While some spot-the-differences remove items (a cop-out, if you ask me), in Tiny Lands both scenes have the lot. The differences come in size, colour, and position, a combination which I found pleasingly did derail my lazy checks of e.g. “Are there three fish by the lily pad? Yes there are three fish” when I realise “HANG ON THAT ONE IS BIGGER”. And I like that 3D does matter, with some objects obscured from many angles. Really gotta spin round and zoom in a fair bit to spot all those differences. Look, I’ll not claim it’s a challenge worthy of the greatest minds of our generation, but I’m stupid as hell right now and tbh probably a lot of you are too. Thematically, it does remind me of the spot-the-difference books I had as a kid in the 80s, with stereotypical scenes from around the world then a few spooky and weird bits thrown in too. I wish I didn’t need to unlock worlds and could just flick through them all, mind. Back-of-a-fag-packet calculation, I’d say it probably has 50 levels? Sure, that’s probably more than I’ll probably do before I’m distracted by a bright colour or loud noise. Tiny Lands is out now on Steam. A 10% launch discount brings it down to £4.67/€5.12/$6.29 until Thursday the 28th. It’s due to launch on Nintendo Switch later this year too.
