Thank you Unity Games for sending us this game to review.

Tinkerworld used to be peaceful and united between the various color districts.  Now all of the residents fight amongst each other or live in a fearful and depressed state.  One of the spirits watching over the land took matters into his own hands and cast judgment on the city by allowing it to be devoured by bleakness.  Can Koru, the last Tinker unite the people and make the town vibrant and peaceful again?

The Last Tinker: City of Colors is a 3D action/platformer game inspired by classics such as Jak and Daxter and Banjo Kazooie.  Since I have yet to play those games, I cannot compare them.  Unlike Mario, the enemies cannot be jumped on; instead Koru must defeat them by using color attacks.  As each district’s spirit joins up with Koru, they give him new attacks and abilities.  These abilities can be upgraded at various vending machines spread out in the town.

The red spirit is feisty and volatile and his attacks are powerful.  The green spirit is timid at first and his attack will make the enemy run away from Koru.  The green’s ability to freeze time comes in handy on many occasions.  Lastly, the blue spirit is sad and his attacks cause the enemies to become temporarily paralyzed.  The blue’s special ability allows Koru to walk through the bleakness without getting hurt for a short amount of time.  

Many of the enemies can be punched into submission by using any attack you prefer, I often default to the red punch or freezing them and then finishing them off with the red attack.  Though there is something to be said for using the green attack to make the bad guys run off cliffs or into thorny bushes. Some enemies are trickier and require a certain color/power combination to defeat them.  Most of the bosses follow the same pattern of defeating the underlings and then hitting its vulnerable spot for a few seconds and then repeat.  There are a couple of unique bosses that add some much needed variety.

The enemies are not the only challenge in the game.  There are many puzzles to be solved including discovering or cracking codes to unlock secret or new areas.  With the word Tinker in the title it should come as no surprise that there are many broken items that need to be repaired to progress the story line.  It’s not all work though: when Koru is not fixing something or making peace with the color spirits you can find him climbing or gliding on rope or rainbow roadways.  

The colorful environment and cartoonlike characters are charming and enticing to a younger audience.  The Last Tinker: City of Colors offers several difficulty levels that can be changed when loading up an autosave.  The easiest difficulty is kid mode and the default is normal.  I got annoyed with the last boss and defeated him on the lowest difficulty level.  As much as this game is geared for children, I was taken aback that they let the word d*mn slip into the game’s dialogue.    Had it not been for that, I would have recommended this game wholeheartedly.  Only kids able to read would be impacted by this since the voice acting in this game is completely gibberish.  The soundtrack is delightful and has a lot of variety.  There are several musical puzzles that require sound matching and correctly conducting an orchestra.

Like many Steam games, The Last Tinker: City of Colors has achievements you can earn and trading cards you can craft a badge with or sell.  I beat this game in eight hours and there is some room for replay-ability if you want to earn all of the achievements or collect all of the paint brushes to unlock the extra silly game modes like big or little head, black and white or god mode. 

While The Last Tinker: City of Colors is a cute and fun game, it could have used a little more variety with the bosses and enemies.  The language is a disappointment as well.  I’m not sure if I would recommend buying this game at full price for eight hours of play, but it’s definitely worth considering if you find it on sale.  I had fun playing it, but I don't see myself going back to it anytime soon.