Pikmin-like indie platformer Tinykin arrives this August

The throne of Captain Olimar has long laid vacant. Whom amongst us has the courage to step up and make a game about a little guy followed by other, even littler guys, solving puzzles in a microscopic world? Indie developer Splashteam has answered the call with its Pikmin-like platformer, Tinykin launching August 30. From the game's Steam page:

"Milo arrives on Earth to find that he's way too small, everybody's gone and a day hasn't passed since 1991! Catch hundreds of mysterious tinykin and use their unique powers to create ladders, bridges, explosions and a lot more!"

That's certainly an exciting premise, and while Pikmin focuses on tiny life in a garden, Tinykin adds a lot more verticality with its de_rats-style indoor spaces. Players will be able to collect and use the titular Tinykin to solve puzzles and ascend to ever-greater heights in the game's colossal abandoned house, befriending settlements of insects along the way.

I'm always a sucker for this sort of Minish Cap/Honey I Shrunk the Kids thing in videogames. Okami had a particularly great sequence, and the forsaken 2001 Duke Nukem Forever build boasts a level inside a CD drive—a tragic road not taken. We'll be able to enjoy Tinykin's contribution to this venerable videogame subgenre when it releases this August, and until then you can add it to your Steam wishlist.

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.