In Tiny Hands Adventure, you are Borti, a T-Rex with the titular tiny hands. Your quest is to gather tools that will make your arms longer so that you can goal-keep for your friends’ soccer game. A novel premise, certainly, but how well does it hold up?

Hint: a game-breaking bug meant that neither of us could finish it. For details, read on.

Pretty as a Picture

The graphics are the best thing about Tiny Hands Adventure. Borti is a cute, unintimidating T-Rex who wears a baseball cap. What’s not to like? His jump animations are great: occasionally he will do a flip while his cap stays in the air. It’s pretty charming! The cartoon environments also look good, being nicely detailed with well-rendered textures. However, while the art itself is decent, other details are lacking. The text and speech bubbles, for example, look flat and out of place as they have not received the same attention to detail as the environments. There are also some minor visual glitches and frame rate drops.

Furthermore, while not a criticism of the graphics as much as the decision-making behind them, the levels are very random, seemingly just for the sake of it. For example, progression between levels makes no sense: you might complete a beach level, a psychedelic space level, a jungle level, and a city level in rapid succession. This complete lack of consistency between levels was distinctly strange and detracted from the gameplay experience. Likewise, the audio is a bit of a mixed bag. Not all tracks are bad, but many of the themes become tired and repetitive before long. Although some may be drawn to the soundtrack for its upbeat feel, there is nothing exceptional to make it stand out.

Simple Controls and Straightforward Levels

Moving on to gameplay, the controls in Tiny Hands Adventure are simple to learn. You can jump, attack, and slide, and there is also an action button to use your various tools. Likewise, the gameplay is pretty straightforward. It consists mainly of linear platforming and, occasionally, top-down 3D maze navigation. It is also a collect-a-thon: you must find the red slate in each course in order to unlock the boss level. The design of these boss fights is Mario-esque, in that you must activate certain triggers to leave the enemy vulnerable to attack. As you might expect, after each turn it gets more challenging for you to expose that vulnerability. Although this was familiar, the boss fights did get pretty challenging at times. This was a welcome distraction from the other levels’ repetitive, linear structure.

Onward, But Certainly Not Upward

Unfortunately, there are a number of flaws in Tiny Hands Adventure‘s gameplay and level design. For example, although the game is rendered in 3D, the fixed camera makes gameplay awkward and choppy. There’s definitely room for some polish here to make it more fluid. Likewise, a bland, linear progression system and heavily recycled enemies detract from the game’s enjoyment. All you ever do is enter the level, find the red slate, and get to the end. You will face the same wasps, crab-like abominations, and floating cat paw enemies time and time again . . . Rinse and repeat until you’ve collected enough red slates to get to the boss. And yet, surprisingly, the enemies will be far from your biggest obstacle in the game.

Indeed, it’s Tiny Hands Adventure‘s technical issues that are the game’s real letdown. For starters, the controls are awkward and often not responsive, and the game frequently does not register your input. Although most of the time this is just an inconvenience, in levels that require precision and quick reactions it often leads to your death. Secondly, navigating the levels is a chore, as you often get stuck on invisible objects and boundaries. The only way to solve this is to move around and press some buttons until something eventually works.

Speaking of work, using the combat mechanics is a serious struggle. Besides being awkward, it’s also inconsistent: often the act of jumping on an enemy is enough to kill young Borti, too. Finally, we should make it clear that neither of us could actually finish Tiny Hands Adventure due to a game-breaking bug (different to the one shown below). However, the developers are working on a patch to address this.

Details, Details. Who Needs Them?

Unfortunately, the criticism doesn’t end there, as cut corners stand out at every turn. Take, for example, the death animation: when you die, you just lie down wherever you are – even if that is in midair. Likewise, nothing about the controls felt precise or polished. And, finally, it would be remiss of us to ignore the hub design. From the hub itself, you cannot actually tell which of the red slates you have collected. If you miss one in a level without realising it, tough luck: you’ll have to revisit each of those levels to find it before progressing to the boss fight. Unfortunately, little details like this make the game feel as though most of the design decisions have not taken player-friendliness into account.

A Premise with Promise

As you play through Tiny Hands Adventure, you can tell that it desperately wants to be original. In fact, we were both originally drawn to the game for its unique premise and potential for humour – who doesn’t find tiny T-Rex arms just hilarious? But, much like Borti’s little arms, the game fell short when it came to its originality, too. If anything, the amusing premise is the only original thing about it, and the lack of narrative development and characterisation leaves its execution feeling shallow. Likewise, as you might have already gathered, the gameplay also isn’t groundbreaking. It felt as though elements of tried-and-true platformers like Crash, Banjo, and Mario had been picked up and just dropped in this game. This is unfortunate, as we both thought the title had a lot of potential.

Lacking in More Ways than One

Needless to say, Tiny Hands Adventure was not great. With its dated gameplay and lack of originality, it felt like a modernized, budget version of a cross between Crash Bandicoot and Croc. For a game with art that looks as polished as it does (at least, before you look too closely), its multiple flaws in gameplay, control, and level design significantly detract from the experience. It looks like the developers poured most of their attention into the art itself, leaving the game’s other fundamental elements seriously lacking. Overall, Tiny Hands Adventure felt like a bit of a missed opportunity. It’s hard to recommend in its current state, but we may update this rating once the patch has been released.

Thanks for reading this joint review by Renate and Mikey! If you liked it, please give us a follow on Twitter or YouTube. Now, if you’re looking for a decent platformer, we’d recommend checking out Semblance or Iconoclasts. And, finally, if you’d like to help us bring you our quality content, please consider donating to our Patreon or shouting us a coffee. We appreciate your support!