The Last Tinker: City of Colors nearly passed me up, as I had not heard about it until several weeks ago. But I’m glad I did, as The Last Tinker: City of Colors is a cute little 3D platformer. There’s just a couple of issues that keep it from being awesome and ends up just being a good game.

The game’s plot is about a young boy named Koru who lives in a city where the inhabitants are all based on the different primary colors. The city itself is also similarly sectioned off into colored districts. The city is falling apart though, with inhabitants distrusting or hating each other, or even themselves. Although things seem fine on the outside, after a few incidents the game reveals the city’s troubles and its inhabitants unknowingly unleash the Bleakness. The Bleakness seeks to destroy the city and build a new one in its place so that people can start over. So it’s Koru’s mission to fix the city and get rid of the bleakness, but first he needs to get the residents to stop their segregation from themselves.

The gameplay is a very simple modern day platforming affair, with Koru’s movement allowing for automatic traversal around platforms with the right trigger, similar to Assassin’s Creed. The combat is also much like the Batman Arkham games, with melee attacks being able to be switch between targets seamlessly. Although the combat itself is simple, never reaching the kind of excitement that Arkham’s can reach. Later on, you gain the ability to infuses your melee attacks with different powers based on color. Red is attack. Green will drive away enemies in fear, which they can then run into sharp objects or into the water or pits. Blue attacks will stun your enemies so you can either run away or move in for a one-hit kill back attack. You can also shoot color bullets from a distance to take out far away foes. Some of these abilities are also used to solve puzzle with your mushroom friend.

The game has some pretty impressive visuals, with the game displaying decent textures for the environment. The world is structured as if it were made entirely of cardboard, even showing the fluting in-between the walls. Dialog boxes are also made of cardboard, with text being written as if by marker. The world itself is vibrant with colors, albeit when you aren’t in an area that’s surrounded by the Bleakness. The game also has a nifty display option allowing for color blindness color correction. It will take a pretty beefy PC to play on max settings, but a useful tip would be to tone down the draw distance. Thankfully console versions are on the way for the PS4 and Xbox One for those unwilling to play on computer formats. The sound quality of the game is alright, Music is serviceable, but there are no noteworthy tracks to speak of. Strangely, there is no voice acting, leaving the NPC’s to speaks in only grunts akin to games like Banjo Kazooie. As a kid’s game it’s somewhat seen as a lack of consideration for those with reading difficulties to not feature voice acting. The only exceptions are the narrations of the intro and ending movies.

Other issues with the game stem from a lack of content, such as the story. Koru’s origins are never explained nor are the circumstances regarding him being the only (Human? Monkey?) one of his kind in Colortown. The game is also fairly short, but there are some minimal item collection things to do to alleviate this. But a bit of more scenario could have helped some. The game also has a nasty blurring effect during the grind-rail portions of the game, making it hard to see when to jump over a fence or onto another rail. Thankfully these sections are not too difficult or long, but it’s annoying regardless. But despite these issues, The Last Tinker ends up being a pretty decent platformer that’s just under 2GB and costs around 20 USD. I highly recommend this as a buy!

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