“His gaze glossed over a stack of wooden crates and landed on a steamer trunk that was covered with stickers from all over the world.” – Megan Frazer Blakemore
Overview
A Tiny Sticker Tale is a wholesome little adventure game about changing the world using a magical sticker book! Players take on the role of Flynn, a delightful little donkey who must journey and quest his way across Figori Island.
Developer: Ogre Pixel
Released: 4th October 2023
Price: TBA
Narrative and Gameplay
The overarching narrative is fairly minimal and focuses on Flynn arriving on Figori Island and making his way across it helping the different creatures that he encounters. The NPCs and their quests provide some narrative elements surrounding their predicaments and situations and add to the story as a whole.
A Tiny Sticker Tale allows the player to explore a tiled map, meet NPCs and help them with different things such as fishing, finding an elderly character a pet dog or even reuniting a brotherhood. Through doing so, there are five medallions to collect, each representing something different such as love or self-confidence, collecting the full set is the main objective for Flynn!
Completing tasks and helping NPCs involves solving interconnected puzzles. These are largely inventory-based conundrums, with the interesting twist that the player is not collecting items but stickers. By entering ‘sticker mode’ a large number of items within the game world can be picked up and stuck in a different location, either for the purposes of completing a quest or task or simply just to decorate or change the appearance of a place. This also applies to the NPCs who can be moved in the same way. In keeping with this, the inventory space is not limited by the number of items or their weight but instead by what can fit on the player’s sticker sheet.
The non-linear gameplay is a lot of fun, emphasising exploration and highly satisfying puzzles. Objectives are not always clear however and it is often uncertain what needs to be done next. This is in part due to the lack of any quest log or similar. There is an NPC that acts as a sort of guide who can be placed in the world for advice but this does not seem to be linked to current activity and will often advise on tasks that have already been completed, rendering the guide quite unhelpful.
Styling
A Tiny Sticker Tale has a vibrant and wonderfully whimsical cartoon art style that perfectly matches both the gameplay and narrative elements of the experience. The look is quite soft, with few harsh outlines and only mildly saturated colour palettes. The overall tone of the game is very cute and the visuals reflect this effectively, helping to create a joyful and upbeat aesthetic.
The music is similarly fitting, using instruments such as xylophones and glockenspiel to create gentle melodies with soft drumming and twinkling noises. The soundtrack is varied and there are a range of tracks that play depending on the player’s location. The effect is very relaxing and unobtrusive, allowing the gameplay to shine through. There is no voice acting in the game and dialogue is minimal but often informative, directing the player to a new task and putting the focus on exploration and utilising stickers.
Summary
A Tiny Sticker Tale will take anywhere from 2-4 hours to complete and is a delightful example of a wholesome adventure game. It features charming, whimsical cartoon art that really suits the gameplay and story. The soundtrack elevates the experience, adding varied background music that helps immerse the player in the various locations within the map, such as the desert or the mountains. The gameplay is the highlight, with interesting NPCs with fun interconnected tasks that involve solving satisfying puzzles with just the right level of difficulty to maintain a relaxing feel overall. I had a lot of fun playing A Tiny Sticker Tale and I’d happily recommend it to fans of cute puzzle adventures!
Looking for more wholesome games? You might like these reviews:
Smushi Come Home – The Most Wholesome Platforming Adventure! – Calico – A Wonderfully Wholesome Community Sim with lots of Cats! – Shindig: A Wholesome New Point-and-Click Adventure
