Tiny Lands

Review

Do you have a little bit of time to kill? If yes, why don’t you have a shot at this little beauty of a game called Tiny Lands? A puzzle game that will make you squeeze your eyes and find yourself getting closer to your screen than you have ever been before; it becomes extremely blurry and weird at the same time. For me, I wish that I had known Lee Major’s (the 6 Million Dollar Man) phone number so that I could ask him if he was willing to lend me one of his bionic eyes; that would have helped me considerably!  You’ll need extra sharp eyes to find the differences, in Tiny Lands!   

Tiny Lands is a casual/puzzle game developed by Hyper Three Studio and published by Maple Whispering Limited on the 22^nd of January 2021 on the Steam platform and is also available on the Nintendo Switch.

The game consists of 5 worlds with 10 levels each.  You’ll be able to play the first world straight away, while the 4 remaining worlds will need to be unlocked.  You’ll need to acquire a minimum of 50 golden stars for each of the remaining worlds.

Each level is extremely well-presented, in the form of 2 beautiful low-poly dioramas, which at first glance look identical. But they are not, and you’ll need to spot 5 differences between the 2 dioramas. For that, you’ll be able to zoom in and out and turn the dioramas from right to left and vice-versa by using the W,A,S,D keys.  When you find a difference, all you have to do is to point your cursor on the object and click by using your mouse button. Each time you find a difference, you’ll receive one golden star; find all differences, and you’ll complete the level.

There are a lot of aspects that I like in this game. The difference between the two 3D images is really subtle, such as a colour variation or an object that is displayed slightly differently between the two images and can be easily missed.  It may be a rock or a person that is positioned ever so slightly to the left, right, up, down, or might even be facing a slightly different direction and therefore be difficult to spot, even after turning the images around repeatedly. You don’t have hints either, which I personally like. Don’t get me wrong, it can become really frustrating at times. Sure, you can click on everything as fast as you can and find the last difference, but that’s not the point! You’re supposed to take your time and enjoy the search. Did that last little difference sometimes get the better of me? Yes it did, on more than one occasion, especially in the Japanese world.

The immersive sound is superb in this game. As you are searching for clues, you’ll hear a sound that reflects the image and can throw you a little off your search. It could be a bird, car, train, water or other sounds. On top of that, there’s the dynamic weather which gives you a fully immersive experience, to the point where I actually stood up from my chair wondering why our neighbour was taking his/her bins out two days before the rubbish collection day! I checked outside twice before realising that it was the sound in the game! Yes, it was a big Homer moment!  Even the soft music tune elevates the experience a little bit, in my opinion. It can also boost your frustrations while you are trying to find the last difference; it’s pure torture when that occurs.

As I mentioned above, the low-poly graphics are beautiful to look at.  The soundtrack and sound effects are fabulous, and the game runs very well. I didn’t encounter any crashes or issues while using the camera either. In a nutshell, it is really well done. It took me 5.5 hours to complete the game.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com