I know, I know. Tiny Realms is a title that did not, by any stretch of the imagination, came out recently. It has however made its proof and have quite a large base of followers. I meant to do a review of it for quite some times and I finally managed to do it now.
Right off the bat, you need to debut your adventure by choosing your faction between the Humans, The Dwarves and the Tengu, a reptilian people living in swamp lands. After much consideration of the pros and cons of each races, I decided to shrink myself and join the dwarves of Icemore.
You literally have your units at your fingertips to command! When you deploy your troops, you will need to guide them to their target by tracing a path from them to their goal with your finger.
The tutorial seem to really only cover the basic action of attack of the game. But when it came to building or upgrading, or even collecting materials, you are left to discover it all on your own. Case in point: I didn’t know until I discovered it by accident that I could place the protective walls wherever I choose: I simply place them where they appeared by default, in the middle of my realm.
While this type of game to start with is not my cup of tea, I could appreciate that it was a good execution of the genre. But I got too easily frustrated that my dainty female fingers seemed as clumsy as thick sausages when it came to tapping on stuff in my realm: I always ended up tapping on something else than what I wanted to, or to move a building when I wanted to simply select it.
One thing I was glad for is that you do not have to micro-manage your soldiers too much. Even if they show you in the tutorial, as I mentioned earlier, that you can control them with your fingers, I found out you rarely have to do so. They are well-seasoned, bloodthirsty warriors and they seem to know what they are doing.
I was worried at first that the screen and the unit where ridiculously tiny, but quickly discovered you can pinch and zoom in to have (some sort) of better grasp on your situation..
Overall, make no mistake, it’s the kind of game that requires a lot of your active, daily, involvement. You can’t just pick it up once in a blue moon: enemies might have decimated your realm out of all your units and gold by then!
If you secretly dream of controlling an army of warriors and conquering foreign lands, this title will fit nicely in your pocket.
