Tiny Guardians Review

A tower defense game... Without towers!? That's how the Malaysian developer Kurechii describes their latest game, "Tiny Guardians". As a big fan of tower defense, and a big fan of cute indie games, this game jumped out at me immediately. "Tiny Guardians" tasks you with protecting a girl named Lunalie on her journey across a bunch of unique and beautiful landscapes. This game was released on mobile devices a few years ago, but this is the brand-new Steam version (and everything is better on PC).

The player takes on the role of a disembodied hand with a deck of cards, watching over Lunalie as she walks a path towards the end of each level. Along the path, Lunalie is met by waves of increasingly more difficult enemies. The cards you play represent heroes, the eponymous "Tiny Guardians", which fight for Lunalie. Lunalie herself can fight back with ranged magic but needs her guardians to do the majority of the combat. There are 12 guardians overall, and each can be upgraded as it levels up during combat. The guardians cost mana to play, and you can have a total of 4 guardians around Lunalie at any given time. The game starts out fairly casual, but ramps up the difficulty over time, leading up to various boss fights.

The art in this game is simply gorgeous. I love the combination of sprawling fantasy backdrops and cute character designs. Each zone has a unique design, from the fairly standard (but still really pretty) plains, to the creepy clown circus place.

The cards you play to summon guardians have some of my FAVORITE art in the game, though. Every time  I level up a guardian in the field I get the urge to take a screenshot just to go back and look at it again. Each level of a card has different art, and they all look absolutely fantastic.

I'm having a lot of fun with "Tiny Guardians". It's semi-casual, but just challenging enough that it hasn't gotten boring or tiring. The tough battles are just hard enough that if you run into something easy, it's a breath of fresh air rather than a disappointment. I will say that after a while I start to wish I was playing on mobile rather than a desktop. It FEELS like a mobile game for sure. The only reason I love the PC version is the high-resolution art that I can't get enough of. You can buy "Tiny Guardians" on Steam for $9.99 or your regional equivalent.

-Justin

Graphics: PERFECT
Sound: GOOD
Gameplay: GREAT
Value: GREAT
 
OVERALL: GREAT

Kurechii:

Website: http://kurechii.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kurechii
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kurechii/

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FULL DISCLOSURE: this game was provided to A-To-J Connections free-of-charge by the developers in order to write this review.