Rogue archetypes are common in video games, but due to their nature the chance to play a pure value removal specialist that relies on his stealth and trickery is rare. The latest release to allow you to do this is Tiny Thief by Rovio. Rather than take the route that Mark of the Ninja took last year and provide slow, tight game play across open levels, Tiny Thief instead opts to convert the action into what can be best described as a casual point and click adventure game. The end result is tight, and charming, but ultimately too short, and mired by troubling pricing schemes that might make it a better purchase on mobile platforms.
Tiny Thief puts you in the shoes of the titular thief as you rob your way through thirty increasingly complex and difficult levels. The first thing that will be noteworthy is the gorgeous story book aesthetics, giving a great and unique look. The second thing that one will notice is that this was clearly a mobile game port, with the tutorials showing where one must tap the screen. The menus will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has played an Angry Birds game. There is one game mode: story mode, where you select one of six chapters, and five levels within that chapter. Initially you must complete these levels and chapters in order. There is a story that actually does a great job of escalating not only the complexity of the levels, but of giving the player a good sense of progression on their abilities and on the stakes of each chapter. Tiny Thief starts you off small, scrounging up food to survive and to feed other members of your fairy tale village. Pretty soon, though, you will be taking on the corrupt authority of the kingdom, and going even further, having a career comparable to fantasy’s most famous rogues through the six chapters.
Fortunately, the game play is fun. A mixture of stealth and point and click puzzle solving, you will avoid guards and other hostiles while looking for triggers and items to sneak, trick, and clear the way to your objective. The solutions to most puzzles is fairly logical and usually easy to guess. You will not be stuck wondering what obscure logic the madman who made the game utilized to torment you, as is so often the case with adventure games. If you do end up getting stuck, the game has a handy hint book, which tells you how to beat the level. The book is restricted so that you can consult it once every four hours, so as to avoid abuse by the player.
The main issue with Tiny Thief is that once you have beaten it, there isn’t much else to do with it. There is only one way to beat the levels, and it does not change once you beat the game. There are some optional objectives aimed at lengthening game play. These include finding your ferret mascot on every level, as well as optional valuables you can help yourself to. But even if you go back and replay these levels, there just isn’t much longevity to the game. It can quite comfortably be beaten in one sitting in one afternoon without much effort, and the truth is that even the optional challenges required to get three stars in a level will not add much play time.
Some research into this game revealed that it is a mobile game that was merely ported to Steam. While the game does support some of the Steam amenities such as achievements and trading cards, there really is no indication that anything in the game itself has been changed in translation from mobile to PC. The pricing however, has increased drastically, from 99 cents in mobile to $15 on the PC. There is definitely an audience for this game, and I do believe its worth playing if you are looking for a short, fun game you can complete in a few hours, but taking the price difference into account I recommend that you seriously consider the mobile version over the Steam one.
