Developer: Phigames
Publsiher: Digital Tribe Game
Platform: PC, mac, linux
TinyKeep – Review
Dungeon-crawling games have been a popular series ever since gaming has existed. Even now they are still being made in all kinds of unique and fun ways, often combined with other kinds of genres. One of those games was made by Digital Tribe Games, and is called TinyKeep, a dungeon-crawler combined with hack-and-slash elements and tons of upgrades. So put on your trusty sword and shield, find your way through all the dungeons and fight of tons of enemies in this small, but fun game!
Story
The story of TinyKeep is pretty simple: you have awoken in a prison deep down a dungeon of multiple layers. You find a small paper laying on the ground, written by your fellow prisoner Maggie telling you that for some mysterious reason the lock on your cell has been busted open. Maggie has gone ahead in trying to escape the prison warning you about all the guards standing on your way. She tells you that you need to find a sword and shield and try to catch up to her, in the hopes of escaping the prison once and for all.
From that point on you’ll notice small letters laying about the levels, written by Maggie and telling you about what kinds of things are surrounding the different places. You’ll need to find these letters, fight your way through hordes of enemies and try to arrive at the gates of freedom.
The game doesn’t have much storytelling in it, but it is sufficient enough to give you an idea about what is actually happening.
Graphics
One of the more typical dungeon-crawling elements in this game is that dungeons are random. This makes it so that each dungeon differs from layout, but the first couple of levels will generally look the same. Though not much difference is present, after reaching a couple of levels, you’ll notice that the kind of environment in the game is different, varying from typical prison walls, to more nature like dungeons. So this makes the game look different once in a while, but not by too much. Which is fine honestly, because you’ll mostly not have the time to be worried about the environment, as you’ll be busy enough with the enemies. Most of the enemies look rather the same, but to differ just like the environments when reaching certain levels in the game. There is more uniqueness to them unlike the environments, as enemies have their own style of looks.
Overall the game looks pretty nice and no issues are present, though it would have been nice to see a little more varying environments.
Sound
Music-wise, the game makes you feel as if you are truly in a different time period. You’ll listen to mostly scottish music much like you’d hear in movies or television series, and it fits the game pretty good. The voices (though you’ll only listen to Maggies voice) are also typical to that kind of time period, making you think that Maggie is probably a scott. In short, the music is pretty good, it does a fine job at letting you form what kind of world you are living in.
Gameplay
As I have explained before: TinyKeep is a small dungeon-crawling game that implements hack and slash elements to its game play. The goal of the game is to go through all the different layers of the dungeon, which are randomized on each play through, and arrive at the last room. Once you reach the last room, you’ll be freed from the dungeon and you finished the game. Once you do, you’ll be able to play a new game plus with more challenging enemies.
Each play through is different, no dungeon has the exact same layout, nor are places where items can be found. You cannot just save when in a dungeon and pick back up a different time, as there are no check points or a save option available. This means that you’ll need to keep playing until you have finished the game, if you wish to stop you can do so but you’ll lose the progress that you have made so far. This makes the game rather challenging, because if you happen to die, you’ll have to start all over again, not keeping the items or upgrades until the next play through. This is a weak point of the game, but at the same time a feature that makes the game as it is. Losing your life punishes you, so try not to die and survive until you have reached your destination.
At the beginning of the game you’ll have a small character creation option, where you can choose the typical customization parts of your character, like face, gender and so forth. The game is short, but definitely challenging as the further you progress, the harder the enemies get. Thankfully, in each dungeon you can defeat enemies in order to get gold, which you can use at special spots to upgrade your character with skills like more defense, more health or speed. There are lots of variations, and you’ll keep you upgrades until you either finish the game or lose the game. You can stack multiple skills, but you do not have the option to choose which upgrade you’ll get. Sometimes you’ll get good upgrades, while other play through do not. This on its own makes the game different each time you play it.
In order to help you progress through the game, traps are hidden all over the levels. You can use this to trap enemies and kill them, but also means that you can get in a though spot because traps can also hurt you. These traps are different after a couple of levels, and vary between spikes, wall arrows and so on. You can also make different species of enemies to fight each other, which is rather funny. One important element to look out for is an altar with a skull on it. If you hit the skull, an invasion will start and tons of skull warriors will try to kill you. This makes the game exciting and these skull warriors are also a good way to farm gold, as they give twice the gold as normal enemies would. You’ll also encounter bigger and stronger enemies, that sometimes count as bosses or are just there to give you a hard time.
The one thing that might take some time to get used to is the camera. You’ll move the camera with your mouse in such a fast way that it will take some time before you can use it well. Once you do, you’ll find that this comes in handy as you can quickly look at your surroundings.
Game play wise the game has almost no flaws, except that a possible quick save option could’ve nice (with quick save I mean a temporary save that gets deleted if you load from it, and when quick saved the game shuts itself down). But as mentioned before, that makes the game even harder to beat, and offering challenge to a player is always a good thing, as this shouldn’t bother many players.
Conclusion
Overall, the game has almost no flaws, except that enemies are sometimes too similar, no quick save is available or that the game might be a little too short. Aside from that this game is definitely a game that most people should play, as tons of fun can be had and it can even be challenging in such a way that the game has its replay value.
TinyKeep - Review,
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[…] we reviewed TinyKeep here we were very impressed with it, and now the intense, randomly generated indie crawler that is […]