Tiny Hands Adventure

When you think of throwback platformers, you probably picture 2D action games like Super Meat Boy or a 3D nostalgia trip like Yooka-Laylee. But let me ask you this: Where are all the games evoking the spirit of Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot series? That seems to be the inspiration behind a colorful new platformer called Tiny Hands Adventure. And while it misses a whole lot more than it hits, I can see the adorable characters and goofy story appealing to younger gamers.

Let me introduce you to Borti, a friendly Tyrannosaurus Rex who is on an adventure to grow longer arms in order to become a better soccer goalie. This quest takes him to a mysterious temple to ask a floating fairy for help. She's willing to oblige, but only if Borti takes on a series of trials to prove that he's worthy of these new skills. This gives us all the incentive we need to take on twenty different stages and defeat the five guardians standing in the way getting of longer arms.

The twenty stages in question are all a little different, bouncing wildly from one type of level to another. I have to admit, there's a nice variety here, including jungle levels where we run towards the camera, slippery ice levels, futuristic locations, overhead mazes and even side-scrolling 2D levels. These stages look and play a little different, but they all want you to track down a bunch of colorful shapes and find the ticket to open up the next boss fight.

This is a simple and good-natured platformer where there isn't a lot of conflict. Even when you get to one of those bosses, they seem to come off more as an instructor than an obstruction. Most of them are happy when you win and want to be friends after you've graduated, leading to nicer and friendlier platformer than I was expecting. There's a sense of gentleness permeating through Tiny Hands Adventure, which makes me think that this is aimed at a much younger audience.

The problem is that this is not a very good kid's game. A lot of this can be blamed on the crummy gameplay, which makes even simple things (like ducking and jumping) a real pain in the tail. Borti has a spinning attack with limited range and effectiveness for most of the game, and even when he do get longer arms to attack with, the T-Rex will still fall to his death because of the laggy jumping. These control problems are only amplified when you get warped into the annoying 2D stages, which unsuccessfully attempts to convert the 3D worlds into a side-scrolling obstacle course. Jumps are hard to judge, enemies become hidden, the foreground doesn't line up properly. The whole thing is a real nightmare.

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There's a general feeling that Tiny Hands Adventure is still a few months from being complete. And it's not just the unpolished stage designs and questionable enemy AI, but also the way some of the special moves work. For example, the fairy will eventually give us mechanical arms that can be used to swing to different parts of a level. The only problem is that the developers completely forgot to animate this action. You just kind of float over the water for no reason. They don't even show you the mechanical arms. This is just one of many examples of why I couldn't shake the idea that this platformer remains unfinished.

When it comes to reviews, I normally don't talk about the end boss, but I feel it's important here. This is, with very few exceptions, an incredibly easy game. The stages are a cake walk, the bosses don't put up much of a fight and you'll end up beating the whole thing in around two hours. But for whatever reason, the developers decided to make the final boss a punishingly difficult affair. It's not that any part of the battle is particularly tough, but there are a bunch of parts to complete without any checkpoints. It's easy to complete the first three or four stages and then die from a cheap hit, forcing you to start the battle all the way over from the beginning. This is a long and frustrating fight that feels completely out of place compared to the rest of the game. You don't want to leave people angry and annoyed when they beat the game, but that's exactly how I felt at the end of Tiny Hands Adventure.

If I'm being honest, I'm not sure there's much of a future for Borti the T-Rex and his dinosaur pals. Forget the inevitable ice age, Tiny Hands Adventure is a poorly executed platformer with a flimsy premise. There's nothing here that demonstrates personality or an original vision, and what we're left with is a middling throwback with crummy control and levels that were lifted straight out of better mascot games. This game is prehistoric in all the wrong ways.