EDIT: Spoilers are open!

Prior Message: Welcome to the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. Our second game of 2023 is Tinykin. The target completion date is January 30, 2023.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after January 30, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You are also free to come back any time after the completion date and share your thoughts! This club is meant to be open to all whenever you want to join in the fun!

You can find out more about the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club or suggest future games for it here.

What is Tinykin?

Tinykin is a 3D platformer with elements drawn from the Pikmin series. It has a soapboard that's fun to use! It made many top 10 lists from the staff on this very website! You should play it!

How long is Tinykin?

How long to beat lists it as 6 hours long.

I really really liked this game. I finished it within 24 hours of starting and I was very surprised to find it was mostly a 3D platformer and not a Pikmin-like (though there are some Pikmin elements.) Finding all the Tinykin was kind of addictive, the powers were cool, the soap board felt great, the game was pretty and polished and amusing. It doesn't have the highest of highs but there are very few lows. Just a really solid 3D platforming experience in a genre that's making a big resurgence.

In terms of the story...who cares? I didn't connect with any of the characters or their plight but it didn't seem to be the game's focus. The end was kind of a downer for reasons I don't really understand but whatever. It didn't hurt the game.

The Good

• Good looking levels with well thought-out mapping and vertical level design
• Well thought-out puzzle design that sometimes made me pause to consider my surroundings but never got convoluted
• Pikmin elements generally work well
• Movement felt good and the levels were fun to explore
• The dialogue was usually fun
• The large crowds of Tinykin that eventually follow you around are more impressive than anything Pikmin has ever done

The Meh

• The story and characters were never worth getting invested in, and the ending didn't make much in the way of sense
• The soapboard physics were kinda iffy
• I never got a good feel for the glide ratio of the bubble gliding
• Some minor technical hiccups, such as aiming for the bridge tinykin getting janky halfway through building
• The Paper Mario-esque character designs don't work particularly well

The Bad

• Even with the unlockable shortcuts, some of the points of interest can take a while to navigate back to if you don't have enough tinykin the first time you encounter them.
• The opening cutscene sucks so much, like, it's Rayman bad. I'm very glad we never hear the main character talk afterwards.
• OPEN WORLD CHECKPOINT RACES SUCK, HAVE ALWAYS SUCKED, AND WILL ALWAYS SUCK. FUCKING CUT IT OUT ALREADY.

I also beat it within 24 hours of starting. It was largely a light and breezy time. I do wish that there was some endgame upgrade that let you spot collectibles that you missed out on the first time through the levels, for the sake of completion. I always ended up with less than a hundred pollen left in each level, but meticulously re-exploring every nook and cranny is too tedious. I'm a sucker for 3D platformers and open world design, so I largely feel kind towards this one. This is a better Open Zone game than Sonic Frontiers.

Unfortunately, I did not finish this game like I had planned to this weekend. I am on the kitchen level, and loving the gameplay of it, but the sneak launch of Hi Fi RUSH took over my weekend and I played several hours of that instead.

But I really like Tinykin. As an avid fan of these collectathon platformers, I fell in love with it almost immediately. It does such a good job of constantly leading you to its collectibles or breadcrumbing you around each self-contained room. The puzzles haven't been overly complicated or obtuse, and I only rarely haven't had the tools needed to solve something right then and there.

I think the reason I haven't completed it is because I wouldn't move on from a zone unless I found everything in it. So some levels I beat easily in one sitting, and others I spent 45 minutes looking for the final 3 pollen bits I missed. If only there had been a way to highlight the collectibles you are missing (or at least which region they are in) to speed up that process, because, yeah, the final bits can be a real pain.

All in all, this gets a solid 4/5 from me unless the final level and a half introduces some wild mechanic like a boss fight that doesn't make any sense or something.

(edited for typos)

I really need to go back to this. I was trying it and got very frustrated at the very first puzzle when I couldn't find four or five tinykins to move something, but it turned out that they were just hidden. I should go back to it at some point.

Went back in and finished this last night. I, too, realized I did not pay attention to the story at all when you're introduced to that guy in the attic. This was just an easy collectible game for me, where everything I did gave me some sort of dopamine hit.

And I did almost everything in the game. Missed 3 tinykins on the kitchen level, and 13 on the kids bedroom at the end, but got everything else. Part of me wants to go find those final kin, but without an easy way to know where they would even be, I probably won't.

i really enjoyed this one when i played it last year. the movement was Great , the collectables were managable in a i got Almost all of them type of way. the world design was pretty great specially how the shortcuts opened things but to make collecting better, and while i bearly paid attention to to story since i used it as a podcast game it seemed like it had the right type of humor for that world. i gave tunic my #10 goty spot last year but honestly it was a tough call cause this and nobody saves the world and tunic all kinda honestly tied for the spot in my book.