➤ Tin Hearts: the review of the puzzle game between tin soldiers and with a heartbreaking story 🕹

In this review of Tin Hearts we will take you to discover Albert's life, divided between his family and his work as a master toymaker, in a bittersweet story.

Do you remember the fairy tale of the tin soldier? For those who don't know, the story written by Hans Christian Andersen is about a one-legged toy soldier who falls in love with a paper dancer. He does it at night, when everyone in the house is asleep and the toys come to life. A wind-up doll with devil-like features, jealous of the two, curses this new love, to the point that the next day he throws the little soldier out of the window and makes him fall into the streams of water that have formed in the street afterward. of a heavy rain and they drag him into the sea where he is devoured by a fish.

Fate wants that fish to be sold to the mother of the child who lost his toy, who thus returns with the beautiful and sweet dancer. The angry devil decides to annoy the poor soldier again and causes him to end up in the fireplace. Only, as he sadly melts, a gust of wind makes the paper dancer float next to her, melting forever into a heart of lead. Although it has a bitter ending, The Tin Soldier has become a famous story for the little ones that has inspired rogue sun, a team born from the developers of Lionhead (the creators of Fable), to create a video game where the tin men are the protagonists. In this Tin Hearts Review We tell you a puzzle that transports us to childhood between wooden toys and the story of a father's love for his daughter.

tin heart

In Tin Hearts there is no dancer to fall in love with, the history It is based on the love of a toymaker father for his daughter, while the levels of each enigma are a piece that makes up this man's journey of memories, between carefree and happy moments that alternate with tragedies and loneliness. The game revolves entirely around solving puzzles: the toy soldiers have to cross the creation studio to reach a small door, the objective of which is to go to the next level, and to do this we have to use the toys around us.

Being a puzzle game, the path to reach the end of the level is full of obstacles and our task will be Correctly direct the march of the toy soldiers. with the help of wooden molds to position and fit correctly, or move the trains to the correct position. The levels that make up the entire Act 1 serve to help us understand the game mechanics, which are quite simple and intuitive, to be able to continue and learn about the story that the Rogue Sun studio has decided to tell us.

Next there will be new mechanics, ranging from the simple placement of wooden shapes to the use of balloons to make the little soldiers fly or drums where the friendly little tin men can bounce to reach the highest and most distant surfaces. The elements with which to interact are only those necessary to pass the level, an element that makes what we are called to do extremely intuitive.

Everything in its place

In Tin Hearts we play Albert, little Rose's father, a famous inventor and skilled craftsman, capable of creating surprising and innovative toys. Each level leads us to discover something more about the history of this family, which is initially presented as a happy family story, but which unfortunately will encounter quite difficult moments. Although it is a product in which most of the time we will find ourselves placing the objects correctly, the Narrative plays a key role., adding depth to what is essentially a series of puzzles.

Being memories, Albert's form is ethereal, making us immediately understand that what we are experiencing belongs to the past and, thanks to the help of his inventions, we can discover what happened in his life. The point of view is always from the first person and this choice is justified not only by trying to make the experience more immersive, but also because Tin Heart, in the summer months of this year, It will also come to Meta Quest and PlayStation VR 2.

Despite this, the experience is extremely enjoyable on Nintendo Switch, where it is already available, but also on PC, the version in which we tested the game. The gameplay, in fact, is pleasant both with the mouse and keyboard and with the controller. The first-person perspective and the essentiality of the necessary movements should marry perfectly with virtual reality.

At the pace of march

Completing the game takes approximately 6 hours., a count that can vary depending on your ability to guess more or less quickly the arrangement of the objects in each level. As mentioned above, the story is the main reason that pushed us to continue from level to level, since these, although original in their resolution, in some cases are quite repetitive, due to the reuse of some interactions and the background setting.

The setting is almost always the same and even the furniture and elements of the setting tend to repeat themselves in each puzzle, simply changing the correct arrangement to get the little soldiers to the goal. To speed up the resolution of each level you have a tool see Able to increase the speed of the incessant march of tin toys, or to break boredom, observe them more closely by following them with a dedicated shot. At the same time it is possible to go back in time to fix a poorly placed wooden mold or recover the poor soldiers who ended up over the edge, destroyed on the ground.

The greatest help it provides is the possibility of pausing time which, in addition to giving time to reflect on what to do, shows the path that the little soldiers will follow once they leave the box that contains them. Thanks to this tool, the resolution becomes more immediate and ensures that even those environmental puzzles that at first glance may seem more difficult to overcome are never frustrating.

Conclusions

Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Holygamerz.com 7.5 Readers (2) 4.3 your vote

Tin Hearts makes simplicity its strong point, taking us to an attic full of the toys and inventions that made the protagonist of this story famous. Although the gameplay is based on solving puzzles, what emerges as the strongest component is the narrative, which leads us to discover a rather sad story although full of love, exactly like the story of the tin soldier and the ballerina. Furthermore, the creativity with which the levels were developed manages to compensate for the repetitiveness of the environment and the few elements necessary to continue until the epilogue of the game, making the hours necessary to discover what happened in life quite fluid. of the master toymaker.