Tiny Crawl has almost no story and is focused more on gameplay than anything. However, it does follow a rough, linear progression. Your goal is to find the Crystal of Ix by progressing through a series of harder and harder dungeons. That's it. Everything else within the game is entirely dependent on your interpretation of events, although there are unfinished "ominous messages" which serve to add mroe story to the game world. This is primarily a game about gameplay, not story, so it's understandable that there isn't much exposition.

When you start off the game, you'll initially notice that it takes place entirely within a grid of randomly generated rooms. You do not move within rooms. Rather, you can only move between rooms and interact with things inside them. This is the first major streamline of rogue-like mechanics that Tiny Crawl implements. Instead of having to sift through all those empty corridors and cave systems, you directly leap from room to room, making the game play much faster than other rogue-likes. Each room will only contain one element, be it enemies, mushrooms, stairs, or what have you. Stairs (or ladders, if you prefer) are the only way to continue on your quest, so they are the most important room attribute and should be found as soon as possible for each new dungeon level.

When you run into a room, chances are you will encounter either monsters or traps. You will wake the monsters as soon as you enter, which allows them an initial attack on you if you leave and come back. In other words, you only get the drop on monsters once, and every time you come back to a group of monsters you formerly left, they will get the drop on you instead. Sometimes leaving and coming back is unavoidable, but you have to make sure you have enough health before entering a room that has monsters in it. Thankfully, if a room still has monsters inside, it will be marked on your map, so you will always know where they are. Traps are nasty as well, because they instantly subtract 12 health. Funnily enough, if you are in a room next to are diagonal to a trapped room, you will encounter a feeling of dread, making trap detection almost like the classic game Hunt the Wumpus.

Alongside monsters, rooms can also contain items. Items are divided into four different types. Weapons increase basic attack strength, armor increases health, spells take up different spell tabs, and spell power increases the effectiveness of your spells. Items are absolutely essential to surviving, as later levels get extremely difficult without increased damage or health. This necessity of exploration for items is a definite unique point of Tiny Crawl, and one of the better aspects of the game. However, you will find your exploration constantly blocked by monsters, which forces you to engage in combat. You also can't take too long in exploring a level, as after a certain amount of time, monster patrols that are significantly stronger than the stationary monsters will begin to spawn. There are also healing mushrooms scattered around, although they are limited in supply and only heal you by three hit points each.

Combat is relatively simple. There's no randomization of damage, so monsters of a certain type will always deal and take the same amount of damage. You will also always deal the same amount of damage, which is dependent on your basic attack characteristic. When in combat, you have the choice to do basic attacks or a spell from one of your three spell tabs. Your spell tabs function much like an inventory, with a maximum of three spells in your tabs at any particular time. You can also have repeats, so if you want to have all healing spells, you can. Spells are essential to survival, as they allow you to do things such as take out all enemies in a barrage of magic or heal yourself when you are at the verge of death. Beyond spells, combat is simply targeting an enemy with tab and pressing space to do an attack. After each offensive action you perform (spell or otherwise), every enemy in the group gets one action in response. This means that you can heal yourself at no penalty, but attacking opens yourself up to a world of hurt if you aren't prepared.

Tiny Crawl is a very focused game, but there are still a few minor issues. The graphics are certainly not for everyone, although we think they have a delightfully lo-fi charm about them. Combat serves little purpose except as an obstacle at the moment, which can be very frustrating to newer players becoming used to Tiny Crawl. After all, there's no XP system, so combat with monsters only opens up new areas. It doesn't actually give you levels. Enemies also tend to get stronger than you can keep up after a while, making the game become quite difficult in later dungeons, even if you have been gathering every possible item. Finally, there's little character customization outside of spells, which is a shame. However, the game is still in development, which means that all of these potential issues (except lo-fi graphics, which are charming anyway) will undoubtedly be addressed by the developer at some point in the future.

For those that have difficulty in getting into rogue-likes, Tiny Crawl acts as a perfect introduction to the world of dungeon-crawling. Its gameplay is so streamlined and simple that your grandma can pick up and play, and it has enough depth and uniqueness to keep fans of the genre intrigued and engaged. It's also playable anywhere and on just about any system thanks to its status as a low-fi browser game. There are two different versions of Tiny Crawl you can give a try. The latest stable version can be found here, while the absolute latest build (which may be unstable) with the newest gameplay updates can be found over here. If you have any suggestions on improvements to the game, you can offer them in the official TIGsource thread.

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