Nintendo Switch Review Code Provided by Wired Productions and Rogue Sun
Wired Productions and developer Rogue Sun have just released their new indie puzzle game Tin Hearts on the Nintendo Switch, with Switch users getting access a month before PC and console players. Tin Hearts is a narrative puzzle adventure that tells the story of a Victorian toy maker and inventor, Albert J. Butterworth, and his family as you explore his house full of magical toys and memories. Tin Hearts does exactly what it sets out to do from the start and builds an incredible world of fantasy, magic, and incredibly well-designed puzzles. However, on the Nintendo Switch version, much of that is hampered by clunky and misbehaving controls.
Story
Tin Hearts is very much a game of show and not tell. Throughout the game, you slowly explore Albert's magnificent Victorian townhouse, solving puzzles in each room and viewing memories of events that occurred in those rooms. The memories slowly reveal the story of Albert and his family, which will vary between making you go "aww" and breaking your heart. But, I won't spoil any more than that. The story is revealed excellently, and we get to see the characters develop slowly over time.
A huge part of Tin Hearts' story is told through world-building and design. So much of Tin Hearts' story is beautifully told by the house itself, from how rooms in the house are decorated to each individual toy's design, and it is done exceedingly well. Tin Hearts' story is one that will keep you enthralled, waiting for the reason why you are experiencing all these memories, and parts of it may just break your heart.
Gameplay
The gameplay is where Tin Hearts both shines and falls apart, at least when it comes to the Nintendo Switch. The basic gameplay loop follows you as you move from room to room, solving puzzles. In each room, you must maneuver various toys and objects in the room to lead your toy soldiers from their toy-box to their own tiny exit door. Your toy soldiers can only walk in a straight line, however, so you must use the many toys Albert has created that are lying around to get them to their destination. There are angled blocks to turn them, cannons to knock objects down to create bridges, drums to bounce them across the room, balloons to float them, pinwheels to blow them, and much more. Later in the game, you can even enter a toy soldier that has freedom of movement to explore places in the level and interact with objects you normally couldn't.
During the process of solving a level, you have free control over time. You can pause it, rewind it, or fast forward it. Sometimes pausing and rewinding may be required to solve more complicated puzzles.
While the process of building and solving the puzzles has been implemented amazingly well in Tin Hearts, the controls to do so have not, at least for the Switch. The process of moving around the room, picking up objects, and placing them is incredibly clunky, and the controls do not respond well or smoothly. In addition to the finicky controls, they often move incredibly slowly and are still hard to maneuver. You must aim various objects in the game, and doing so can be greatly annoying at times. Despite how intriguing Tin Hearts' puzzles and story were, many times I found myself wanting to throw my Joy-Cons on the floor in frustration over the annoying and finicky controls.
Audio and Visuals
The audio and visuals in Tin Hearts are also rather hit and miss, particularly the visuals. While the audio in Tin Hearts is simple, it meshes well with the setting and the world that Tin Hearts has created and serves both the story and the puzzle solving particularly well.
Where we come to issues is with the graphics, while the world and the rooms of Tin Hearts look amazing and are incredibly detailed in their creation and decoration, the problem is with the human characters.
Throughout the course of Tin Hearts, you see memories of events in the house and the character models of Albert and his family. I have two words to describe those character models: uncanny valley. Tin Hearts is one of the worst cases of the uncanny valley I have seen in a video game in years. This causes a problem sometimes where, despite how well the story of Tin Hearts is told through these moments of memories, the uncanny valley of it all can just take you out of it.
Replayability
Tin Hearts is a puzzle game - there's not much replayability to it. Tin Hearts does have an achievement system with unique and specific goals, as well as hidden easter eggs you may miss, so that does help replayability. Tin Hearts does make completing those easy as well with a simple process to go back and repeat specific levels. Overall, as a puzzle game, however, Tin Hearts doesn't have a lot of inherent replayability.
What It Could Have Done Better
My biggest gripe with Tin Hearts is the controls and graphics. Tin Hearts would be such an amazing game, but the controls for the Switch edition are trash and can be incredibly annoying to use. That may just be the Switch, but it could easily feel the same on any controller, the only control setup I see being completely separate and possibly better is a mouse and keyboard. Tin Hearts would have been a much more enjoyable experience if I hadn't wanted to yeet my joy-con through the TV every other 5 minutes.
Aside from my major gripes with the controls, my issues with the uncanny valley of the character models are a relatively minor issue. At most, sometimes the character models can take you out of the story, but it's not too bad. Tin Hearts' story is just so good I could easily ignore that aspect. Do I wish they spent some more time making the models' faces, sure, but overall the characters take up way less screen time than the world and levels themselves, and those look beautiful.
Verdict
Tin Hearts is a unique puzzle game that makes you use your head all the while telling an amazing story, but the clunky and annoying controls make the game a hassle to play at times. On Switch at least, I honestly don't recommend it unless you're a big fan of puzzle games. If Tin Hearts sounds like something you'd enjoy, I recommend waiting for the PC release. That way, you can use a mouse and keyboard or a controller which I expect will function much more efficiently than the Joycon.
For $30, Tin Hearts actually has a lot of interesting puzzle content and a beautiful story, so I do recommend the game for lovers of puzzle and story games when it comes out on PC on May 16th. However, I will warn anyone away from the Switch edition, no matter how fun the puzzles are or how well the story is told, the hassle of the Joycon controls is abysmal.
Tin Hearts is available now on Nintendo Switch. It will release next month on May 16th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, and Utomik.
