Game Review: Tiny Thor

Coming from Asylum Square and Gameforge 4D GmbH, Tiny Thor pays homage to classic 16-bit action platformers from the SNES and Genesis era with some fun new twists.

As the title suggests, you play as a kid version of the God of Thunder, who is celebrating his birthday and Odin’s gift of the hammer Mjolnir when he learns of various threats to Midgard and the other realms and heads out to try and become a hero and stop them. The game starts out like a standard old-school platformer where you run and jump and can kill enemies by jumping on them but shortly into the game when you get Mjolnir is when the game gets infinitely more interesting and fun. Thor can throw Mjolnir to kill enemies but you can also carefully aim it and it bounces around the levels and off walls. This adds lots of fun takes on puzzles as you try to get Mjolnir into just the right spot and adds tons of great wrinkles into combat, like bosses that basically turn the game into Arkanoid or Breakout where you need to constantly bounce Mjolnir to score hits and break objects.

The game’s graphical style perfectly captures the feeling of old-school 2D platformers but doing things with the amount of animation or enemies and objects on the screen that the developer back in the 90s could probably only dream of. The sprite work is excellent and Thor and the other characters have lots of charm and personality. The music is also excellent throughout, also nailing the feel of classic games but doing something unique as well and definitely working to help keep the game fun and exciting. Tiny Thor is overall excellent with inventive and fun gameplay and fantastic art and music. If you are a fan of classic 2D platformers, Tiny Thor is a must-play and it’s out now on Switch and PC.