consistently novel even if you don’t feel like poking around the large locations for every goodie, but there are certainly limits on how much the Tinykin can do so you don’t often feel much in the way of challenge as you work. Funnily enough, despite the premise similarities, Tinykin ends up feeling quite different from Pikmin in the end, it’s more relaxed approach and limited moments of peril making it feel more like a platformer that contextualized your problem solving resource as a bunch of cute little characters that follow you around.
THE VERDICT: The creative levels of Tinykin aren’t just visual treats where household objects have become huge playgrounds to explore, they’re well shaped to host the platforming and exploration that exists at the heart of Tinykin. While low on real danger or puzzles, Tinykin instead invests in having spaces that are fun to poke around in while the titular creatures are mostly just tools to open up new spaces or trigger a change in the world. While similar to Pikmin in some surface level ways, Tinykin shines instead as a low pressure platformer about collecting all the goodies in an area and seeing the strange and silly things that make up its fun setting.
And so, I give Tinykin for Xbox Series X…
A GOOD rating. Its limited complexity and lack of puzzles does mean a lot of success comes easily in Tinykin, the player really just needing to follow their curiosity and have a sharp eye for little hiding spots where pollen or Tinykin eggs can be. The large spaces are easy to traverse as you start doing more work in them though, ensuring even if you fall from a great height or want to get to the other side of the room quickly there’s usually a silk strand to help or the Green Tinykin can give you a lift. Exploration really is the main appeal in the end though, the player drawn to interesting sights and identifying what needs done to get rewards from whatever set piece caught their eye. With the need to build structures out of household goods and the little bug societies having their own cultures things get more imaginative than just being a tiny person climbing standard bedrooms, and there was a good deal of thought put into things like the shadow of Ardwin’s influence while still having a lot of room for comedic writing. Tinykin put a lot of its creativity into its world design rather than the depth of your interactions and while that means you won’t often face much opposition besides moments where you realize your a few Tinykin short of being able to do a task, you won’t likely be too fussed that all you’re doing is going on an interesting platforming tour of some neat environments with plenty of collectibles to scoop up along the way.
Tinykin is truly a collect-a-thon at the end of the day, a 3D platformer where minion management is more just about having the right ones on hand rather than really working out how best to use them. It is, however, a lovely collect-a-thon that’s good to unwind with, its goals and hidden objects not too simple but also not too demanding. A strong game world holds your attention and uses your interest to pull you towards nifty interactions, Tinykin pretty cozy overall as it taps into the desire to explore but lets you handle most things at a relaxed pace without much concern over whether you have the reflexes or smarts to do all that’s available.