| Toby: The Secret Mine | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Lukáš Navrátil |
| Designer(s) | Lukáš Navrátil |
| Composer(s) | Matthew Steed |
| Engine | Unity |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows Linux OS X iOS Android Xbox One Wii U PlayStation 4 Nintendo Switch |
| Release | Microsoft Windows, LinuxAndroid, iOS
|
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure, platform |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Toby: The Secret Mine First released on Tuesday 20th of October 2015. Genres Adventure, Indie, Platform, Puzzle Age ratings ESRB E10 (Fantasy. Toby: The Secret Mine is a secret not worth sharing. It’s a bore of an experience that doesn’t give you any context whatsoever, and comes off as an obvious piggyback from the game Limbo. Although it does share a few good, similarities when compared to the inspiration, enjoyment is sadly not one of them, and if I wanted to play a Limbo-esque. Toby: The Secret Mine. Headup Adventure. Everyone 10+ 253. Add to Wishlist. $4.99 Buy “The game looks and sounds beautiful. I personally found the game extremely immersive.” Keengamer 'Toby is a charming and solid platformer with plenty of fun challenges and difficult obstacles to overcome.' Toby: The Secret Mine is an entertaining video game with a fun storyline players will find easy to get into. The character of Toby is unique and adds another enjoyable touch to the game. Players will find this game simple enough for even the newest of gamers, yet involved enough for even the more experienced players.
Toby: The Secret Mine is a hybrid of the classic platformer and adventure game, developed by the independent dev Lukas Navratil. Toby: The Secret Mine takes the player on a journey to a fantastic world. The home village of the title character was attacked by mysterious invaders who kidnapped most of its inhabitants.
Toby: The Secret Mine is a 2015indie game developed by Lukáš Navrátil. It is a puzzle-platform game that resembles Limbo.
Gameplay[edit]
Toby: The Secret Mine is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer with black silhouette graphics. The gameplay is very similar to Limbo but its atmosphere is much less dark and world is much more colorful. The player controls Toby throughout the game, guiding him through multiple levels set in varied environments such as forests, caves, a mine, blizzard etc. There are puzzles on the route that the player must solve to progress. There are also multiple traps that the player can easily overlook unless alert. These traps vary in each environment with the blizzard levels focussing heavily on timed platforming. There are also kidnapped friends that are hidden throughout the levels adding an element of exploration. The game consists of 21 separate levels in all.[1]
Plot[edit]
Toby lives in a nameless town whose residents are being kidnapped by a red-eyed cats. Toby decides set up for an adventurous journey to save his friends.
Toby pursues gets through a Lost Mine full of dangers and traps set by kidnappers. Toby eventually gets to hideout of kidnappers and defeats their leader. The leader offers Toby his crown and player is given choice to accept the crown or kill the kidnapper.
If he takes the crown, Toby's eyes turn red and Toby becomes the new leader of kidnappers. His friends turn evil too and Toby is seen standing on a cliff as his homeworld is burning.
If Toby kills the kidnapper, his friends are freed and they return home.
Development[edit]
The game was in development for one and a half years.[2] It was inspired by Limbo, Nihilumbra, Type:Rider and other games. Navrátil worked on the game alone. He had to deal with the difficulty of his lack of experience. He eventually finished the game and in October 2015 it was released on Steam via Steam Greenlight. An iOS version is currently planned.[3] The Nintendo Switch version will be released in Japan on July 9, 2020.[4]
Reception[edit]
KeenGamer called Toby: The Secret Mine 'a beautifully crafted puzzle platforming game.' The review praised the game's aesthetic and gameplay including the puzzle sections. Criticism was reserved for the lack of story and for the unintuitive nature of some of the sections. The game was rated 6/10.[5]
Gone With the Win Was critical of the similarities between Toby: The Secret Mine and Limbo but praised its charm and gameplay.[6] It also criticised the guesswork required in the puzzles but gave the game a positive review overall with a 7/10.
References[edit]
- ^Jones, Alyx. 'The Sound Architect'. Alyx Jones audio reviews the puzzle-platformer, Toby: The Secret Mine. Read below to find out what she thinks of the game audio!. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
- ^Navrátil, Lukáš. '[iOS, PC, MAC] Toby: The Secret Mine'. České hry forum. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
- ^'Indie Interview – Lukáš Navrátil of Toby: The Secret Mine'. Bare Knuckle Development. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
- ^'Toby : The Secret Mine (トビー：ひみつ の こうざん)'. Nintendo Japan. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^'TOBY: THE SECRET MINE - REVIEW'. KeenGamer. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
- ^Espada, Leo. 'Toby – The Secret Mine REVIEW (So happy it's not The Secret 'Mime')'. Gone With the Win. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
External links[edit]
With its art style making use of shadow, minimalistic design for its 2D protagonist and with challenges more clever than they first appear, Toby: The Secret Mine feels like an indie platformer. We’ve had a lot of those on the Switch so far, with a lot of them coming up with the goods and giving themselves a permanent place in our collections. This game, from Headup Games, should be considered up there with the good ones.
Toby is a humanoid being with horns whose friends have been kidnapped by demonic-looking red-eyed villains. There are twenty-six of them strung up in bird cages across the game, and your side quest is to reach and release them, with a lot of them found in hidden alcoves and just out of sight of the beaten path. But the main mission is to negotiate the game’s puzzle-platforming sequences, with the slightest of touches to any of the game’s hazards resulting in Toby’s death. It’s a pretty forgiving game, usually respawning the player back at the most recent safe spot, but it does quietly record your death count to torment you with at the end.
Your inputs are fairly simple, with a jump button allowing you to make leaps between platforms and an action button for pulling levers. Toby moves at a very rigid and non-negotiable pace; there’s no sprint button, which does make the game feel pretty slow and plodding, but there is a reason for that, as many of the puzzles involve timed challenges like pendulum swinging circular saws and moving platforms which require precision in the timing of jumps in order to progress. There are also more intellectual puzzles, from tile-sliders to environmental conundrums where a code is displayed in the background a short while before you’ll need to enter it, so keep those eyes peeled.
The biggest criticism of Toby is his lethargically-slow speed, but towards the end of the game there is a mine-cart level which ups the pace dramatically. Still, the precision platforming and the emphasis on good timing does offer a decent amount of challenge, but even without following a guide you’re likely to have played through the whole story in around an hour. Difficulty is at a decent standard, but it’s not impassable for novice players.
Toby The Secret Mine Level 8
Colour isn’t exactly showered across this game, but it is used in a way which gives clues towards danger. Spikes that you don’t want to collide with will be a much brighter colour than the dull black that the majority of the environment is presented in, but on the whole it’s darkness which is at the forefront of the presentation.
On the whole, Toby: The Secret Mine is a solid puzzle-platformer. It won’t live as long in the memory as some of the other examples of the genre we’ve seen on Switch so far, but it’s a pretty fun ride while it lasts.
Toby The Secret Mine Switch Review
Summary
Toby: The Secret Mine doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before, but it is a solid if slow-paced puzzle platformer. Pick it up.