Experienced across four beautifully rendered vignettes, Miniatures is a short game that leans as much into the shadows as it does into the charming strangeness at the core of each narrative.

Miniatures doesn’t take great pains to explain or justify itself, leaving us somewhat mystified by the sparse tales. The connections between the little ballads are delightfully unforced, making the game as a whole feel like a curated artistic experience rather than a complete narrative. We’d go so far as to compare Miniatures to a literary magazine, where each story responds to a theme while still being individually expressed.

The stories can be played in any order by selecting the representative object in a box of trinkets. The reptile figurine takes us to The Paludarium. We spend an evening at home as Emil, whose parents call to say that they’re staying late at work. Emil collects snails to feed the family reptile, Hugo, all while the house itself begins to take on the qualities of Hugo’s combined aquatic and terrestrial enclosure.

The seashell leads to The Last Sand Castle, where we rouse creatures made of rocks and shells from their slumber and equip them with instruments. The moth opens The House of the Moon, in which Alma searches the sea and cliff sides for her mother, often using a mysterious blue light as her guide for the path forward. Finally, the screwdriver represents Familiars, a tale about a family assembling furniture together to poor outcomes.

The sound design is sparse, but impactful. We were made to feel in turn lonely, adventurous, and stressed by the well-placed music and effects. It’s like everything in Miniatures—a light touch goes a long way towards the overall effect.

There were times where we got momentarily stuck and struggled to figure out what we were supposed to be doing—clicking, scrolling, backtracking—in order to progress forward. Miniatures places a bigger emphasis on exploration and interaction than it does on puzzles, so getting stuck was more frustrating than it might have been in a strategy game. Ultimately though, we were always able to find our way through, so we’d call it a pretty minor complaint.

Miniatures is a short narrative experience but manages to navigate both awe and dread during its approximately one-hour play time. Each tale imbued us with a sense of mystery and left us ruminating on all that was left unsaid long after we finished playing.