Toby: The Secret Mine Reviews

Toby: The Secret Mine is ranked in the 7th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
Cubed3
Top Critic
4 / 10
Jun 30, 2017

To put it bluntly, Toby: The Secret Mine plays it too safe. It settles for a basic understanding of the fundamentals, and does little to push the player. The pacing is appropriate, the adventure never becomes monotonous, but there aren't any inventive or exciting elements. Trial-and-error game design has its own problems, but at least more effort could have been put into Toby's death animations. Usually, he falls over like a puppet that lost its strings. In some cases, he doesn't do anything, and gamers are merely kicked back to the last checkpoint. If death is such an integral part, at least make it fun.

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4.5 / 10.0
Jul 4, 2017

Toby: The Secret Mine lacks inspiration and original ideas: it's a puzzle-platform adventure inspired by masterpieces like Limbo and Inside, but it isn't able to rival with them.

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5 / 10
Jul 11, 2017

Toby: The Secret Mine has plenty of great ideas that could make it a great game, but it quickly plummets down a mineshaft thanks to a number of missteps. It generally succeeds as a puzzle game, but the heavy focus on platforming doesn't work well and hampers the overall experience. By following the basic visual style and gameplay from such a highly regarded game like Limbo, The Secret Mine sets itself a standard it's never able to reach.

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7 / 10.0
Jul 12, 2017

Toby: The Secret Mine may look like another famous platformer, but it deserves to be recognised by its own merits. There's plenty of brain teasing going on as well as some tight platforming to keep you pushing towards the end. Don't bother getting invested in the non-verbal narrative, just enjoy the journey.

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6 / 10.0
Jul 16, 2017

Toby: The Secret Mine is basically a more colorful clone of Limbo. Same pros, same cons, with some puzzles that occasionally pushes too hard in the direction of the "trial and error".

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Digitally Downloaded
Brad L.
Top Critic
Jul 26, 2017

To be honest, the only redeeming factor of Toby: The Secret Mine is that it's not one of the many, so many, "roguelikes" or pseudo 8-bit platformers that are the norm these days from indie developers. It felt kind of refreshing to go back to 2014, even for a fleeting moment. The ideas in Toby are sound, the execution however is a lot to be desired.

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3.5 / 10.0
Aug 10, 2017

Toby: The Secret Mine is inspired, to say the least. Its not its imitation of previous games that kills it, but its execution of those elements. It had potential, but you've seen this game before.

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3 / 10.0
Aug 23, 2018

Although it does share a few good, similarities when compared to the inspiration, enjoyment is sadly not one of them, and if I wanted to play a Limbo-esque game I would just rather play Limbo instead.

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5.5 / 10.0
Oct 13, 2018

The presentation and story are fun, but the rest really doesn't stand out much. All in all, there are better offerings out there that give you more consistent quality. The puzzle-platformer genre is deep, but Toby is nowhere close to that.

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