Farming life meets cosy incremental gaming in Orca Point Studio’s Tiny Biomes Cozy Idle. The pixelated graphics and cheerful tunes accompany hours of gameplay. However, there is much more to Tiny Biomes Cozy Idle than first meets the eye.
Humble Beginnings
It’s time to take on the task of hitting targets as the newest employee in charge of collecting resources from the “gathering zone” island. Starting with a basic axe and a few trees, this zone will grow and expand to include all the trees and bushes you unlock in the skill tree. Using your mouse to move around the screen, the pointer will automatically “chop” whatever is under your cursor to add them to your collection.
Every time you venture into the gathering zone, it is considered a day. But the time gets extended as you upgrade your skills. Although you start with only ten seconds, by the end of the game, you will have a few minutes in each round. Similarly, you will upgrade your axe proficiency to make chopping more efficient.
Each resource has a unique value and difficulty, determining how many chops are required to collect it. This makes placing your cursor chops somewhat tactical when starting out. However, as the name suggests, the aim here is to unlock upgrades that automate coin collection while idle.
Upgrade And Automate
Tiny Biomes Cozy Idle becomes more of an idle game after a few hours of gameplay. Expanding your skill tree to unlock auto-collectors is the first of many ways you can unlock and upgrade to clear the gathering zone without your input. The gathering zone mini-game starts slowly and lasts only a few seconds, but it becomes more active as you unlock skills to respawn trees and extend the timer. After a few more hours, I would click into the mini-game and leave it running for a minute while I worked on other tasks.
This mini-game is fun, and I really enjoy the mechanics; however, I wouldn’t consider it fully automated. Which is where the home hub comes in.
The Hub has several Tiny Biomes where you can raise animals and collect resources to earn money. These animal biomes can be upgraded to add more animals and become more efficient, generating further profits to add to the ever-increasing pot.
Mad Skillz
It’s no secret that I am a sucker for filling in a good skill tree. Tiny Biomes presents colourful nodes with images that show the general effects of each unlock, along with a text description. It was easy to navigate, and you don’t have to fully level each skill to progress, giving some choice in how to fill it out.
I really enjoyed filling out the skill tree and upgrading the axe and biomes from the hub. It felt like there was more to do, and the inclusion of the hub to scroll through my biomes made Tiny Biomes feel more of a full concept than a mini-game. But that wasn’t the only thing that surprised me about it.
There’s A Plot?
You were probably thinking I was done with this cosy, incremental game, but wait, there’s more. Tiny Biomes actually has a plot. There is a character who introduces the world and the various tasks you have to familiarise yourself with as you reach those incremental highs. It’s nothing deep or spectacular, but it got a few chuckles out of me here and there. Mostly, the inclusion was a welcome surprise and shows a level of care from the developers that elevates indie games beyond the casual slop released to the Steam store.
Presentation
The pixelated graphics are cute, but I feel like there’s a resolution issue somewhere that I can’t quite explain. It’s like the pixels are too big on the hub screen, or that the sprites are the same as the resource map, but zoomed in. Although it’s not a huge complaint, merely an observation, as it’s all very in keeping with the general style.
The sound design reminds me of Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon. While the soundtrack was really pleasant, I eventually turned it off to leave the game running and collect the final resources. Similarly, the tap of the axe was satisfying at first, but became increasingly overstimulating as I added more auto-collectors and power-ups.
Conclusion
Tiny Biomes Cozy Idle is fun, cosy and a great first game for Orca Point Studios. Although there are idle aspects to the gameplay, I would still like to emphasise the incremental mini-game nature more than the name “Cozy Idle” would suggest. Once the gathering zone mini-game hits 30 seconds, you can somewhat leave it running, but you will miss out on collecting power-ups and other bonuses as a trade-off.
I spent a few days hammering out the gathering zone for this review and completed the achievements in under 10 hours of gameplay. It’s got more legs than Petal by Petal, which has a very similar core gameplay mechanic, and heaps more charm.
Platforms: PC
Publisher: Orca Point Studio
Developer: Orca Point Studio
Played On: Steam
Code Provided By: Keymailer
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