As was the case with History 2048, one of my main motivations for purchasing Miniature – The Story Puzzle was its appealing art style (it didn’t hurt being on sale, either). The screenshots posted on the game’s eShop page highlighted neat little dioramas, not dissimilar from History 2048. Both games were developed by purpleElephant, so the shared design aesthetic makes sense. It was a good looking game, but there just wasn’t much to it.

Each stage of Miniature told a story across five scenes, represented by changes in a diorama. For instance, one stage told the story of a deep sea dive. Early scenes had the diver getting ready aboard the boat and entering the water, while later ones highlighted the discovery of treasure and threat of a shark. I cycled through the scenes randomly, moving the diorama around, zooming in for clues, in an attempt to put them in the correct order.

There were about a dozen stages to play through, which altogether took less than a half-hour to complete. The controls were the most puzzling aspect at first, but once I figured them out, I was off to the races. Conceptually, the gameplay of Miniature was enjoyable, and the presentation was neat! But, there wasn’t much to the package. Although I don’t think the game is a particularly good deal (even on sale), it’s probably the perfect length.

Adding more puzzles could’ve improved the value proposition, but to prevent the game from getting stale, I think the developers would’ve had to increase the scenes per stage to up the difficulty, or expand the gameplay in another way. Miniature was enjoyable, but it seems better suited as a novel minigame in a larger game.