A cute 2D side-scroller, Tiny Thor blends a nostalgic strategy to recreation building with influences taken from Norse mythology. You play because the titular younger Thor, aged eight. Your father Odin items you the long-lasting hammer Mjölnir in your birthday and you might be inspired to go play within the woods with it earlier than your social gathering.
Within the woods, you encounter a mysterious stranger who tells you that an evil bee queen is plotting to assault your village. The primary part of the sport sees you traverse her lair to hunt her down and defeat her as the primary of quite a lot of bosses. As soon as she is defeated, you study that the stranger was the trickster Loki and that your actions have shattered the bridge resulting in Asgard. The remainder of the sport sees you journey by means of varied areas of the map on a MacGuffin hunt for the 4 runes that can restore the Bifröst.
The primary few ranges are pretty intuitive, with controls which might be simple to study. The primary time a brand new motion is on the market, directions noting the button or combo seem within the nook of the display screen. When you’ve carried out a transfer as soon as, the sport doesn’t maintain your hand each time. However it’s simple sufficient to guess when a wall could be collapsible or a creature could be an enemy it’s essential to assault.
The extent design evokes an actual sense of nostalgia, with daring, vivid colours in a 16-bit model. It’s a must to be careful for enemies, leap over obstacles or destroy them by throwing Mjölnir, and gather gems alongside the way in which. Blue gems are pretty widespread and may be exchanged for power-ups. Pink gems are uncommon, usually hidden in secret areas, and unlock bonus ranges that problem your abilities.
As you get nearer to the boss of every part, there are pretty properly laid clues about which abilities can be required to win. The bosses themselves have attention-grabbing designs and distinct combating kinds, which match the formulaic nature of old fashioned bosses. Every time you defeat a boss, you retrieve one of many lacking runes and unlock a brand new talent.
These abilities aren’t terribly unique. With Norse mythology as the sport’s premise, there’s a variety of scope right here for cool, uncommon mechanics. As an alternative, you study to double leap and climb partitions and different pretty widespread side-scrolling mechanics. These all simply might’ve been launched on the way in which to the primary boss, which might have left room to determine extra fantastical and luxurious talents which might be extra befitting the God of Thunder coming of age.
The Mjölnir mechanic is maybe probably the most distinctive component of the sport, however continues to be a reasonably normal projectile weapon. You management the angle at which you throw it, however in any other case the one management you might have over it’s to summon it again. Actually Odin’s description of Mjolnir as “the hammer that by no means misses its goal” will solely apply to probably the most expert gamers. It’s undoubtedly an attention-grabbing alternative that it bounces off the nook of the display screen, which makes for some cool methods of fixing specific issues.
Even then, it may be irritating because of the awkward controls. There are many obstacles that require a stage of precision that the controls aren’t notably suited to. It doesn’t assist that mechanics that make different platformers a bit extra fluid – reminiscent of having the ability to seize onto ledges – aren’t current in Tiny Thor. The seize perform for swinging vines that does exist continues to be clunky. You’ll be able to’t management when the seize occurs and there’s solely a small window the place Thor received’t sail straight previous regardless of seemingly being shut sufficient to seize. There are additionally some minor glitches that trigger Thor to all of a sudden seem previous an impediment and find yourself trapped on the sting of the display screen.
These aren’t game-breaking points, however they’re annoying. General, the sport is first rate. The design is gorgeous and it embraces nostalgia actually successfully. With the appropriate mindset, even the awkward controls can really feel like a tribute to early video games. Nonetheless, it does really feel like Tiny Thor suffers from missed potential with regards to the motion that would have made it really feel extra such as you’re really on the core of the Norse pantheon.
