Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

So why is Ellen in the picture looking sad? I used to think it was because of her quest to find her long-lost mother but now I think it’s because she saw the end of Folklore. After spending a good chunk of time leveling up the folks and trying to capture new ones in the middle Chapters of the game I finally finished it last week and, well, the ending isn’t good.

It seems like Game Republic ran out of time with the game and made the last four chapters or so very cut scene heavy interspersed with some smaller action levels that quickly introduced some tougher folks. The sleepy pace of the opening chapters was wiped away by a much more intense ending. While the final boss’ identity was an odd twist that fit with the story the fight itself was uninspired and poured on the special effects so often that it didn’t look all that good.

Now that the main plot is done, what do I do now? Not much given how the game is structured.

After the final fight you don’t get to save again, and there doesn’t seem to be anything attached to your user profile that’s unlocked by finishing the game. Replaying previous sections requires you to reload your saved game from before the final fight, and the online maze-crawling mode may give you rewards of new folks, but without a reason to play through the game a second time why would you want more folks in your arsenal?

The online mode is also a bit underpowered in terms of maze design and folk choice. The levels all look alike, the mazes are boring to look at, and you can’t swap folks once you load your character from the saved game you choose. I imagine this could cause a problem where you come up against a folk you can’t combat with your current choice of folks, and I don’t know if the game would detect this and give you a warning or not. In the end, it doesn’t matter much to me because I don’t think I’ll be going back to Folklore again.

There’s the usual setup for a sequel, and the game world is rich enough to warrant one, but I hope they get the opportunity to make it play well all the way through before deciding to make Folklore 2 or not.