Tiny Connections in IOS

★★★★★ App Store Editors’ Notes

★★★★★ Great Game; Poor Controls

Don’t be fooled by my rating. I adore both the aesthetic and gameplay of Tiny Connections, however, it could benefit from some rework of the controls because for a mobile game, it doesn’t have much flexibility. I could attempt to delete a pipe and accidentally delete a grid supporting like 4 homes. The pan to the whole city whenever you deselect is kind of unnecessary. It does present your city in an interesting light but it is so repetitive that it’s annoying. The zoom feature is a bit slow and junky, I wish I could increase the speed of the zoom because it makes it so that you have to zoom multiple times. Therefore increasing the chance you accidentally remove or add something you wish you didn’t. Aside from those features is what I struggle with the most. The tunnels. The tutorial is very well made and I appreciate that, however, I think it didn’t show how hard it is to actually place the tunnels when you have factors such as the zoom and clunky controls in general. You must place two consecutively and the amount of times I accidentally tried connecting a 2 with a 3 is laughable compared to the time I’ve played. Also, the way to place pipes and grids is confusing. It’s like you have to delete half of your pipe or one side of it to connect them properly. I am upset with the game overall but love the idea of it a lot.

★★★★★ Tutorial was inaccurate

The game itself seems fun and playing the tutorial I really enjoyed it but when I played the real game it was somewhat inconsistent with the tutorial. The tutorial explains that tapping the clock will stop time and holding down on the clock will speed up time. I really appreciated being able to pause time because it made the game enjoyable instead of stressful. But when I went to play the first level, I was very much unable to stop time, and could only speed it up. Because I expected to have the same abilities I had in the tutorial, I did not do well, and after many tries still haven’t made it past day 6 or 7 on the first level/location. This was pretty frustrating because I really enjoy puzzle games but don’t do well with timers or needing to be fast. If the tutorial was accurate and I could stop timeI would definitely still be playing the game. The app support is kind of lacking because it requires that I have social media or give out my personal email, which as someone who isn’t in the habit of either means I’m forced to leave a bad review and hope they see it instead of starting a dialogue to get the problem fixed.

★★★★★ Nifty…for the first minute.

It’s at that point where you realize that navigating the screen is an exercise in futility. To be zoomed in, you have to have a resource selected. When you try to move around the screen you’re throwing pipes and cables randomly, which you then have to delete. You can exit both delete and resource mode, but that throws you to the bird’s eye view and you’re back where you started. I had to exit the tutorial because it wanted me to connect stuff to a house…and the one connector it had wasn’t the right one. At no point did the tutorial “tutor” me as to what I was doing wrong. And in regular game play, houses or cities or whatever they were died because trying to reach them involved a one step forward in build mode, two steps back in delete mode process. Which took too long. Game needs a third mode for navigation where you can swipe around the land without wreaking havoc. I’m sure it’s a nice game but it’s just too frustrating to spend a lot of time on. If there was an abstract art achievement for putting a weird blob of pipes in the middle of nowhere, that I could pull off. Best of luck. Uninstalled.

★★★★★ Not too bad, but needs work

This is a decent start to a game, but it needs some polish. Two things I find lacking are, one, the information to using different pieces and two, controlling the screen. The tutorial is ok, but some pieces, like tunnels, are not always easy to figure out. Maybe a guide, as you play, to remind you of what a piece can do. The second thing lacking, the control of the screen, is a much larger issue. Twice, I have made it far enough where the city gets crowded and not being able to zoom in to a specific area is a huge problem. I misplaced a tile and could not easily go back and adjust because it was in a corner of the screen. This in turn, causes a break in the water / power line and failure to finish the level. Good luck going forward with this game!

★★★★★ Carbon Copy of Mini Motorways

Someone in another review said this was a similar game to Mini Motorways… it’s more than just similar, it’s a straight up carbon copy of that game, with only minute differences (you do power and water instead of roads, and you can rotate buildings). Please don’t download and support this type of game development. Please just download Mini Motorways. This type of game development will lead us to every game becoming a carbon copy of something else. I’m sure the developers here could take a different design path over time, but at the moment this is just straight up copied gameplay with some new assets. Please don’t support this people. We want original designs that may use similar ideas or pieces of other games, not this…

★★★★★ Potential but major flaws

Game has potential. Yes it is very similar to mini motorways. I do like the upgrades in this game more. The zoom/pan is not perfect and makes it harder to operate under time constraints. The pause feature doesn’t work which is a huge deal. It’s often difficult to see what places are about to run out of time. I also like how there’s an end goal and isn’t just limitless. A little work and could be much better but worth playing.

★★★★★ 2 issues…

I was loving this game until it accidentally was deleted from my device. When I reloaded it I discovered I had to start all over even though my Player Profile shows all of the accomplishments. While “Restore purchase” works fine, there is no way to restore your previous game history. On top of that, there is no way to contact Support. App Support sends you to their website just fine…BUT there is no option to contact their support. I don’t like leaving reviews without contacting support first…but there is no other option.