Tin Hearts - Switch Review

Fun fact: Tin Hearts is developed by none other than the team behind the popular Fable games. The game sees a platoon of tiny tin soldiers marching through a magical toy shop which will reveal an emotionally driven story spanning generations carefully woven into the actual gameplay. Each of the 40+ stages will see you overcoming a plethora of obstacles, learning new abilities, and overcoming many hardships by using your magical abilities to reach your destination, all while listening to a memorable soundtrack and experiencing the magic within.

The Good

Tin Hearts feels quite familiar to me and harkins back to a very well known game called Lemmings which I owned back on the amiga which saw you watching small creatures marching on a straight path till they reached an exit. However, there was a little more to it than just that. You would need to direct these creatures over many different obstacles and avoid certain death by using ladders and many other tools to reach the goal safely. Tin Hearts feels like a love letter to Lemmings in many ways by bringing the old formula into the modern age with a beautiful art style, memorable music score and more engaging puzzle elements.

You don't have direct control over your tin soldiers but objects around each  stage help you manipulate their path, allowing you to guide them to their destination without any mishaps. Each puzzle will work your logical thinking as you plan out what needs to go where, and how certain abilities and objects can be used to assist you. Along the way, there are many different tools at your disposal that you’ll find in tin outposts that are located in some stages. To unlock them, simply walk a tin soldier into one of the outposts to acquire a useful tool, which range from blocks that you can possess, a clock that allows you to stop time giving you time to plan out a safe route, speeding up time, and rewinding time if mistakes happen.

The story is told while playing the game and is quite an emotional affair; these story segments are played out in front of you while you’re playing the game and are all fully voiced. You may also discover letters that will be read out to you, expanding the narrative which is all accompanied by a very soulful soundtrack.

The game does have some replayability with its achievements. There are a total of 30 medals to collect throughout your campaign. You can also return to previous levels to rescue all the tin soldiers in case you lost any, but that’s if you want 100% the game.

TL;DR

• Love letter to Lemmings fans
• Plenty of useful abilities, tools
• Touching story
• Soulful soundtrack
• Achievements to earn

The Bad

There are some unfortunate performance stutters when moving around certain large environments, and especially when there is a lot happening on screen at once. In addition, when you look down at your body, the walking animation looks really stiff, making it look as though you're walking above the ground. It looks a little funny.

Also, I found moving and possessing objects a little clunky at times because it's difficult to judge the distances when trying to place objects. This can sometimes result in a lot of finicky movement back and forth until the pieces fit. It's nothing game breaking, but it can be frustrating at times.

TL;DR

• Some performance hiccups
• Odd walking animation
• Finicky controls and object placement

Final Score: 7/10

Tin Hearts is a puzzle-filled adventure with a touching story and a relaxing soundtrack. The game does stumble along the way but if you can get around the hurdles, there are still a lot of puzzling stages to get through as you march onwards to your destination.

Thank you for checking out our Tin Hearts Switch review, thank you to Wired Productions (via Renaissance PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
• Bel Cubitt
• Jack Caven
• NintenVania Podcast
• RedHero