In a world where the poor are cheated, ordinary citizens are overtaxed, lawmakers are corrupt, and pirates rule the seas, you need a Robin Hood Styled hero who will use his wit and cunning to steal from the rich, give to the poor and deliver justice in his own imitable style. You need Tiny Thief. A brilliantly designed point and click adventure from Rovio Stars and 5 Ants, Tiny Thief will leave you anticipating every tiny move as you plot and scheme with the little avenger to take what is not yours and make a fool out the greedy rich exploiters of this medieval kingdom.
Thieving is an Art!
Tiny Thief is played out in six chapters, where the pint sized fellow sets out to deliver justice by stealing, dodging, and outwitting the mean rich bad guys. Each chapter follows a simple storyline ( you’ll see flashes of the Angry Birds styled cartoon clips) loosely explaining the story behind Tiny Thief’s adventures in each game. Your task is to help the most wanted guy in town pick up items and use it at different points in the environment to accomplish the ultimate objective of the game: winning all three stars. A concept that is typical of Rovio games, you earn stars by picking up a certain number of mystery objects, one main treasure, and rescuing the hero’s sidekick, a little brown ferret. As you run around the environment, you will find bright amber icons that will prompt you into action.
Things Get Difficult. Yes, They Do!
Tiny Thief is indeed quite simple to play. You run through the first few games pretty quickly, but as you move up levels, things get a little more tricky. That’s because the game is designed to work in a slightly rigid sequence, and with little clues as to how you need to proceed, you find yourself wandering back and forth and engaging in quite a bit of trial and error before finding your way out. The game’s controls also fall slightly short of perfection as you find a disconnect when interacting with the command prompts. I also wonder if Tiny Thief has been deliberately made to move slowly, but a swift runner would have increased the pace and vitality of the game. A handy Hint Book is available for the less patient ones, but if you expect a quick and easy solution, you’ll be stumped. The solutions are depicted as sketches, which take a bit of time figuring out. Plus, absurdly enough, hints recharge only once in four hours!
Tantalizing Adventure
However, Tiny Thief is not a game to be played using Hint books, Cheats or Walkthroughs. It’s not merely a game about a hero battling a bunch of villains. It’s a game that pits you against the villains and tests your wit and skill in out-maneuvering the bad guys. You will enjoy every challenge that is thrown at you and you will chuckle, smirk and punch the air as you jump into wine barrels, try to ride a donkey, climb a raccoon inhabited tree, sink a sleeping sailor and get bird droppings on the grumpy guards. There’s plenty of things you’ll love and adore doing, and although you may find it easy to play, you may not be able to put down the game quite so quickly. (And if you do, you’ll probably rue the fact that you have to wait for some time before new levels come out.)
Tiny Thief ‘s cartoony settings makes you feel like a puppet master pulling the strings. The graphics and artwork are fantastic, despite the fact that the game’s characters are so very tiny. You experience the joys of a successful steal, frustrations of a baker you robbed, and foolishness of a guard you duped. The soft sweet notes of the background music will be forgotten as you get lost in the expressiveness and the cleverness of the entire plot.
Tiny Thief is available on the Play Store for $2.99, which is a bit pricey for just a 30 level game. The real mystery lies in the fact that Rovio has a warning for parents that the game may include advertising of Rovio products as well as those of its partners, and the option for IAPs. The current version of the game however does not feature any ads, nor does it feature a Store, but this may likely change with future updates.
Despite the limited game play and premium pricing, Tiny Thief gets a big thumbs up for its inventiveness, artwork, and enjoyable puzzle solving techniques. It does however, get a thumbs down for making thieving so cool!
