Misc. A Tiny Tale is an adorable story where you're exploring the world outside of your little village for the first time. On your journey, you will help many others. No missable achievements, completion is around 10 hours.
Approximate time to 100%: Around 10 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote
this guide which also includes the locations of the Golden Cogs
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option, but the game isn't hard
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: See the end of my review
Gamepad or mouse and keyboard: I played this with a gamepad, and it worked perfectly.
Misc. A Tiny Tale is an adorable adventure game in which you go on a journey to explore the world outside of your small village. It will be the first time you leave the town, but the night before, something strange happened: an explosion. Now, the gate to leave your town doesn't work anymore. You have to find at least 8 of the 10 Golden Cogs to fix the gate and leave your town. Fortunately, they have just landed in the village, and some of the villagers have also found one and are willing to give it to you if you help them out.
The artwork of Misc. A Tiny Tale stands out. It is so cute and vibrant. The small robots are just adorable! And to make it even better, you will receive a new outfit every level, so you fit in with the theme of that level. And I can tell you they all are just so so adorable! I can't even tell you which one is my favorite, it is between levels 2, 3, and 5. Another thing that I love is that the everyday items you find in Misc. A Tiny Tale has different names to describe what they do, as the robots are unaware of the names we use.
There was also a great deal of detail put into the sound and music design. I love that there is a voice-over at the beginning and end of each level that tells you how the story continues. It is so well done. Later on in the game, you will also be treated to two beautiful songs. And not only did they add so much detail in the music, but also when there is none. In chapter 7 and 8 you won't get the standard music when cleaning an area and it is very clear why that is and this ads and extra layer to the emotions of the main character.
There are numerous opportunities to save, which is fantastic. That way, you can decide when to quit and come back later at any moment. You can save on the level select screen, but you also always find like 2 or 3 save points in a level, so there is always a save spot close to you. You have three separate save slots, allowing you to create backups if needed. Alternatively, multiple people can play the game simultaneously, each with their own save slot.
The most challenging part of Misc. A tiny Tale are the challenges Gus gives you. Especially in the beginning, as you're still adjusting to how far you jump, when to use glide, double jump, and run before jumping, so you get further. I struggled with the first challenge for a while, but I can tell you it gets better over time when you are adjusted to the game, or maybe you don't even struggle at all. The challenges will get harder with each level, but once you've adjusted, they'ren't that hard at all. Only the last challenge is quite long, and if you don't land on a platform, you get teleported back to the start. Gladly, you have an unlimited number of lives in Misc. A tiny Tale so you can retry the challenge over and over again without any penalty.
The achievements are mostly for exploring each level and finding the collectibles while helping the other robots. None of the achievements are missable because you can always reset a level. But if you don't want to keep that to a minimum, my tips are to save before finishing the quest with the light string in level 4, so you can reload and choose another dialog option. And to wait before delivering any trash on level 8 until you have cleaned the whole level. [I]Side note: At this moment, a few achievements on Steam are bugged, but the devs have 9 days left to fix those, and I'm pretty sure they will be fixed before the launch on Steam.
I give Misc. A tiny Tale 4.5 out of 5 stars.
4.5