Bite-sized Review:
Tiny Thor

By Chris Picone, 06 June 2023

Tiny Thor's a lovely new retro-modern platformer with some gorgeous pixel art, well-designed levels, and a cool hammer throwing mechanic around which most of the gameplay focuses.

Aesthetics

How good does Tiny Thor look!  The parallax backgrounds are detailed and beautiful, the UI's minimalist but polished, the characters are super cute.  It's definitely one of the nicer looking pixel platformers out there.  

Gameplay

The focus of Tiny Thor's gameplay is the hammer-throwing mechanic, which is used not only to kill the baddies, but also to trigger switches and collect hard to reach gems.  It's a nice little feature that makes the "combat" a bit more interesting than just bopping enemies next to you or bouncing on their heads (although you can do that too).  The hammer ricochets, which also adds another layer where you might need to either shooting enemies in hard-to-reach places or else work out how to bounce your shots to hit armoured enemies from behind (or above).  And of course it's a platformer, so you'll be bouncing from landing to landing, dodging traps and so on.  This is the part I had the most fun with, actually - within the main game you can use rubies (a hidden collectible) to unlock "challenge levels" which I found the most fun levels in the game.

Verdict

A very nicely done platformer that will appeal to most fans of the genre.  Doesn't really break any new ground but does what it does very well and the hammer-throwing mechanic is fun.  Kid-friendly but challenging enough for adults too. 

Links: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/541310/Tiny_Thor/