Tin Hearts is a 2023 game by Wired Productions, which is available on all modern consoles and is scheduled to be released on PSVR2 in November. At its core, Tin Hearts is a solid puzzler. Players can adapt the difficulty by forgoing the pause ability. The story is also engrossing; you can really feel the love between the Butterworths. Whilst the game is enjoyable, there are a few little issues that hold it back.
Read more: Tin Hearts: A Spawning Point game reviewWhat is Tin Hearts?
Tin Hearts at its core is a puzzle game where the objective is to guide all your tin soldiers to the exit door. However, whilst you are solving the puzzles it is also telling the story of the Butterworths, a Victorian family. It very much gives the feel of What Remains Of Edith Finch crossed with Lemmings.
How does Tin Hearts play?
Players take on the role of a memory / spectral manifestation of Albert J. Butterworth, a well regarded toymaker, who has created these tin soldier toys. Players enter ever-changing room layouts in the house and must guide all your tin soldiers around the room in order to reach the exit. Making your life easier are other inventions, such as the wooden blocks, which allow you to alter the path your tin soldiers take and the ability to pause, which also produces a virtual path that the Tin Soldiers will follow, which is extremely handy.
What Do We Like About Tin Hearts?
At its core, Tin Hearts is a solid puzzler. Players can adapt the difficulty by forgoing the pause ability. The story is also engrossing; you can really feel the love between the Butterworths. The letters and background scenery really help to flesh out the story in between the kind of memory cutscenes. Players can request hints from the start screen, which provide neat hints in picture form, which are neither vague, nor spoon feed you the solution, which is great. There are 50 puzzles in total, which range in difficulty and length and plenty of trophies to achieve in the study, so there’s plenty to keep puzzle enthusiasts busy for a while.
The Not So Good
Whilst the game is enjoyable, there are a few little issues that hold it back. I found that at times the blocks blend into the background, making the levels unnecessarily difficult. As my sight isn’t brilliant, a colour accessibility mode would have been a nice inclusion. I also found the camera movement was blurry, triggering some motion sickness issues at times and at others, the background blurred completely when manually controlling a toy soldier. The camera angles are also problematic. Whilst there is a zoom button, sometimes the camera felt too far away to accurately help. The camera issues make aiming the cannon tricky at times, as the camera angles were unhelpful or were obscured by scenery.
Overall Opinion
Tin Hearts is a fantastic little puzzler despite the camera issues. The story is engrossing and some of the puzzles really make you think.
Our rating: 7/10
You can buy Tin Hearts now on the following platforms: