evieNerdy but Flirty was lucky enough to check out the preview build of The Last Tinker: City of Colors from Mimimi Productions. The game was formerly known as Tink and won Best Project 2012 at the Selected Project Contest at Game Connection Europe 2011. It’s partially funded by FFF Bayern. Check out the trailer:

Plot

In a world where creativity has given way to conflict, a young street kid living in the slums of Colortown seeks to restore the spark of imagination to his hometown. As Koru, you must harness the power of color to defeat the Bleakness and make Colortown vibrant once again.

The preview build consisted of the first hour of the game. During that time, my main goal was to sign up for a footrace, which seems to be a pretty common event that happens in Colortown. Unfortunately, a registration fee has been introduced, so you have to figure out a way to make money. You can find gems by smashing random barrels (of course), but that’s definitely nowhere near enough, so you go to fighting class for half the money and help out a farmer for the other half. Bullies plague the streets because tensions are high in Colortown, and they were my enemies during my playtime. As the preview ended, the larger plot was hinted at, and I was granted color-based powers with the promise of more to come.

Something to note is that there are very few women characters, and those that are there are in the background. Some of the spirits could be ladies, but it’s hard to tell without voices or other gender indicators. However, this is only the first hour of the game, so maybe some will show up later.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are wonderfully bright and colorful, as the name of the game would suggest. The only drawback to this is that sometimes it was difficult for me to figure out where to go, because by making everything eye-catching, I wanted to look at everything. Character design is unique, with nothing being quite realistic. My favorite character from the preview build was the mushroom in the picture below – he’s not too bright, but he can shrink himself, which is useful. That level of creativity can be seen throughout. There are no voices in The Last Tinker, but the music was upbeat and excellent. There wasn’t much repetition in the first hour, and different areas had different soundtracks.

Gameplay

The game has full controller support, which is how I played; I find platformers too difficult with keyboard controls. Some of the controls are finicky though, such as the forward attack jump and the one that lets you jump from ledge to ledge without falling; I ended up falling into the water quite a bit. Luckily, there are no consequences when you fall – you just start again right where you left off. If you run out of all your lives, you start back at the last save flower (which gets activated when you walk by it). You never have to repeat any actions or backtrack too far because of a death; the flowers are plentiful.

The puzzles are simple enough so you’re not ripping your hair out, but you will have to think a little bit. My favorite one involved getting the mushroom guy up there to navigate to other mushrooms so they could grow. Traveling between areas is fun, because sometimes you get to skate on a rail/roller coaster type thing at breakneck speeds. You don’t control this, but it’s cool to watch Koru zip around. Press copy suggests that later on in the game, you’ll be able to manipulate colors to do different things in the game: red will let you aggravate enemies, green will frighten them, and blue will make them grieve. I’m quite interested to see those in action! The game also encourages exploration with hidden collectibles and just by making the environments colorful and fun to explore. Your trusty floating pig(?) sidekick is helpful without being annoying, and he will guide you if you’re lost.

Final Verdict

The Last Tinker: City of Colors is an eye-popping action-platformer that I would like to play more of! I am holding off on a score for now because of the very short length of the preview build, but at this time I do recommend that you keep an eye on what looks to be a great game.

Check out the official site and follow the team on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The game will be available in summer 2014 on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

[Disclaimer: A review code was provided for me to review this game.]