When Tinykin was first revealed, I could not help but compare it to Pikmin, in both games you are a tiny explorer in a world not entirely familiar and are helped out by little creatures. The difference in the two, apart from the visual style is that Tinykin feels more charming and lets you explore the world at your own pace. Does this laid-back exploration help this one stand above, or is it just too tiny to reach the same heights?

In the game, you take control of Milo, an explorer who finds himself waking up on Earth, except he is very tiny and the world is frozen in 1991. Milo has no idea what is going on at first, but quickly finds himself recruited into helping in the construction of a device, which should help out the denizens of this new location. Milo meets a handful of critters early on, that call this place home and as you explore each of the rooms in the house, you will meet countless more. The main objective of Milo is to collect items in order to build a device, with the hope that its construction will assist with his return to normal size and his own time.

As far as story goes, it is pretty thin, the reason for visiting each location makes sense, but the overall narrative isn’t something you are going to write home about. The characters that you meet in each location though, those are something fun to enjoy, because each has a little personality quirk that makes them fun to discover. In the first location, there are a trio of critters, named Hewey, Dewey and Lewey and they talk about their Uncle, a clear homage to the triplet nephews of Donald Duck. But they are not the only ones that you will get to discover, there are some folks that carry on like they are heroes, some are comedians, but all are a delight and while there isn’t a lot of dialogue from them, what is there is nice. Milo himself doesn’t speak, and you rarely get to see him interact with the world, outside of a few cute animations, but as a character he does the job needed, of letting you experience the world.

Speaking of the world, as I mentioned before, each of the locations you visit take place within different rooms of the house, the first main location, is that of a music room. So there is a piano, records and a lot more, with each item fitting in, as if someone’s house was photographed for inspiration. The second location is more of a greenhouse style room, with plenty of plants and a terrarium, with there also being bathrooms and more. The fun part of each location is discovering just how much is within them, from ground level, they all look massive, but it is when you climb to the highest point, which can take some effort, that you can truly see the scale. The first room is the same one that I got to play at the start of the year, so going in, I knew where things were and it still took over an hour to get almost everything done within, they are that massive.

In addition to the main quest of locating the items, so Milo can return home, the denizens of this world, all have their own little quests for Milo to help out with. Each stage has hidden items to find and return to their owners, some of the quests will provide you with artifacts that you can use to bolster the line up of the museum and if you wanted to collect everything, there is pollen all around the place, usually around 1000 pieces in a stage. All of those things to do, collect and return are made possible by making use of the titular Tinykin, little critters that are known for doing their own thing. Milo himself is not useless, he can jump and then use a special bubble helmet to float around, as long as it doesn’t pop. He is also gift a soapboard, which is like a skateboard, but made of soap and that gives him more ways to reach other locations.

The Tinykin however are where things can become more exciting, because each of them has their own unique use and ensuring you have the right ones on hand, is more crucial than you might think. I should preface this next part by saying that the game never asks for more Tinykin than the stage provides and they are usually close by to a use case, but not always. There are a handful of Tinykin, the basic ones are the purple and they are the muscle, you can use them to carry objects of great weight to other locations in the place, with the heavier the item, the more Tinykin that are needed. The second type you encounter are the red ones and they explode when they hit something that can be blown up and then you get green and blue ones.

The game is kind enough to let you keep any that you throw and don’t use, so if you start lobbing red ones around and they don’t explode, they return to your party. The other thing the game does is they will only throw the ones at items, that can interface with it, so you won’t be throwing exploding ones at items to move them. I do appreciate this, but it also removes an element of management from them, meaning that you never have to worry about throwing the right one, I can understand why, I just wish it was an option. The game is not really that difficult, apart from falling from a great height, which can be negated by the bubble helmet, or touching water, Milo has no real threats to deal with. There are dangers of course, but they are easily avoidable, if you take your time and there is no countdown clock or pressing need to do things quickly, you have all the time in the world.

One clear area where Tinykin looks vastly different to Pikmin is with its presentation, everything here is bright and colourful and looks like it could have been taken from a Saturday morning cartoon. Milo himself has a bunch of fun expressions and each time one of the animations plays out, you get to see even more, it is a real delight. The world itself is vibrant and rich with detail, if there was one downside to the visuals it is that some of the items feel out of place, not as if they don’t belong in the world, but just the detail on them doesn’t match the world. Each room also has a different vibe to it, thanks to the colour palette that the game has opted to embrace, the music room is warm, with a lot of browns and oranges, while the bathroom makes use of the blues that one might find in home from the early 90s.

Something that you are either going to love or hate, is that Milo is always facing the camera, in fact all the characters do, its something we saw a lot of in the earlier Paper Mario games. While it is charming at times, it can be a little distracting, especially if you want to investigate the world and just have Milo starring back at you. The character design is also a little limiting, there are a handful of critters, but they will generally repeat across each of the locations, from the ants to the mites and so on. While that isn’t a bad thing, it is a little disheartening to see so little effort done there, especially when you compare the vibrancy of the various locales, even some colour swaps would have been enough.

Tinykin is a game that is easy to recommend, the platforming and exploration is flawless and while Milo can do most things on this own, it is when you make use of the Tinykin that things become even better. The number of locations and things to do in each, make it a fun and enjoyable ride, but the lack of control over which Tinykin you can use is a bit of a letdown. The game isn’t a grand epic that will take you days to beat, but while the runtime is not long, the fun you will have playing it, will stay with you for a long time.