Tinykin is a puzzle-platform video game developed by Splashteam and published by tinyBuild. It was released on August 30, 2022, for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. The game follows Milodane, an archeologist who explores a mysterious planet and uncovers humanity's origins. During his journey, he encounters Tinykin, tiny critters with unique abilities that help him reach places and complete his objectives.
Development initially began in 2017. Director Romain Claude developed it as Bubble Town for the Global Game Jam 2019. The project came from a jam theme "What home means to you". Claude, alongside his team, became interested in the project and decided to develop it further. The game was inspired by the Pikmin and Paper Mario series. The game received favorable reviews. It received an honorable mention for several awards at the Independent Games Festival.
Gameplay
Tinykin is a 3D platformer with puzzle game elements, action-adventure gameplay, and features two-dimensional characters in a three-dimensional world. Players control intergalactic astronaut Milodane, an archeologist who must collect Tinykin, colorful tiny critters collected from eggs. Each Tinykin has a unique ability to help Milodane reach places and complete objectives. These include pink varieties, which can carry objects, red varieties that explode on impact when tossed, green varieties that stack vertically to form a ladder, blue varieties can use electricity, and yellow varieties create bridges. Each time when players meets a new variety an animated cutscene is shown.
Milodane's abilities consist of making soap bubbles that can glide around, soapboard to hover or grind around and using Tinykin to progress. Players can collected pollen for exchange for an additional bubble. The game has no enemies, health bars and the only way to die is from falling too far or going in water, making Tinykin a non-violent game. There are six main zones which are described after rooms of a house. A free update in December 20, 2022 added the ability to select and change an outfit for Milodane and added a Time Attack challenge mode for each zone, a mode that players race around the zones.
Plot and setting
Tinykin is set on the distant planet Aegis in the year 2748, after Earth has been abandoned. Milodane sets out on a mission to explore a mysterious planet, later established to be Earth, and uncover the secrets of humanity's origins. After crash-landing, Milodane is trapped in an enormous house, set in 1991. During his journey, he encounters a group of creatures called the Tinykin. Despite their reclusive nature, the Tinykin like Milodane and assist him in his quest by helping him find components. Ridmi introduces himself and shows them to a workshop with the components which he had been searching for ever since he was a child. Milodane and the Tinykin gain a deeper understanding of the components they have collected and how they fit together.
Throughout their adventure, Milodane and his companions encounter a range of creatures, including ants and other insects who have built elaborate cities and their own cultures in each room of the enormous house they live in, each containing a component. In the process, they discover that the bugs revere a man named 'Ardwin', presumed to be the former human owner of the house.
After collecting all of the components, Milodane is about to return to Aegis, but the machine breaks. Milodane travels to the house's attic, the 'The Last Refuge', where he meets Ardwin, who is in fact still alive. Now the size of a bug, and having kept himself alive for decades with robotic parts, he reveals he was a scientist responsible for humanity's exodus from Earth. His shrink ray went haywire and shrank the entire population of the planet, who fled to Aegis, leaving Earth to the bugs – who evolved alongside Tinykin and took over as the dominant species. Ardwin also reveals that the house is permanently stuck via a time-loop in 1991, where the technology is not sufficiently advanced for him to mend his escape ship.
Returning to the workshop, Ardwin discovers they can use a bone dropped by Milodane's dog, Nevus, as the last component for the machine. Finally taking off, Milodane and Ardwin discover the truth: that since Earth's shrinkage, it has been added to a collection of bottled planets by an alien species, which watch over them with scientific interest. This was the reason for the time-loop. The ship then returns the heroes to Aegis, and Ardwin rejoins human civilisation.