Take the name Miniatures seriously, as this is a very small package of four games that can be collectively completed in under 45 minutes. Is that worth $5? It depends on what you’re after when you sit down to play.
One of the coolest things about Miniatures is that it does nothing to tell you what it is or how you’ll play it; the game is completely about discovery. When you first launch it, you see only a table in a darkened room. There’s a light switch, so, of course, you click it. There’s a small box with a key, so, of course, you turn it.
This opens up to reveal four separated items: a lizard, a shell, a moth, and a screwdriver.
Do any of them pique your interest or remind you of anything? Maybe that’ll guide you to select one over the others. I went with the lizard first to find a boy who’s saddened by being left alone at home…again. There was little to do here except click around on various items to push the brief tale along.
The more the boy moved around the house, the more it seemed that nature was taking it over. Weeds and plants grew in the cracks. Birds settled inside in the dining room. How would this boy deal with it? I’ll let you find out.
The other items tell their own very brief stories in their own unique ways. One involves tiny creatures attempting to make some music in their sand castle home. Another is centered around a family combating the evils of furniture assembly. The most haunting of the four follows a young woman who has seemingly lost her mother to cosmic forces.
Although each story has its own method of progress, they all basically require just clicking around the environment to see what happens. You can’t die or be forced to start over; you just have to discover what to do.
It’s not much, to be honest, but it’s still effective. This is largely due to the melancholic approach of Miniatures’ presentation. The hand drawn graphics and animations are mostly pretty dark and simple. Aside from the sand castle chapter, the visuals have few colors and details. But, they involve a degree of movement that gives them life.
That sense of melancholy carries over to the chapters themselves. They don’t so much tell stories as they simply offer snippets of childhood memories. It’s then up to the gamer to provide the context. I’ve started a couple of bands in my time, so I could identify with the struggle of the sand castle people (and even more so with that segment’s conclusion). I’ve worked with others to assemble boxed computer desks and TV stands, so I get the comedy and frustrations of the process.
Maybe your connections will run deeper—a specific memory instead of a general vibe, or a sense of loneliness you either overcame or have learned to endure.
It all begs the question of whether you fire up your Switch to tap into such emotions and memories. If you play games to escape reality instead of working through it, Miniatures is not for you. It’s also not for you if you’re not an emotional person. This is a brief experience that relies almost solely on your ability to identify with the sentiments it’s giving off, and it otherwise will not work. If you can’t connect with those sentiments, you’re just clicking on stuff for 45 minutes.
I’m still going to recommend Miniatures because I found its approach and its vibe to be quite intriguing. I also appreciate a game that asks for under an hour of my time and charges accordingly (forgo DoorDash the next time you want to take-out and you’ve cleared the room in your budget). Buy it, sink into it for a bit, and move on. Whether it makes an impact is really more about the player than the game.
