Tiny Glade is a game about building rustic ancient dwellings in idyllic pastures. There are no challenges, no narrative, nothing is unlocked and nothing is at risk. It is a meditative digital play object made for tinkering. It is a imaginative sandbox with sturdy boundaries, designed so that even the most cursory efforts will yield “beautiful” results.
You need to know
What is this? A cozy “build a small town” game with no bugs and a relaxing atmosphere.
Expect to be paid $TBA
Developer Reflecting lightweight
Publisher Reflecting lightweight
Rated on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16 GB RAM
Multiplayer game? NO
Steam deck To be determined
To combine Couple
The toolbox is surprisingly slim. Building a grand or modest manor, castle, or ruin involves squeezing together rectangular or cylindrical structures, adjusting their heights and perimeters, choosing from more than a dozen color schemes, and then applying cosmetics like windows, chimneys, and lamps. Terrain can be raised, paths, fences, and brick barriers can be built, and lakes and gardens can be sprayed on the ground like spray paint.
It all feels a bit restrictive until you reveal the interplay between the building elements. For example, if I build a path through a stone wall, an arch emerges. What’s more: if I run a path through the length of a stone wall, a nice viaduct-style ruin emerges. Elsewhere, if I build three stained-glass windows side by side, a larger, more elaborate stained-glass window replaces them. With a free-roaming camera, I can get up close and personal with my remote little outpost, and I can even switch to first-person mode if I want to have a proper wander around my little Edens.
Tiny Glade is constantly reconfiguring my world in tiny ways; sometimes it can feel like collaboration. Placing two modest wooden windows close to ground level conjures up a pretty little stool for breathing in the morning air, and sometimes it manifests a potted sunflower. I don’t have the option of building my own doors: Tiny Glade usually (but not always!) places them where paths and walls intersect. Beautiful but hairy staircases creak as I precariously lift my previously earthbound manor house atop a steep hill. If I quickly clear the ground from under a sheep, it floats down to the ground with an umbrella. Of course, I can pet the sheep, and sometimes, if I spend enough time petting, a bird will land on its back.
Everything is so nice. The gentle soundtrack subtly adjusts to the time of day, which can be changed or left to play. The music also changes depending on which of the five seasonal themes I’ve selected from the main menu. (There’s also a daily theme that encourages players to try out certain prompts before sharing them on social media. In the pre-release version, I was encouraged to build a “cozy bakery.”) The direction of the sun can also be shifted to facilitate you take the perfect shot in the game’s photo mode. Tiny Glade isn’t pushy about this at all, but it definitely wants me to share my pretty creations online.
Everything is so very nice. So unbearably nice. The notion of beauty and coziness in Tiny Glade is unwaveringly orthodox: everything is awash in a pleasant, undetailed pastel goodness that desperately cries out for love. The game’s interventionist approach to decorative style seems humorous at first, before sometimes becoming overbearing and, at worst, patronizing. The notion of beauty and idyll in Tiny Glade is so tried and true, so obvious and unassailable, that it is essentially impossible to create anything ugly or messy in it. This is a game whose heart is expression, which allows me to express myself only in one narrow, overly familiar mode. This is a imaginative game that is suspicious of my ability to create in its own, strict vision, so it hovers around the edges.
I love the concept of a low-stakes construction game with a tiny but engaging toolkit, and Tiny Glade is certainly not the first of its kind: check it out City landscapeOr Summer house. Tiny Glade feels more limiting compared to the two (Townscaper, for example, lets you create some pretty weird settlements), with the kind of Hallmark card concept of relaxing, cozy, or pretty that borders on the cliché. It’s kind of like the final boss of cozy games, so cozy that it smothers me in its feather-stuffed duvets. Under its cloying veneer — under its bulky hand signaling that it’s chill—is a frustrating lack of imaginative agency for the player.
But then again, criticizing Tiny Glade for not letting me be as imaginative as I’d like might be missing the point. I can go and play in Minecraft’s imaginative mode, or mess around in Cities Skylines’ sandbox mode, or (gasp at the thought) go and draw a picture in real life. It might be better to think of Tiny Glade as a toy; I wouldn’t criticize a train set for not letting me meticulously design trackside buildings.
To be fair, these toys allow the player to fill in the gaps with their imagination, but Tiny Glade’s raw materials—its artfully moss-covered stone blocks, its ever-smoking chimneys, its slightly bookish curvature of construction—don’t leave me much room for imagination. All it does is make me feel, well, Isn’t that nice?Isn’t that a nice thing for people who like nice things?