Tiny and Big

           I am  a sucker for game physics, and physics are what has  made this generation and hopefully the next generation so exciting. A lot of people focus on the graphical power of a game, which is arguably one of the least important aspects of a game. As long as you can see what is happening and the developer has a good sense of style, things don’t need to be photorealistic. Sonic and Knuckles is still more beautiful than most of the brown military shooters that have come out recently. On the other handSonic and Knuckles. You can’t mess around with weight distribution and other physics based puzzles like you can in Half Life 2 either. That is the kind of evolution that impresses me. This is why Tiny and Big in Grandpa’s Leftovers (or Tiny and Big as it will be known hereafter) is so up my alley. The gameplay is all pulling, pushing, and cutting the sometimes massive setting elements in the game. It can be very impressive. Unfortunately, it is marred by a lack of polish that can make the game excruciating.

, you can’t blow up buildings in

            Developed by German development team Black Pants Game Studio, Tiny and Big has a promisingly oddball story. A nerd named Tiny is on a quest to retrieve a pair of magic underpants from a bully named Big. The pants, as he calls them, were given to him by his grandfather. In order to get the underpants back, Tiny must scale a vast and ancient pyramid while avoiding the doom which lurks around every corner. The game is funny in that quirky way so popular in independent media. The hand-drawn look of the game adds to this goofy strangeness. While often charming, the indie sensibility can also get in the game’s way sometimes. Tiny and Big seems to be a sequel, although I didn’t know this until I had already finished the game. I know nothing about the game that came before it, or if it was anything more than a beta version of the game I played. Either way I hope it explained or showed more than Grandpa’s Leftovers, because this game is confusing. While the basic storyline and motivations all make perfect sense, the particulars of the world don’t. I don’t actually know what Tiny and Big’s relationship actually is. At the end of the game they seem like they might be brothers, but you never get that through the rest of the game. Also the dialogue can be maddeningly obtuse.  The characters seem to always be saying things strangely or in a way that doesn’t quite make sense. This may be because of the translation, because I have to assume it was originally written in German. The lack of voice acting didn’t help. I don’t like reading my games unless it is subtitled or a JRPG.

            The gameplay, unfortunately, is haunted by similar problems. On one level, I really loved it. Tiny and Big is one of the purest platformers to come out in recent memory. Helping Tiny jump, cut, pull, and push his way up the temple can be very fun and rewarding. The laser is especially well done. There is something about cutting rocks into platforms or slicing off the entire side of the temple to reveal a secret area that is amazingly good fun. I would really like to see this style come back in another game. Then, just as you’re having fun, the lack of polish starts to show. For instance, it’s often difficult to tell exactly where a platform ends. There were multiple times where I accidentally fell off a ledge because I got a little too close to the edge, or I wasn’t paying attention and strolled right off a cliff only to find myself standing on thin air like Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade. The giant rocks you cut can smash you, which makes this aspect of the platforming fun and dangerous. However if said rock even thinks about rocking backwards it’ll squish you. The level design can be gorgeous with huge, sweeping vistas of desert or the impressive scale of the massive temple Tiny’s climbing. Then again, the whole place seems to be littered with crevasses you can fall through at any moment. There is little more frustrating in the world of games than falling for seemingly no reason. I almost quit the game a few times over it.

            The biggest failing in Tiny and Big is the lack of connection between the story and the gameplay. The story doesn’t really seem to enhance the actions taken by the player. I rarely felt connected to what Tiny was doing because I was kept at a distance by the strangeness of the dialogue as well as the lack of exposition. I didn’t understand what I was doing or why I was doing it most of the time. I didn’t even know WHAT I was supposed to be doing in a lot of cases. The game is not always clear about where you need to go. The most important aspect of any story is motivation. Go to any creative writing workshop and I can almost guarantee that they will talk endlessly about why the characters did whatever they did. We know that Tiny needs to get the underwear back from Big because it came from his grandfather and he cherished it, but that emotion never really comes through. We don’t know anything about his grandfather at all other than that he was an archaeologist that specialized in underwear for some reason. About halfway through the game I started to get really bored because I neither knew nor particularly cared what why anything was happening. I was just cutting down platforms, jumping on them, and all the time moving closer towards…something. It picked up a little near the end, but that middle sagged amazingly low for such a short game.

            So Tiny and Big is destined for the worst of all fates: mediocrity. There are really cool things going on in this game. The music is great, although obviously not so great that I remembered to mention it in the main body of my review. I like the gameplay most of the time, and the story has its moments. It all ultimately feels disconnected. The game simply doesn’t try hard enough to make you care about what is going on, and is somewhat shoddily assembled. I look forward to a better product next time, because this series has potential. I just hope that Black Pants Game Studio can get their act together. Also, maybe they could stop being obsessed with underwear. That would be nice.