Mechanically scrappy and needs patience, but due a big update. Exploring dark rooms as a little robot with a limited battery is a GREAT gameplay loop, but needed to be more cohesive to really shine.

With a battery lasting a good fifteen seconds without charge, Tyler reminds me a lot of my phone.

I was going to wait for the incoming update that will rework the combat, lighting, tutorial, climbing, and control among other things, but after a few months of waiting (now over half a year), I needed to get this up on Steam. I'll update accordingly come any update dropping!

So that's a veritable laundry list of significant aspects currently being redone. How does it currently hold up? Remarkably okay - particularly if you've got a strong stomach for a little mechanical jank. Immediate worrisome standouts include the aforementioned combat, which offers no feedback and has you whale away at the air in front of an assortment of the most aggressive insects the world's ever seen to hit them; and the platforming and climbing, which is ultra-finicky at the best of times. Perhaps the bigger problem with the combat is that there's just nothing to it. Currently, you hold down one of two buttons/triggers to hit with no evasion particularly necessary. Spiders, wasps and beetles make for pretty incidental, uncompelling adversaries too.

BUT - neither are experience destroying if you persevere. The sword you can equip has much more feedback to it and allows you to dispatch the combat as quickly as possible. The climbing involves a lot of holding jump for automatic ledge grabs and praying, but I never felt I was stuck or lost due to its foibles.

His first steps.

The real pleasure that can be eked out of Tyler lies very much in the exploration of its near pitch-black spaces in the house. Perhaps the best mechanic the game possesses is Tyler's aggressively depleting battery that forces you to seek out the nearest light to recharge or face instant death. This forces you to scope out and carve out a path through dark, inherently foreboding rooms in what feels like a very natural way - illuminating a path as you go. Such exploration is duly rewarded too with the environments littered with customisation options. Traversal requires a liberal amount of launching yourself up ledges, wall-running and even free-form shifting boxes around using a floating grab ability that works remarkably well. A lot of the time, the game's traversal feels like it's actually going against the grain by not being immediately intuitive. A good thing, I feel. I felt like I was placing boxes for tricky jumps in unusual places and getting to places I shouldn't have been able to with well-executed wall runs. The homely spaces don't offer many clues and superbly offer that fantasy of a tiny perspective on an everyday environment. In fact, beyond anything else, my main driving motivation throughout my play was to fill every new space with that safe, reassuring light. I hope the new update as currently indicated doesn't sacrifice how dark the environments too much. Given you have a flashlight ability (that drains your battery just that bit faster) anyway, I think it would be a shame to lose the danger, atmosphere and added motivation to seek out lights the deathly dark environments offer.

The game is plain slander against insects. Some sensitivity for our friends on the path to extinction, please.

An XP system is actually present in a confusing fashion. It allows boosts in damage, speed and, most crucially, battery length in the dark. It feels like a misuse, since all of these, especially your battery that leaves you much MUCH too restricted at the beginning of the game, could have simply been perfectly balanced from the beginning. Much better is its outfit and customisation system. Tyler's appearance is customisable head to toe in very striking ways and it's a constant joy to find new options. Among its better ideas, and one I constantly forgot existed, is a limited rewind ability to remove the frustration of missed jumps. Weirdly, this isn't available until well after some of the first rooms had already amply frustrated me with tricky jumps and that minuscule, unlevelled battery that left no room for error. It contributes to a feeling of general thrown together scrappiness that can both have its own appeal and be an annoyance.

Scattered throughout the game are optional survival missions that lift the environments of the game for a completely separate 'defend the portal' mode complete with various traps you can place. Each trap can be placed with currency from the dead insects that proceed to walk into certain death. It works and is certainly challenging when traps start breaking, but by putting combat front and centre, it's definitely not putting its best foot forward. Its inclusion definitely falls under a mentality of 'more content is always better,' but I did enjoy my time with it - however much it felt like side-content to the point of feeling outside the game.

The game's presentation is at its absolute best when you simply stand by a lamp. The lighting system, in general, is wonderfully done. Areas feel lovingly detailed with objects and furniture that make sense and it's all rendered well, if not in a way that feels budget compared to the lighting. It's indie through and through. The music probably defaults back to its combat track a little too often, but it otherwise does a great job of lending to atmosphere. My favourite instances of music reside in the little radios you can turn on that spew out period-relevant jazz.

Honey, I shrunk the droids.

The main thrust of the game is actually rather story-focused and involves a lot of fetch questing to fuel its time travel antics. A hint system at the press of a button helps keep you on a linear path of progression through the rooms. It's surprisingly well voice-acted and I couldn't get enough of Tyler's very British contributions. I quite took to the other two characters as well. There are some surprise moments including one boss-like encounter I thought was done remarkably well. The limited production values don't sell moments throughout perfectly, but it has a lot of heart. It's a shame it has to end so abruptly!

Overall, I think Tyler through various distractions in its levelling system, survival mode, insect combat and even its story at times often misses the fact that its main source of fun comes from an exploration of its dark spaces with a limited battery and a 'completion' of them through activating light sources and finding secrets. All of its basic interactions from combat to climbing require some extra patience until the forthcoming update, but as they stand don't annoy nearly as much in its later hours. There's a great amount of potential Tyler can't currently capitalise on due to a lack of overall cohesiveness and a bad first impression in its mechanics. Hopefully, with a little oiling, Tyler will be a platformer that really shines.