The Tiny Glade demo released on May 30 and is featured as part of Steam’s Next Fest. It seems to have taken over the cozy gaming corner of Twitter, with players sharing their miniature creations in droves. I’ve spent over 10 hours absorbed in the demo, and I’m still loving it.
Back in March, I wrote about Summerhouse and how amazing it is to just place blocks in order to build adorable houses. Tiny Glade is like taking Summerhouse and making it 3D, giving you creative control over a small area to create dioramas fit for any RPG world.
The Tiny Glade demo offers you control over an appropriately tiny piece of land, on which you can erect square buildings, circular towers, build crumbling walls, plant flowers, and even hang your laundry between windows. There’s not a lot to it, admittedly, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a tiny world of possibilities to discover.
One of the things which makes Tiny Glade so endlessly enjoyable, at least for me, is the camera mode. Not only do you have free reign over your builds, but also free reign of the camera. You can take wide angle shots of an entire build, or zoom in incredibly close to capture the most minute of details, really putting yourself into the tiny world you’ve built.
The buildable zone is very small compared to the space we’ll have once the game releases fully and we don’t have access to all features, which does limit you somewhat. However, the space is ample for miniature builds and the features we do have access to reduce the feeling of limitation somewhat.
Buildings can be circular or square, and windows can be placed pretty much anywhere on flat walls, in corners or as dormers in the roof. They come in different designs which automatically connect to create bigger windows, allowing you to make a feature out of them if you want. There is a certain window which comes with a towel hanging out of it. Placing two of these windows close together, but not quite touching, will result in a washing line stringing between the two, even stretching across alleyways between buildings.
Whether you’re building Rapunzel’s tower or a ramshackle town fit for a medieval saga, each building can be modified in whichever way you choose, with any paths you place automatically creating doors or archways which grow depending on the size of the path. You can stretch walls, curve the roof or flatten it entirely to create turreted lookout towers and walkways. If you place two roofs together just right, a small nest filled with eggs will appear in the joint. Those small touches make the game feel alive.
Once you’ve designed your miniature vista, you can add flowers and lanterns. While flowers are always the same, something I’m hoping is worked on before the full release to add more variation, lanterns will change from free-standing to wall-hanging with no effort, allowing you to place them wherever you like. If you change the time setting to nighttime, those lanterns automatically light up, casting soft light across the paths and brickwork.
All of this works together to bring whatever you create to life, despite the lack of people wandering the streets. Thanks to the free roaming camera mode, you can explore your creation from within and it’s easy to imagine meeting people in the streets, or residents in the houses going about their lives as the windows illuminate the dark of night. The mode feels like walking through a quaint English village late at night and I can almost smell the wood burning fires.
With that said, Tiny Glade isn’t entirely devoid of life. There are some sheep wandering the area and one particularly cute feature is what happens when you modify the terrain underneath a wandering sheep, or erect a building on top of them. Moving the ground underneath a sheep will cause it to fly up into the air and do their best Mary Poppins impression by floating down with the aid of an umbrella. If you happen to trap a sheep inside a building, they will audibly voice their confusion and a speech bubble will periodically appear until you let them out again. Did I mention that you can pet the sheep?
During Next Fest, the team at Pouncelight are issuing daily prompts over on Twitter. There have been three so far – House on a Hill, Secret Garden and Tiny Neighborhood – which have seen players sending in a ton of screenshots. I’ve sent in one myself, though I’ve been put to shame by some of the other beautiful diorama builds I’ve seen.
I have to admit, it’s taken me this long to feel like I’m getting the hang of things and I still don’t fully understand how to do everything I want to do in Tiny Glade. I want to build huge arches and elevate buildings, but I’m just going to have to keep playing to figure that out.
