Tiny Glade review Build a world of pretty dereliction in this game of forests, lakes and forgotten towers. Developer: Pounce Light Pounce Light Publisher: Pounce Light Pounce Light Release: September 23rd 2024 September 23rd 2024 On: Windows Windows From: Steam Steam Price: TBC TBC Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-9400F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 1660, Windows 11 Tiny Glade has been a constant presence on TikTok for the last year or so. It's never far away.
In between burrito recipes and hymns to the Fujifilm X100v, this gorgeous toylike art tool's gamely turning stretches of balmy meadow into semi-ruined castles, semi-ruined villages and semi-ruined citadels. Dreamy and slightly haunted, it's conjured words like "bewitching" and "spellbinding" in the comments sections, too. It makes sense, really.
Tiny Glade's a game about making rustic dioramas and then photographing them. It's not hard to imagine some exiled magical person might live in here among the rocks and reeds and wild heather. It feels like we've been here before - sort of.
Only recently (I just checked, it was March) I was gripped by Summerhouse, another toylike thingy about making beautiful, almost derelict buildings. Summerhouse remains a favourite, and I think Tiny Glade is right up there with it. But I also think that there's more than enough room for two of these thingies in such quick succession, particularly when they're so distinct, and when they delight and compel in such distinct ways.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Pounce Light Tiny Glade's biggest difference is that it's 3D. You're given a snug patch of land, and you can move the camera around as you craft rounded towers and squat, angular buildings, and lay down walls and fences and paths. You can move the ground too, pulling rocks or even cliffs out of the earth or pushing the soil down to find rivers and lakes waiting there.
Then you can move the camera in close, pull it way back, tilt it all around in your hunt for the most charming...
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