TinyKeep Reviews

I'm sorry I just couldn't get into it, the controls feels clumsy and not in a good way. They feel unresponsive, both the movement of the character and the sword swings. The gamplay looks way better on video and doesn't actually reflect the feeling of playing it. I think it could be more polished, at times it feels confusing and camera perspective is akward (and makes you dizzy). Seems like a great concept that just didn't reach its full potential.

Nice little dungeon crawler with a difference. Not just hack and slash, but strategise to escape or die. One word of advice, run! Levels change styles and a story narrative keeps it interesting. Easy simple controls, rich dungeon like environments, bosses, varying mobs/traps. I'm going to keep playing as I want to see what's on the next level. Love the fact it runs on linux, so I made a video [url=http://youtu.be/tOKCA8LQWLU]http://youtu.be/tOKCA8LQWLU[/url]

A polished game, full of fun little surprises and mysteries. ✔ Physics everywhere! ✔ Procedurally generated levels ✔ Very nice soundtracks ✔ Variety of environments and ennemies ✔ Nice graphics, with good lighting effects ✔ Interesting AI (archers run away, factions attack each others... ✔ Linux support! ✘ No co-op multiplayer (maybe in TinyKeep 2?) ✘ Ennemies are really too dumb sometimes ✘ Minimap could be improved

It's fun, but the title says it all. This game is all about the single keep and, well, it's tiny. [b]TinyKeep[/b] is a casual hack-and-slash [b]Diablo[/b]-like game, which is... hardcore like hell. Sounds crazy, but that's how it is here. The whole game includes only [b]20[/b] tiny floors, you can't properly level up (instead, you sacrifice gold by using the shrines to get the permanent bonuses), you can't change the equipment, there are only the few types of monsters, almost no puzzles, no village, no [b]NPC[/b]s, etc, etc, etc. It's not even [b]FATE[/b]. It feels casual and poor beyond the imagination. It feels like a free game. There's actually a free game called [b]Curse of Mermos[/b] in [b]Steam[/b], which feels pretty close to this. It's even smaller, but it feels almost exactly the same. Actually, I'd say that gameplay-wise [b]Curse of Mermos[/b] is more advanced than [b]TinyKeep[/b]. But all that isn't necessary a bad thing. I mean, casual games can be fun too when you're in the right mood, right? But not this one. And the reason is – [b]TinyKeep[/b] is actually a hardcore game. Levels are laughably small, you can barely do anything, but if you die, that's it. The game doesn't just include permadeath. Permadeath here is always enabled. And terrible controls (don't even think about playing this game with the gamepad), awful physics and other bad things don't really help. [b]TinyKeep[/b] is all about rage quits. Deal with it. Which is, of course, the lamest way to make the game feel bigger. You can actually finish the game in less than an hour, but you need to be extremely lucky to do so. [b]TinyKeep[/b] is a [b]KickStarter[/b] at its worse. Wannabe developer took the money, was unable to produce any proper content and made the game laughably hard to hide that. That's the story of this game. Anyway, I can't recommend [b]TinyKeep[/b]. For obvious reasons. It's a torture. Almost no content with always enabled permadeath is the worst thing you can ever imagine. [b]TinyKeep[/b] is small, [b]TinyKeep[/b] is poor, but it isn't fun. Totally isn't. Save your money and buy something else. There's enough good hack-and-slash games in [b]Steam[/b] to ignore this tiny nonsense. You can also play [b]Path of Exile[/b]. It's free, it's pretty well-made, and you can play it with your friends. One way, or another, there's simply no need to pay for [b]TinyKeep[/b].

TinyKeep is definitely a game with a lot of promise and it has some really cool features, but ultimately it falls short of being anything more than just a distraction for a couple of hours. Let's start with what turned out good. The gameplay is fast and frantic, yet simple, giving it a very adrenaline filled arcade type feel. The art style is both audibly and visually charming even if the characters faces are a bit dead and lifeless. Every, chair, table, crate, cup, and bone in the game has full physics to it, which makes the environment feel messy and alive. So where does TinyKeep fall flat? Lets start with the big pink elephant in the room, Permadeath. When done right it can make a game feel challenging and suspenseful. When done wrong it can make it frustrating and repetitive. Tinykeep falls into the latter category. The gameplay is simple hack n' slash with no room for differing play-styles or player choice. The dungeon layouts are random but the content of each floor has little to no variation. These issues wouldn't matter for most games except your expected to play through the same levels over and over and over again every time you die. Other games featuring permadeath offer enough variation to keep each playthrough different. The player will have a chance to try a different strategy or approach, and they may discover new enemies, items, traps, and environments that they didn't see last time. TinyKeep offers very little in this regard. Short of that, my other complaints are merely nitpicks. Sometimes the camera angle and the clutter on the dungeon floor can make movement cumbersome and unnecessarily difficult. The map is hard to read, which is a real pain considering the layout is random. Traps are sometimes hard to avoid, yet they do little damage, so oftentimes you will find yourself just running through them without care if they hit you or not. I could go on, but I'm sure the problems will be smoothed out with later patches.

[h1] TinyKeep [/h1] [i] A bite sized snack of Roguelike frustration... Or is it? [/i] Fine! i was thinking about doing a review from another game, but then i saw this and my ADD for roguelikes kicked in.. So what's TinyKeep? It says it is a roguelike and it is, to an extent. I'm now debating the way to aproach explaining the amount of valid critique i have for the game, for both i find it doing things right and at the same time having some features in it that also spoil some of those said good parts.. Let's list all the things that i found valid critigue for: The game has a physics-engine, which to me feels a bit out of place in a roguelike. Although i can somewhat see the reason for it being there, giving more ways of trying to strategize your way through it. But i also found it.. Very annoying. Reason being, that gold usually gets buried under corpses or some of the fallen rubble and trying to get them from under the piles of death and crockery is really frustrating. The Altars and the buffs they give is also something that i found.. Well, broken would be the best term. If you have the gold and just spam the cheapest altar, you can easily get enough buffs to become totally overpowered, which i did mind you. (About 2 dozen[12] buffs.) And with all of those, the game immediately turned from roguelike to Hack&Slash. This might be just a bug or something that the devs will correct at some point, but it really makes the game, (keep in mind, ROGUELIKE.) just way too damned easy. And while i'm on the subject of mechanics, i must voice my disappointment towards the games option-screen. It is pretty non-existant, which cold be argued against with the games simplistic visual-design. However if the game does not have all the options visible on the main menu, (Most of the "resolution" and audio-options are only visible when the game has been started.) Will turn people of it. With the obvious quote of "mobile-port", which i kind of felt like using, but because i'm a nice guy i wont. It would be nice to set individual levels of detail, the game seems to have just presets and resolution options. Which is very bareboned.. Now, for a roguelike. Some people, like me. would welcome the option of saving the game, it seems to be totally absent from the game. It is annoying and kind of selfish from a game to, ask for complete interest for its duration. Even if the game is about 2h in length... Hang on, 2 hours.. Uhm.. With that i could also make a note of the price, 13€*. (Currently -34%, about 8,60€)*. It might seem a bit too much for most people, even if it's a roguelike with obvious re-playability value. It is still asking 13€* for, what i can see, only 2-3h of content. And with all that. The game is very easy, if you use the "ÜberBuff" tactic. It is just way too simple, which is both its charm and curse at the same time.. Geez, this is hard.. I guess, there is an enjoyable roguelike game here to enjoy. However, the problems it has, need some massive correction work. Broken buff-system and the somewhat obnoxious physics with the corpses and the few bugs that i also managed to find during my short playtime. During which i got to the end boss-fight, which killed me instantly. Because my laptop hyperventilated, from all the crazy amount of stuff on screen just before that.. Anyway.. TinyKeep is a somewhat simplistic, but enjoyable roguelike. It has some features and issues that need repairing, badly. But in its current state, i could recommend it. But not for 13€*, only when its on sale and the issues with it have been fixed. Small edit: [spoiler] It appears there is a hidden level where you can purchase a resurrection power, giving you the ability to respawn infinately.. I have nothing to say against that, besides that it completely breaks the idea of a roguelike.. [/spoiler] Another small edit: The games price has been lowered form 13€ to 10€.

This is the first time I've ever wanted a "Maybe" button. Tiny keep works and plays great the whole way around, without a doubt. The art style is unique, the environments and enemies very cool and well-animated. I found no major glitches or hang-ups to worry about, and enjoyed the bit of time I put in to this game. That said, I couldn't recommend Tiny Keep. What game mechanics exist are very polished, but also very limited. There is almost nothing to keep you engaged in the environment, and that includes the weak-tea story that exists. Combat becomes very boring. With most of your runs being pretty short, you'll discover that there is a simple lack of diversity in the content. Once you know the strategy for each floor, you're just grinding away to get it done. Tiny Keep is a wonderful, well-polished game that could have been much, much more. Another good one to put on your Wishlist in case a nice discount comes along, but honestly an incomplete game at most prices.

Controls feel sluggish and unresponsive. You press the button to attack, and then your attack happens half a second later. Movement is also slow and awkward. Seems to be a design decision, so you can get bonuses that e.g. increase backwards movement speed, but I just really dislike the way the game feels. The camera is also set up awkwardly. It's kind of a weird hybrid of over the shoulder and top-down.

Tiny keep is a treasure to behold and a somewhat interesting game to play. However, This game is lacking a variety of things to a rogue-like procedural death/dungeon crawler. Here is a small list: An inventory, Some sort of skill tree and leveling up system, new clothing/armor, and a variety of weapons. it does not provide neither a small nor large variety of weapons, only three. Here is a list of a few obnoxious things that you're going to encounter, if you make the horrid mistake in purchasing this. Number one: the enemies bunch up and beat you to a pulp, even if you run they will FIND YOU; The dungeons have the same pattern, you beat two levels and then you move onto the horde stage where you must find the gem keys, unlock all the doors and unleash the horde, then you escape. They have you repeat the same mundane task over and over again. The voice acting is great while the fighting style is very repetitive and uninteresting. Sadly this is one of the worst rogue like game I have played. Fifteen bucks for a game like this is not worth it, I'd save my money for something of more value. Sadly it is a poorly executed game.

Overhead dungeon crawler roguelike with some semblance of a story where you are trying to escape with your cellmate of 6 years and you can choose to help them or... not. The combat feels a bit clunky at first but once you start upgrading and the game ups the difficulty on you throwing out mobs plus bosses it can get pretty hectic and a lot of fun as you learn to use the environmental hazards and traps to your favour in the heat of battle. If you like hack and slash and action roguelikes... get this. It's good and not at all tiny considering the price. EDIT: Game definitely has some cool boss fights and powerups. Final boss has insta death attacks so no matter how strong you get he will kill you if you don't learn his patterns.