Tiny Glade is a building game, or a building toy. But you don’t need to actually build anything to see how magical it all is. Instead, you can just take the cursor and move it through a patch of wild flowers. Don’t click. Don’t select. Don’t release a twisting rattlesnake of stone wall or a squat, pointed tower. Just watch as the cursor itself, as its physical presence in the world, prods the wild flowers around, ruffles them, gently reorients their petals and stems.
Stone walls, pointed towers, wild flowers: as these items suggest, Tiny Glade is a game for making pretty little bucolic ruins. You can make a little citadel, with a wall surrounding a central keep and courtyards and battlements and windows to serenade lovers from, but the moment your cursor leaves the screen it will be clear that what you’ve built is old and rundown and pleasantly forgotten.
Windowframes pop into the world sagging. Those walls, which shudder and click as you place them, always come with stones that have settled out of line, with the hint of missing masonry. The towers can be tall and strong, but there’s something about the wood used in the roof, the potential for cracks, that would make a prospective repairman pause under a doorframe, look up, and whisper, “You’re sure you want to stay here?” Tiny Glade trades in gorgeous disrepair.
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