What's Good About Tinykin

I never played Pikmin back in the day. But I have played a bunch of 3D platformers. I saw that Tinykin was on Game Pass and figured “What the heck, this looks like a good Game pass game to doof around on.” I then played through most of it in roughly two days. I think this is my favourite summer game (albeit coming in very late). I’m going to spend this week's entry on why I think that is because I can't stop thinking about it.

The first thing that initially popped out at me was the presentation that the game goes for. The game uses this interesting trick where it uses 3D models to do a 2.5D look. When viewed from certain angles, the method gives off a Paper Mario vibe, and I’m super into it. This combined with the simple, but colourful art style and wonderful animations do a lot to give Tinykin some personality. It also has the side effect of making the game look cute as fuck, the titular Tinykin themselves stealing the goddamn show. They, more than any other character in this game, exude a level of charm that is undeniable in terms of how fucking adorable they are.

This also extends to the environments as well. The game takes place inside of a house in the year 1991, and you, controlling the adventuring scientist Milodane from another planet in search of Humanity’s origin, are shrunk down and see the environment through a larger-than-life lens. The game’s five main levels are large and sprawling, taking advantage of the small stature of the denizens of the game world to add a lot of verticality to the designs. And these are all framed in the context of an upstairs hallway, a bedroom, a makeshift greenhouse, a bathroom/laundry room and more. They all do a fantastic job of selling the size and style of each of these areas.

That all got away from me, so allow me to get to the main reason I want to talk to y’all: The Gameplay. Tinykin is a 3D, Collect-a-thon style platformer with a good dash of Pikmin thrown in for good measure…and it’s kind of brilliant? The main reason I say this is because the general feeling of just moving and jumping around…feels really fucking good. You can jump and glide using your suit’s bubble for the majority of the platforming challenges that don’t require the Tinykin to get around (Trust me, we’ll get to them). Still, there’s also one more baseline movement option available to you: The Soap Board. At any time when playing, you can hold the Right Bumper or R1 depending on the controller to pull out a bar of soap and just use it like a skateboard. You can grind on edges, use it for increased speed, chain it into the base abilities for some sick movement and it all feels so goddamn good. It feels like a really good version of what a 3D Platformer would be like because the movement is the star of the show.  

And this brings us to the Tinykin themselves. They are these adorable little creatures that can be found all throughout the world and can help Milo in some interesting ways. They come in five different varieties: Purple Tinykin are super strong and can move stuff, Red Tinykin can be yeeted at anything flammable to serve as explosives, acrobatic Green Tinykin can be rapidly assembled like an elevator to aid in some of the more trying platforming challenges, the Blue Tinykin are laid back until charged with electricity and be used to fill current gaps, and the Yellow Tinykin are used to build bridges to inaccessible areas. All of them are used in ways that complement the base platforming and movement and I’ve actively spent a good chunk of my time just going around the game world because the movement and these abilities were just that good. And this helps because of the number of collectables that are strewn about the place that you can use to upgrade MIlodane’s abilities or just general completion. Which should not take too long because I got to the last level in less than six hours.

Tinykin is my favourite game that came out this summer. While it may be on the short side, it exudes charm and personality in spades. And this is on top of having some of the best-feeling 3D platforming I’ve played since Psychonauts 2. Take the time to really get through and you will not be disappointed.