Tinboy is a difficult game, both to beat and to judge. Part of this is on me. I was struggling at the beginning to figure out how to use the arrows properly and ended up using walkthroughs for at least a third of the levels. Though I gave up on a lot of these too quickly for the sake of time, once I got a feel for the mechanics, I adjusted and had a lot of fun beating several of these challenges.
Still, the game’s very rough. The visuals are not just boring to look at, they are downright confusing. There are fans, vents, and hanging ceiling tiles that look like they should either affect movement or be indicators of where to stand or shoot at, but they just seem to be there so that the background doesn’t look empty, and they even fail at that due to how much they stick out.
As for the puzzles, while I enjoyed many of them and take responsibility for failing others, there were several that required you to stand on a perfect spot, rely on a very unnatural carom for the arrow, or swing in a specific arc with a specific length of rope. The game’s physics are functional, but they are very loose and unintuitive, with cubes sometimes getting stuck, flying in wild directions and occasionally clipping through walls. The physics are not completely unpredictable, but I never got a good feel for them. Taking note of the placement of interactables in each level will usually help you find the solution, but when the loose physics combine with some of the precision requirements, it can become hard to read when you’re on the right track through trial and error.
I think since the majority of the puzzles were fun to solve, I’d say go ahead and grab this when it’s on sale for a buck, but only if you’re up for the challenge. For something so bare bones, there are just enough clever puzzles that it barely makes the grade, though it would probably be a C instead of an A.
