Miniatures

I am a big believer in short games. There is something promising about looking up a game on howlongtobeat.com and seeing that the “Main Story” is under an hour. The reason that I am so optimistic about a game’s brevity is that, on average, shorter games stay purposeful in their delivery. Short games have an experience in mind for the player, and they rarely meander from that core proposition. I honestly wish more games adopted this philosophy, no matter their play time, to curb the padding we see games that want to prove their worth is in their grandiosity. A concise sentence, well said, creates more in the mind of its reader than a paragraph of loose ideas. 

Miniatures, developed by Other Tales Interactive, is just the kind of game to tug on the player’s imagination without overstaying its welcome. In just under an hour, I was able to enjoy four short stories, all with unique game mechanics, aesthetics, and sound design. Miniatures describes itself as “a collection of strange tales where childhood imagination and reality merge with darker undercurrents of mystery and magic.” Every story feels uniquely personal, and each has a dark twist within its mini-narrative that left me curious to know more.

The game opens with a menu screen that is itself an impressive curio. The title card fades, and the backdrop comes into view—a little wooden box. Turning on the light hovering over the box, the player will open it to find four little figurines that represent the aforementioned short stories. As you play each one, the figurines will change in subtle but odd ways, leaving the player wondering what is truly happening between each bizarre experience. For example, one story is a wonderfully voice-acted sequence about a boy taking care of his pet lizard within a paludarium, all the while the boy’s own dwelling is neglected. Slowly, over the course of time, the home is overrun by nature. The explorable footprint of the house grows and transforms as the boy revisits rooms, blurring the lines between imagination and reality. Yet the sombre reality of this picture is striking. The house is not the only subject in this story abandoned; it parallels a present reality for the child as well and therefore carries with it a melancholic honesty. 

Each of the other three tales left a similarly eerie impression in their narrative design. From the story of a truly monstrous furniture assembly to the tale of a little sea creature band gathered before an approaching doom to a mother who is not quite what she seems, each of the stories pivoted around a very interesting, if uncanny, core idea. The design of each story reminded me of picking up four different children’s books off the shelf, each with their own voice and style

The visual design varied wildly across the stories as well. One story looked like a flipbook of pencil drawings, where the edges of each object were in perpetual motion. Another was a storybook aesthetic with text overlays and bold colours. Yet another had the feel of a surrealist clay village. Some stories moved across several different settings, occasionally using cutscenes to break up the gameplay, while others remained in one fixed scene the entire time. It is a treat for the eyes to begin each story because you are bound to see something unlike anything else in the game. The only thing that seemed steady throughout the experience was a very muted, dark, and earthy colour palette. I don’t quite understand that design decision, but perhaps it was to keep a few threads of visual identity consistent across each scene. 

The most prominent noises throughout my playtime were ambient ones: the breeze, moving water, and the tapping of feet across the floor. However, the sound design was at its finest when the noises were punctuated, surprisingly, by spoken lines of dialogue or the quick blast of a horn for dramatic effect. There are also some moments where an orchestra lightly plucks strings in the background, adding a sense of serenity to an otherwise peculiar soundscape. 

I suppose the gameplay in Miniatures can best be described as point-and-click puzzles mixed with some light visual novel elements, yet even that does not do it justice since it is such a mashup of ideas. Each story involves different, albeit simple, mechanics to navigate the play space. In one story, you will be pulling the pages of a storybook from left to right, as well as up and down to move the protagonist from one space to the next. Then, in another story, you will be quickly tapping on the different parts of a DIY dresser kit to build the drawers, handles, and legs. The novelty of the mechanics, much like the audio and visual diversity, grabbed my attention. Furthermore, since each story was done in 10-20 minutes, even the more tedious point-and-click sequences never grew tiresome. 

Some of the most astonishing feats were the little Easter eggs tucked away in each story for the careful observer. You may find elements of one of the four stories covertly scattered in another, which did lead me to believe that there is some larger narrative scope at play. Also, even within the confines of a single story, there may be different gameplay sequences, like a jigsaw puzzle or a 2D rocket ship traversal segment, that blend perfectly within the moment-to-moment action. These sequences, combined with truly provocative narrative moments, created in me some vivid moments of wonder. 

Despite its succinct design, there are a few setbacks in Miniatures that kept me from loving it. First off, since I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of each story, I was squarely disappointed when I would explore one path forward only to be cut off from the alternative option. I had to replay one particular story several times to see everything, which just seems counterintuitive to an otherwise compact adventure. Secondly, despite those few Easter eggs I mentioned, each story is quite detached from any collective significance. After I had that “wow” moment when each tale took an interesting twist, the narrative just seemed to fade from my mind without anything to tether it back to the broader Miniatures script. This brings me to my last point; the ending was such a weightless, soft landing that it didn’t do much to make a mark. Perhaps that was the intention of telling these stories—to have four distinct flavourful bites, but I can’t help feeling there was some missed potential here.