Legacy Review: The Last Tinker: City of Colors
The Last Tinker: City of Colors
Genre: Action Adventure
Platform : PC (Windows 10 - Steam)
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Playtime: 13 hours
Date Completed: 16/5/2018
Reviewed: 2018
Grade: A
With a game that has ‘City of Colors’ in its title, what
immediately comes to mind is a bright and colourful world. You would also
imagine that this world sports a plethora of fun characters to interact with.
You would also expect nice and easy casual gameplay and a casual story to go
along with it, one that makes sure there is never a dull moment to be had. Well
guess what? You’ve just gone and imagined this game perfectly.
In The Last Tinker, you will take control of a boy named
Koru who has a weird floating thing always by his side. Within the first few
minutes of gameplay, you will quickly get accustomed to the game world, the
characters that inhabit it and a general feel for the direction the gameplay
will take. You will find that everything matches up quite nicely with whatever
you imagined just one paragraph ago.
Progressing further into the game, you slowly learn in
detail more about the mechanics of the game, which vary from solving puzzles to
one-button platforming and of course the ever popular brawling with enemies.
Naturally though, whenever fighting takes a large role in a game, you know
straight away that something bad is bound to happen. Indeed, the story turns
grim and as you start to discover the dark side of the world so cheery on the
outside, the game quickly picks up the pace.
For the most part, the gameplay is certainly fun, with
combat taking center stage. You are limited to basic moves at the start but as
time passes, you will gain new abilities and the number of strategies you have
access to steadily increase. Given the casual nature of the game however, you
can’t expect the combat to get as deep as in other games. It’s more or less
what you would get from a game that is similar in feel to popular games such as
Jak and Daxter or Yooka Laylee. Having said that, the combat system is still
fun and gets the job done.
Another main aspect of the gameplay is the movement itself. I
would call it platforming, but this game really isn’t much of a platformer
because you basically press one button and Koru will automatically jump where
you need him to jump. He will technically do plenty of platforming, but without
any of the frustration that comes with it. Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t like
platformers very much so I personally am happy with this arrangement. However,
those of you who expect a game like this to involve technical jumps may come to
dislike a portion of the gameplay as a result.
And on that note, I believe the difficulty of the game
should be addressed as well. Now, I know what you’re thinking. I have used the
words “casual” and “playful” to describe the game so far which means the game
is probably easy. And frankly, if you compare it to a regular platformer, it is
easy. However, rest assured. That will not be the case for a good chunk of the
game. There were in fact many points in the game where I found challenges,
either with the puzzles which I will discuss in a bit or the combat. I honestly
died many times from combat alone (but never to the point where it became
frustrating. Save points are plentiful). Then again, I did set the game’s
difficulty to hard (and thank the developers for having that option available)
so I can’t say I know what the regular difficulty will feel like. If you are
worried about it being easy, just do what I did.
Coming next to the puzzles in the game, I found about half
of them to be basic, and the other half to be fairly interesting and even
challenging to figure out. Naturally, the complexity of the puzzles gets
gradually higher as the game progresses. Given the frequent (but not annoying)
presence of these puzzles, it would have been good to get a larger
concentration of challenging ones. That too, especially given the fact that a
certain mechanic in the game made puzzles and even combat significantly more
interesting. I can even say that one mechanic about the puzzles in particular
(won’t spoil it. You’ll know it when you play it) really seemed beautifully
designed to me, especially how it was integrated together with the colors.
While I won’t go too into depth for fear of spoiling, you
will come to find 3 different main colors in the game, and each of them grant
you a unique power that both affects your combat and puzzle solving
capabilities. They are put to use throughout the course of the game, but I
would have liked to see more emphasis placed on them as this is one of the
areas where the game shines. As an example, you get one of the big abilities
rather late in the game and its literally only used once or twice in a puzzle
setting. It ended up being a bit of a wasted opportunity, in my opinion,
especially as these abilities really helped to keep the game fresh from start
to finish. And mind you, staying fresh throughout is not something many games
can easily boast.
Now onto the storyline, its both colourful and playful, just
like the characters and the game world, and you will enjoy going through it.
The game even makes that wonderful effort to perfectly balance out story
elements with gameplay so you will always have a good serving size of both in
every play session. The story overall also has that overarching positive
message behind it, making this a great game to play if you are in a dull mood.
I can even go on to say that the 3 colors I mentioned earlier play quite a huge
role in shaping the storyline of the game as well as its characters and the
game world. It makes the game feel unique and I like that.
You will find that the game’s combat system, adventuring,
puzzles and story gel together seamlessly to create a fun and enjoyable
experience from start to finish that I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss out on.
True, none of those things by themselves are all that incredible, but together
they make the game tick and feel great and that’s what really counts in the
end.
To sum it up, if you were wondering whether to play this
game or not, then my answer to you is yes. Play it. Its good casual fun and
games are meant to be played because they are fun. So yeah, sit back, relax and
enjoy what the game has to offer.
+ The gameplay overall was enjoyable and relatively well
balanced
+ The concept of the three colors gave the combat, puzzles
and game overall a refreshingly unique feel
+ The characters and game world were well designed
+ The story was fun to go through.
+ The difficulty felt just right.
+ Sound and visuals were generally pleasant
- While some of the concepts were good, they were not
explored in enough depth, especially the puzzles. Some of the puzzles were in
fact far too basic or mundane. I feel like more effort could have been placed
into setting challenging puzzles that made good use of the color system that
defines this game. Don’t get me wrong, the colors came into play, but not
enough.
- Lost potential with the abilities granted to you is also a
pertinent issue. It felt like the game was onto something, and while everything
was used, they could certainly have been expanded on more and more uses made
available.
- Some petty complaints: One in particular involves
something called the bleakness that destroys you on contact. I was not always
able to determine whether I was going to touch it or not and that got fairly
annoying at times. Thankfully, a save point was never too far away.
- I had some minor gripes about awkwardness with the
controls as well, especially during the puzzles.
- I must also admit that I was not happy I couldn’t change
the controls of the game.
- I did not like the rail systems. At all.
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