Games of the Year 2022: Tinykin

Tinykin is an interesting game that I almost chose not to write about for this list.  You'll see shortly that it ended up near the bottom of my list.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was doing something interesting that deserves some acknowledgement.  And that was my goal with this running this during the year.  I wanted to highlight my favorite games while also highlighting games that ultimately didn't click with me when I tried them but were doing something noteworthy.

Tinykin reimagines what a Pikman style game can be and do.  That's the reason I wanted to give it some acknowledgement.  Pikman doesn't have many games like it and all of the Nintendo Pikman games follow a very similar formula.  You collect Pikman within a level and have to accomplish some collecting objectives within a time limit.

Tinykin takes the core idea of Pikman, that idea of gathering a small army of different and useful creatures that follow you around and are at your command, and places it into a much more open structure.  It's not exactly open world but it's more like an open level design of something like Banjo Kazooie.  It's a really interesting take on what you can do with these core mechanics.

If any of that sounds interesting to you, this one is out on Game Pass to try without a lot of commitment.  In that respect, it's an easy recommendation.  Go sample it if you're interested!

That being said, for me, it's landing third from the bottom on my list:

1. Elden Ring
2. FFXIV Endwalker
3. Citizen Sleeper
4. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
5. Horizon Forbidden West
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
7. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
8. Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
9. Cult of the Lamb
10. Neon White
11. Halo Infinite
12. Vampire Survivors
13. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
14. Cyberpunk 2077
15. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
16. Triangle Strategy
17. Mario Strikers: Battle League
18. Multiversus Pre-Season
19. Stray
20. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
21. Nobody Saves the World
22. Unpacking
23. Tinykin
24. Total War: Warhammer 3
25. Tunic

I played a few hours of Tinykin and appreciated what it was doing, but didn't actually have a ton of fun with it.  I needed the platforming to be more compelling or the level design to be more interesting.  I would honestly love to see what they do with a sequel if they end up making one.