Timbertales Review

Welcome to the world of Timbertales, a turn based-RPG style game for animal lovers! This cute mobile title, currently in early access, takes you on a journey through the wilderness. Explore as a badger, a porcupine, or battle against other players with your army of insects. Beware though, dangers lurk in those woods.

Created by Rainware, Timbertales lists itself as a “fantasy cross platform game” according to the company’s website. It is available on the iOS, Android, and Amazon app mobile platforms, and is also a part of Steam Greenlight. This game poses an interesting step in the mobile gaming world, where PC and mobile may start to meet.

Getting down to the actual title, the graphics are well done. Nothing too high detail, but the Timbertales has a nice color palette that does bring you into a North American woodland forest. You start off as a badger for the tutorial, taking some time to learn the hexagonal style of moving across the map. There is some hand holding for the first mission, which came in handy a little in this case. Bringing realistic looking animals into an RPG setting threw me off a little bit.

There are quite a few game modes, which is really nice as it provides a lot of diversity. The tutorial can be found in Adventure mode along with four other levels such as the prologue. I’m presuming, as it is developed, more levels will be added. The chapters after the tutorial will need to be unlocked using in-game currency, which are acorns, and can be purchased at the Exchange Office or earned completing tasks. There is also a challenge and multiplayer mode, and multiplayer will be interesting as more players join in. Timbertales is also dedicated to PC/Mobile cross-platform gaming; the possibilities of being able to play this game on the go as well as coming home and picking it straight up again on your PC does make this title quite appealing.

Timbertales is very well planned out. It loads quickly and is easy to follow and understand. It looks as if Rainware took their time to make sure that every fundamental need was in place before starting early access. So far, I only noticed one bug where the game seemed to freeze, but again, early access, these things have to be let go a bit. One drawback I did notice is that internet is needed to play, which isn’t always convenient while on the go.

This title has a lot of potential and the cross platform aspect is something we may start to see more of. This is a great title for young and old, as the battle system is pretty easy to get a hold of. The only strange aspect of the game is that, in the battles, there is blood, but at the same time that’s nature… so as a child of the Mortal Kombat era, it doesn’t bother me. I could see where that might bother others, though. All in all, good game with great potential. The future will be interesting for Timbertales.

7/10