the little odds + endsin Tiny Life, you control a set of people that live together in a household. you take care of their daily needs, build their skills, forge new relationships.. or just mess up their life in whatever way you can think of! game title: tiny life developed by: ellpeck games published by: top hat studios, inc. game trailer: watch the trailer release date: early access available now ($14.99) | free demo available now genre: life sim, sandbox, pixel art platform(s): steam, itch.io player(s): single-player for fans of: the sims, rollercoaster tycoon, let’s build a zoo the vibe check
game features
As a lifelong Sims fan, Tiny Life initially drew me in because of how nostalgic this game looks. Many life simulation games have tried to replicate the intricacies that The Sims franchise has put in place to give their players a well-rounded, detailed life sim experience. When I saw Tiny Life at PAX East back in March, I knew I needed to try it for myself. After opening the game for the first time, it almost felt like I was looking at a mobile game on my PC monitor. That was until the instrumental soundtrack and isometric camera view brought me back to the early 2000's when I would spend hours playing The Sims 1 in my parent's basement on the family computer. creating my tiniesBefore spending too much time on the main "Demoville" neighborhood screen, I was eager to jump into character creation. Players are able to customize quite a bit of their pixel people referred to in the game as Tinies including their:
Additional personality traits can be earned through Tinies completing their big life goal which works similarly to aspirations for those familiar with The Sims series. The demo only offers one life goal for you to assign to your Tinies and that life goal is what guides the player through the game's major gameplay features. After selecting your Tiny's outfits, you are able to choose which occasions you'd like your Tiny to wear it for. This made it easy for me to dress my character in a tank top and use it for both her everyday wear and her hot weather outfit without needing to recreate it a second time. There were some things in the create-a-character screen that are marked as future items on the development roadmap, like teen and elder life stages, which I felt was a great way to let players know what additional features are in the works. The game also has townie slots on the main map where you can assign staff that will permanently work in the world. These Tinies can't be directly controlled but you'll see them working various jobs as you play like delivering the mail, collecting the trash, or preparing food on public lots. build + buy modeI am notoriously lazy when it comes to building homes and community lots from scratch in sandbox games like this, so I was comforted to see how minimal and intuitive the Tiny Life build interface was. You are able to modify walls, roofing, windows, doors, floor tiles, wallpaper, and furniture to your liking as you design. Color options are presented as swatches that pop up when you select an item to decorate with, but the demo does limit what design options you have available to you. One feature that I absolutely love in Tiny Life is that you are able to easily pick up and move an entire house and relocate it to another spot on the plot without the need to rebuild anything. I'm definitely a trial-and-error builder, so when I realize I'm running out of room on one side of the house, being able to scoot the entire thing over a few times can make or break a building experience in games like this. While I found building to be really straightforward, I was a little disappointed in how time-consuming it was to look through the furniture catalogue in-game. Furniture is categorized logically into tabbed groups which is great, but being accustomed to The Sims 4 where items can just be searched for in a search bar, it made it difficult to find what I was looking for more often than not. let's talk gameplayThe majority of my time in the demo was spent observing my little pixel people and watching how they interacted with each other and their environment. After creating myself as a Tiny, I sent her to an empty residential lot that was already pre-furnished and got her a job as a firefighter. Next, I sent her to the coffee shop next door to meet some premade townies who were hanging out there. Interacting with my Tiny was pretty self-explanatory. The main user interface is so similar to The Sims that it was extremely intuitive to use. The player is able to quickly observe their Tiny's current emotional state and see what recent actions have impacted their mood. Tinies have needs that require constant monitoring, but all of these needs are very much the standard fare: energy, hungry, social, toilet, hygiene, and entertainment. There are also tabs that show your Tiny's skill levels, personal relationships, life goal progress, and personal information that you can quickly refer to when needed. Tinies earn Tiny Bucks by going to work or through the use of their skills. Once I had my Tiny self get a job, the career tab in the UI gave me a brief list of tasks that she needed to complete in order to boost her job performance and earn a job promotion. My Tiny wound up selling a few mediocre paintings that she whipped up at the easel in the park, a lot that she was able to walk over to without any loading screens as it was right across from her house. When my Tiny did encounter other people, the game's AI did a great job at encouraging social interactions and keeping the Tinies occupied. It wasn't often that I saw anyone standing around doing nothing for too long, although I did experience some pathing issues when navigating crowded lots. The interactions between the Tinies felt realistic and kept me entertained, especially when these social interactions were often a result of the game's AI and not from me constantly needing to nudge my characters to "do something interesting". Overall I was extremely happy with my time trying out the Tiny Life demo! I enjoyed creating my mini-me and watching her interact with the other Tinies in the world. I loved decorating my little pixel house with little pixel furniture and using those items to help my Tiny skill up and earn a job promotion.
By default the game autosaves every few minutes which is a setting that can be changed, but not turned off completely. While I love autosave because I tend to get too absorbed in gameplay to remember to save, it would be nice to have the option to turn it off completely in case you wanted to back-track on any decisions that your Tinies made. It's possible that this is an option in the full version of the game, but I am unsure at this time. There is so much more to discover in Tiny Life that I wasn't able to cover in my experience playing, so I highly encourage you to check out the free demo yourself if this looks like a game you might enjoy! The early access version of Tiny Life is available on Steam for $14.99 if you would like to try the game in it's current entirety or you can support the development for free by adding Tiny Life to your steam wishlist! If you have already played the Tiny Life demo (or the early access release!), I would love to hear your thoughts on the game in the comments below!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |