There are few things more frustrating in a puzzle game than figuring out a solution to an obstacle, only to find yourself fighting with cumbersome controls and unpredictable physics when you’re ready to move forward. This happened to me far too often during my time with Tiny Brains, an indie puzzler for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PC. Its few really neat ideas are suffocated beneath finicky mechanics, uninspired and recycled challenges, a drab visual style, and long stretches of frustration. Even played in multiplayer as it’s obviously intended, Tiny Brains isn’t good – and it's even worse when you're playing alone.

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Not-So Super Powers

The basic premise of Tiny Brains has a lot of potential: a group of four endearingly ugly critters who’ve been experimented on to the point of developing superpowers escapes their mad scientist captor. One can create blocks, a pair can Force push or pull objects, and the other one can swap places with anything in the environment. Each of the powers are great on paper, but stumble in execution.

Most challenges revolve around going from point A to point B, with the occasional switch that needs to be pressed. Looking at a puzzle, I’d often quickly realize that I could solve it by, for example, creating a block with one character, pushing it across a chasm with another, and swapping places with it at the exact right moment with the third. Easy, right? The problem here is that the crappy tools and graphical hiccups seemed to actively work against me as I tried to execute that solution. Trying to highlight a specific object that you need to swap with on the other side of a room is tough thanks to the incredibly fussy aiming system. Using your push and pull abilities to roll a ball across a room filled with chasms becomes a chore when you can't quite get a handle on the ball's inertia. And then there's the power to create a block, which is underutilized in the level design to the point where the poor guy who got stuck playing as that character feels useless for long stretches of the multiplayer campaign.

Tiny Brains occasionally tosses an arena battle into the mix, but these quickly grow tiresome once you realize the quickest way to dispatch enemies and repeat it constantly for easy success. And aside from the main campaign, there are only a handful of challenge rooms where your team has to solve tough puzzles quickly, try to keep an object safe in a dangerous room, or play soccer against each other. These are completely forgettable diversions that serve little purpose beyond padding out the menu.

Single vs. Multiplayer

Tiny Brains is even more infuriating when you attempt to solve its incredibly linear two-and-a-half-hour campaign by yourself. You have to hot-swap between the four creatures, and seeing as how most puzzles require at least three different abilities to solve, you’ll be doing a hell of a lot of swapping. Messing up while juggle characters only enhances that lingering frustration of trying to complete a puzzle after you've already solved it in your head.

The best moments I had with Tiny Brains involved four people yelling at one another, gesturing toward areas of the television, and ultimately cheering in joy once we managed to physically solve a puzzle that we’d mentally conquered a few minutes back. These specific instances brought back fond memories of local multiplayer during the Nintendo 64-era – a time in gaming that I'd love to see more hearkened back to more often. Just... in a better game.

But while I have the luxury of working in an office full of PS4 controllers, I imagine many early adopters will have a tough time wrangling up the four controllers that are needed to experience Tiny Brains at its best. Obviously, it's a bit easier to find four controllers for the PC ir PS3 version. And though it does have an online mode, not being in the same room removes that chaotic fun, leaving you with just more frustration.