Tiny Sheriff

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Got to test the earlier builds couple months back. Still love every ounce of character still present in the game, and ALL THE NEW STUFF! I love the nuanced additions like bouncy key-frames in the character models, the flavored level design, level select and a somewhat weightier feel while playing. Definitely looking forward to a full play-through, either recording and playing this for YouTube, or playing on stream! So proud of the team, and my homie who go to play a part in it! Looking forward to more updates!

"Tiny Sheriff" is a one-of-a-kind retro 2D platformer gracing Steam and raising the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely! This 2D retro western themed platformer eschews the usual run-and-jump mechanisms that most platformers have for a revolutionary aim-and-propel movement gimmick where you use a variety of weapons to fling yourself around, making this feel as much like full mind and body euphoria as it does a platformer. This does rescue the old, dead and defunct platformer genre. Imagine thinking that in 2025, gamers don't want platformers. I wonder why this was such a success? Platforming is a classic, alive and thriving genre, and this stellar experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, is saving the genre... it's no surprise this succeeded to capture all attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming. While I couldn't find this on the mobile app stores, nothing about it looks and feels like it's a mobile app designed for mobile phones... but instead for PC gaming enthusiasts, it's going to give you a cutting edge PC gaming experience. That alone is enough to qualify this for any recommendation. We spend thousands building gaming rigs so that we can play regular games on Steam. The game is really simple yet ambitious in terms of implementation - reminiscent of the Games at the University of Utah senior capstone program - where amateur developers are given $100 to publish something on Steam Direct to see if it's possible. Yes, obviously it's possible. A senior project, capstone, or something that's putting students' efforts on display is offering something truly valuable to gamers. On the topic of visuals, the incredible looking 2D retro assets seem like they wouldn't be more at home anywhere else than in a steam game. 3D graphics accelerators hit the mainstream of PC gaming in the mid 1990's with cards like the ATI Rage and Voodoo3D, but who needs all that nonsense? There's no better example of such great 2D graphics in 2025. That alone is enough to qualify this for recommendation. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. This is 100% free (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag- not so with Tiny Sheriff!), you won't be expected to spend any money before or after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, luckily Tiny Sheriff is both free AND good! In terms of public reception, this succeeded! There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at 5 concurrent players... this is a GREAT public reception [this is actually pretty crazy for a game with zero marketing and made by a group of college students]. This was so good they could even give it away. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? YES!! This is worth downloading. There's no financial cost up-front, and you'd be spending your time and a little hard drive space on a product that's basically the best. There' sno better alternatives on Steam!