Tiny Brains is a game that it would seem I should enjoy it. It’s a physics-based platformer with four characters, each given a special power.
The game has four lab animals of different types, but rather than heavily name-checking them, the game spends the entire game calling them “Tiny Brains.” At the beginning of the game, you choose one of the four. If you’re playing solo, it’s rather academic because the player is required to swap between the four characters to complete the game. So why make it a choice?
Each of the four characters has an ability, and they are given names early on, but because the names are only said once, and, as mentioned, the game constantly just calls them by “Tiny Brains” I refer to them as “Suck” “Push” “Swap” and “Ice”. “Suck” and “Push” is quite literal. One sucks any objects in it’s range towards him, push repels them forcibly. “Swap” can change places with any object which just teleports both objects to the other’s position. “Ice” creates Ice blocks and can explode them to propel him or other objects (usually upwards).
I will say this, all of the power are pretty good. Not great, as “Teleport” seems to have odd range restrictions, though I think that’s to help gamify the systems. “Push” on the other hand should have been really frustrating, but is actually a joy to play with. “Ice” feels a bit overused especially to make jumps, and “Suck” is underused.
Of course, it wouldn’t really be a puzzler if you couldn’t combine powers. For the most part, you’ll combine “Ice” and “Push”, sometimes with “Teleport” after it. Almost always in that order. This is the weakness of the game. There is a good synergy but there’s really only a handful of ways the game uses it, and I think part of the problem is the powers are limited. Requiring the game to be completable by a single player becomes a weakness of the system. At the same time, I wonder if multiplayer would be more repetition (requiring more teleports) or more of a delight. I can’t tell you as I didn’t have the opportunity.
I can, however, tell you most of the puzzles are relatively interesting though there were quite a few “action sequences” which involved using “Push” and “Suck” to move objects around or “Ice” and “Push” to fight enemies.
By the end of the first level, you have seen most of the synergies and learned the one technique the game feels like it needs to specifically call out. The rest of the game continues using the same techniques. There are small bits of complexity added in later, such as using an ice brick, pushing it, and then exploding it to propel yourself up to use teleport, but you can do that in the original level.
Of course, any game in the modern era has to have a story, and this is where Tiny Brains starts to have trouble. It’s not that there is not a story, there is. It is just nothing that great. When you finish the game you see the whole story, and it’s not awful, but there’s never a moment in the story where I felt really entranced by it. There is a crazy scientist saying silly things, usually about trying to trap our heroes, but it feels a bit expected in gaming to have a quirky narrator. That would be fine, but it’s not that interesting.
A lot of the dialogue feels random, with four animals the only one talking is the scientist for the entire game, and it’s trying to be clever, but never really made me pay attention, I just tried to beat the next puzzle to see more of the game.
The game itself just isn’t a big delight. Tiny Brains only has about five enemies if I am counting correctly. There are a few interesting moments, but nothing that really shined over other games. The locations are relatively sane, being laboratory test cages for the most part. There are a few interesting items in the world but nothing I would call out as especially unique.
The puzzles in the game are mostly easy. The only real trick is to remember you can ride an ice block and push it at the same time. That was the only thing that challenged me, and it was about forgetting something. Other than that, I would often walk into a room, see a task, and have to play with the objects in the room for less than five minutes to get a solution, even the hardest rooms are quickly dispatched due to the number of objects to interact with.
The action scenes I mentioned earlier, such as rolling a ball up a curved incline are the only parts I had a minor struggle with. Most of the struggles were because it was more action based than puzzling, and the character’s abilities don’t really give a good way to beat them in single player.
I beat the game in under 3 hours. That’s fast, though about the same speed as Portal, but Portal came with bonus stages that I wanted to play, and I absolutely adored the story. Tiny Brains takes a shorter time and just isn’t as compelling. There are bonus stages here, but I played most of them once and didn’t feel like trying again to top my score. Sure it meant I didn’t get to play all the bonus stages, but part of me knew I didn’t want to in the first place. I finished the story and the bonus stages are just harder versions of levels that can be done to award stars for distance or time.
There is one factor that I’m forced to admit might change someone’s opinion of the game. I didn’t play this in multiplayer. And perhaps that’s the secret to the game. Maybe the game is really fun in multiplayer. But I have some thoughts on it. First two player would seem like it’s chaos. One player could do everything with the other player only assisting some of the time, or the players would keep switching characters and it’s almost a fight for the right character. If you somehow got four players for the game, maybe it’s really great, but I can’t imagine having “Suck” as a power is going to be great. “Suck” and possibly “Teleport” seem like utilitarian powers, whereas “Ice” and “Push” are core powers.
But like I said, I don’t know, maybe this game is awesome in multiplayer, but I think I’d have more fun playing something more like Overcooked, Cuphead, or Cook, Serve, Delicious! With someone.
Before I finish there’s one more issue I have with this game. When I switched the game to windowed mode and tried to leave the game, the game froze on me, twice. When I played Tiny Soccer, after the match the game froze on me. I also got stuck in the floor on chapter 2. These were the only bugs, but I only played for about 3 hours. Still, it’s a 5-year-old game, I’m surprised there are still bugs, but I won’t let that affect the review too much, it’s still an odd problem.
So truthfully, I had some enjoyment with this game. I got it in a Humble Bundle for this game and played it based on the Completionist’s recommendation on Youtube. But to me, it didn’t live up to the hype. While I enjoyed my time with the game, I paid for it so long ago and so little (6 bucks for 6 games) that my enjoyment was mostly because I was playing a random game in my library. Having to spend ten bucks on this game, definitely would change my opinion. But in addition, I was able to play it quickly, write this review and move on in a handful of hours. Not a great bar, but at least a positive one for a reviewer.
I don’t think this game is worth the money, and I think the length of the game is a huge problem. This could be changed of course if you are looking for a couch co-op game, or really just have to have every physics puzzler, but I think Tiny Brains isn’t the top of the barrel. I don’t hate the game but I don’t recommend it.
If however, you want to find a different game to spend your money on or just want to see what I think of other games, check out my curator page at http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31803828-Kinglink-Reviews/ and give me a follow. I always appreciate it.
