There is a phenomenon that happens here on Steam. I call it "the Nintendo Clone" game. As we know, Nintendo refuses to release its games on PC, where not only they could fully blossom, but live on forever. So it's up to other developers to release variations of such games for the PC, Playstation and Xbox crowds. For fans of "Mario Kart", Sega has released a couple of "Sonic" racing games - with a new one coming up. People who want the "Animal Crossing" experience can have "Dreamlight Valley"; fans of that "Super Smash Bros." style of fighting can have "Brawlhalla" or the Nickelodeon games - and for a time, they had "MultiVersus" too. People who want that "Donkey Kong Country" gameplay can have it with "Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair". Even "Breath of the Wild" had its clone with "Immortals Fenyx Rising". And for the people out there longing for the "Pikmin" experience, "Tinykin" is here to save the day.

But to introduce "Tinykin" as merely a "clone" may be to diminish it: this is an excellent game. It's just fantastic both visually and mechanically. Granted: it has those little janky quirks that collectathons may have. But during my 20 hours with it (damn!), it brought me much more joy than properly frustration. And I'm happy to see it has built a community around it.

As the promos suggest, you are this small visitor on a typical suburban house. The objective of "Tinykin" is to collect pieces for your ship, and each peace is in a different room. You must do favours for the bug inhabitants for them to liberate the pieces. And for that, you must go around collecting these little aliens - the titular tinykin - that can serve different proposes.

The purple ones can carry objects small or large, remove obstacles out of the way, or pull things down. When they carry something particularly big, they go on a specific path which becomes partially visible with arrow signs, and as long as they're carrying it, they'll be unavailable to you. They move slow, so I often left them unattended so I could futher explore the maps, until they reached their goal. But sometimes, there'll be something blocking their path, or no path at all, so it's up to you to create one. In rooms, you'll also find smaller objects that your buddies can carry along with you, and you'll use them with other objects in the world - e.g., a key for a lock, a screwdriver for a screw, and so forth.

Red ones are naturally explosive, and can blown barricades down, activate shortcuts and free trapped tinykin. Green ones form pillars for you to climb, and here's for a very important PTA: you don't have to aim them at the floor to build a pillar, as you can just press M1 and a pillar will quickly grown with you on top. Blues ones can serve as electricity conductors, while yellow ones become temporary bridges. You call your available tinykin back with E; being colour-coded, they'll only interact with things that glow on their colour, and sometimes, it may be hard to spot that glow - specially purple.

The gameplay is intuitive, precise and fun. I decided to play this game with keyboard and mouse since aiming is a small part of it. The platforming is great, and instead of sprinting, your character instead conjures a soap bar that makes you "skate" around, and it's immediately more fun - specially that you can grind on edges and silk lines (but naturally that you can't skate uphill). You'll also have a soap bubble that you use to hoover, and it can be improved by collecting a certain amount of pollen in each room, making you hoover for longer and reach new places.

There are no enemies in this game, but your character is vulnerable to water: to land on it will make him slower and short-circuit for a time, until you can get him back on dryland or he explodes like Rayman. But fret not: the game is incredibly kind in letting you start over quickly from the last ground you were. So water and gravity are your only threats in this game.

The house is typically divided into different chambers, and then there'll be a hangar that works as an overworld. But rooms are also connected to each other, and at first, it may be difficult to navigate the map - especially that some rooms can get quite bit. Apparently, you can fast travel to the hangar at any moment, but even there it's a bit of a mess to know what door leads to which room. A tool that you must use regularly is the binocular: it can identify certain elements in the room, such as characters, side-missions (yes, this game has them), and large objects being carried by your tinykin but that are stuck for some reason. Sometimes, you'll come across points of interest, but you won't have enough tinykin to deal with them, meaning that you have to scoop around for more of them - the problem then becomes to remember where these points are, in that they're not marked by the binocular. And don't worry: the game was designed that you never get stuck, as there's enough tinykin in a room to spare.

Rooms also have common missions such as lighting candles, delivering letters, and finding a jewel. It's important to notice that you don't take your tinykin with you all the times: the tinykin you find at a specific room will be there for you in that room only. Also, the game does that thing of introducing new mechanics (that is, tinykin) as you discover new areas, and it's weird to go back to some early rooms without being able to use those powers (because such rooms don't have the tinykin for that).

Now, "Tinykin" has a very serious issue. It may not be a problem for those of you who just want to play the game, but for completionists going for the achievements, it can be a gruelling experience to collect the few remaining pollen, or the few remaining tinykin. Some of them are incredibly well hidden, but once again, this game has formed a community, so there are YouTube videos to guide players. Still, the game could have found a manner to guide players to those pesky final collectables.

And then there's the update, which introduces this time trial mode, in which you have to traverse as quickly as possible these tracks - two per room. This is the game at its most addictive, and by all means, it's a game in and of itself, changing the gameplay into this unhinged "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater". From my 20 hours with this game, most of them came from this update, as I repeated myself until I got the platinum badges. The tracks demand that players get their feel, and they succeed when they pull the right moves at each point.

Visually, "Tinykin" is wonderful. The cartoony visuals are superb, and the developers made sure that you see your avatar's face even if you're behind him, just so you always get a good look on his nerdy face. As you progress, you gain new clothes for your character - which strangely, you have to collect at the hangar before being able of freely equipping. The scenario evokes early-to-mid 90's vibes, with VHS tapes all around. The little bugs that populate the worlds are also incredibly sympathetic, and with funny dialogues for those curious enough to interact with them.

But unfortunately, the game also makes liberal use of obnoxious pop culture references, with a lovey-dovey couple that was straight up named Jack and Rose, and a cook bug named Remy. When I passed by a miniature medical bay, I just thought to myself: that's gonna be a "House" reference. And what do you know? It was. This diminishes the charm of the game, instead of adding up to it.

"Tinykin" is not a perfect game, but it's a wonderful time, very addicting, and with a surprisingly moving ending. It's one of those games that I picture being a perfect contender for a cartoon adaptation - the visuals are already there. And if Nintendo won't bring its notoriously modest-selling "Pikmin" games on Steam, where can could sell as water, maybe Splashteam could deliver us another gem.

Just cool it with the pop culture references, okay

One of the best collectathons ever made, no exagerration.
Absolutely no low points in the entire playthrough.

Sublime level design, super intuitive. Exploration just feels so satisfying.

What a pure joy to play, and I don't even like this genre. 10/10, recommending it to everyone. This game reminded me that not every game needs to be a sweaty, tryhard, difficult, narrative, cinematic, etc experience to be a flawless game. Sometimes games can just be...fun?

I love this game. Presentation, controls, level design, everything is just *chef's kiss*. It's truly cozy in the sense there is no death, no time limits, no combat, just unadulterated fun exploring and collecting.
I had previously cleared it 100% on Xbox, but getting it dirt cheap on a Steam sale I just had to play it again. It's still super awesome!

Would love to see a sequel one day. Just more of the same would suit me fine!