Review: Tinkerlands Demo

Genre / Tags: Casual, Action-Adventure, RPG, Atmospheric, Action, Indie, Strategy, Simulation
Developer/Publisher: CodeManu, Endless Coffee/HypeTrain Digital
URL: Tinkerlands on Steam

Tinkerlands is a cozy adventure game that tells the story of several shipwrecked survivors who have found themselves on a mysterious island full of dangerous creatures. It seems to be that their main goal is to survive in this dangerous land and uncover the truth behind the island’s secrets

I learned about Tinkerlands as I was scrolling through games that came out with demo’s either during NextFest 2024, or shortly before. Right away Tinkerlands gives me Terraria / Starbound vibes during character / world generation. Very much in that realm of styling and options to customize your character. Getting into the game itself it’s like i’m playing Terraria, but not tied to being sidescroller and instead having a more action-adventure style camera and moving freely.

The demo for Tinkerlands definitely doesn’t feel like a demo, there never really felt like a “lack” of what I could or couldn’t do in this shipwreck survival game. I did a bit of exploring and building just to get a feel for the game and got a pretty basic town set up for the various survivors that can join your community.

Something I noticed right away was that speed plays a big part of the gameplay, each terrain I experienced (sand, dirt, grass, water, etc), either sped up or slowed down my movement, which you don’t see in too many games. It was neat to come across like dirt roads as i’m running through a forest and have a nice speed boost while i’m on the dirt. Those roads gave me a couple opportunities to chase down monsters that were running from me because I had that little bit of a boost.

This ease of gameplay extends to fighting and building: despite the fixed perspective, it was intuitive for me to fight and dodge enemies very easily, and when I built a house, it took me mere seconds to complete everything.

The island is bursting with stuff to collect, from trees and stones to shells and bones. It was hard to stay focused on a task because I wanted to run around clearing and collecting everything, this played a huge factor to how far I actually got into Tinkerlands, it was just fun to run around and explore.

I think the game has great potential, even with the little bit that i’ve played thus far. I’m going to keep playing this and see where the demo leads and prolly pick Tinkerlands up, it’s right up my alley of games that I enjoy.

Right now i’d have to give Tinkerlands a solid 9.2/10, gameplay loop is pretty solid for the category of game it is. Even playing on hard it wasn’t too overwhelming to play. I’m sure as I get into the bosses and such I may change my opinion in that regard, but we’ll see.

Check Tinkerlands out via their gameplay trailer shown below, or on Steam!

FGM –