From what I've seen, many creatures live in the undergrowth - miniature people certainly don't, yet Tiny Tales: Heart of the Forest tells us a story about them. I am well aware that neither the plot or setting of hidden object games in general are the most serious ones in the world of videogames (not to mention their primary target audience), but I'd like to emphasize nevertheless that there's a certain amount of childish elements you can cram into a game: a kingdom of small people ruled by mice and rats, where a rabbit-riding woman is not an uncommon sight... while I love classic fantasy and tales, I found the general concept way too infantile and one should take this into consideration before purchasing this game (upon seeing all this I was contemplating whether I should activate it or not, since I got this in a bundle).
The game itself isn't particularly bad, although it has its fair share of shortcomings, but I thought this was something I should definitely mention.

The other thing I immediately noticed is that how similar several mechanics are - most notably the spell kit (along with the runes required to create spells), that is exactly the same - to the ones seen in Queen's Quest 4: Sacred Truce. It was obvious to take a look at the release date of the 2 games to see which one's the culprit: Queen's Quest 4 was released 9 months later... so this makes that game not only the weakest part of the Queen's Quest series, but a lazy rip-off as well in addition. But that's enough about that.

According to the story, we play as Max, one of the mentioned small folks, who returns home after searching for his father without success and finds the kingdom facing many difficulties, where rats manipulate the mouse king and beavers cause draught by cutting down trees, thus blocking the path of a stream (yet we see no sign of the latter, there's lush foliage everywhere).

Besides the spell kit as the previously mentioned main feature, what we get here is a pretty average hidden object game with the usual ~30 minutes long bonus chapter (where we have to find a mushroom, so that we can extract an antidote to cure our mother who's been poisoned), which is also required for an achievement. The minigames are fun (for the most part), although very easy (with some time-consuming ones, like the knot-pulling "puzzle"), but we've seen all of them in the other games of this developer, namely in the Queen's Quest series.
The hidden object scenes (we can also play a pair-matching game, Monaco instead) themselves are fair and their number isn't overly high, at least in the main game, because the bonus chapter is full of twice used HO scenes. Also related to the bonus chapter: I noticed that some items needed more than one clicks, not to mention the annoying morphing objects (they change their shape at certain intervals). We also have to look out for ordinary items around the edge of the screen, the straw for example which is needed to reach a piece of cloth high on top of a mushroom...
Besides the interactive items which require some components to be found before they can be used, there are some nonsensical item uses, like the one where we have to use a spoon (!) to move fallen rocks out of the way... and that exact spoon is later used to lift a heavy branch (named it 'The Universal Spoon of Ultimate Power' afterwards - shame it disappeared then, I bet it could have been used successfully against the final enemy as well). Seriously, I know these people are small and so they can use spoons as such, but still, if they have miniature bows, arrows and such, why can't they have tiny pickaxes or showels? And what about the bird needing a cap - why would a bird want one?
Collectibles are very easy to spot, which fits perfectly to the nature (made for children) of the game: on each screen we can find 1, which is either a mouse doll or one of the gold coins with cheese on them :)

Throughout the game the combination of blue-green colours dominate, which gives it a unique look; for the most part events occur outside (which I'm a fan of) in the miniature kingdom, where mushrooms and flowers seem huge and all this give place to some pretty scenery. On the other hand cutscenes appear to be rough and crudely made - mostly due to the fact that they use the magnified image of certain characters.
Music during some of the minigames (or the loud, looping combat music) may seem familiar if we played... yes, the Queen's Quest series... again. And unfortunately they aren't good either. Background music in general isn't bad though.

Tiny Tales: Heart of the Forest is a rather generic, yet still likeable little hidden object game, that is obviously made for children, considering both the difficulty of its puzzles and its themes. Thus I would rather recommend it to children, /skip otherwise.

PROS
+ beautiful, unique scenery
+ child friendly...

CONS
- ...to an extent where one could call it childish instead
- lazily done cutscenes and reused, annoying music

RATING
5/10

A good Artifex Mundi hidden object game.