You've probably seen a few gifs of Tiny Glade at some point over the past year on Twitter or TikTok (though I'm not sure it had a name or Steam page until recently). Do you remember short clips of someone moving a mouse over green pasture and effortlessly drawing wooden fences, stone walls, castle towers and pointed rooftops, and then click-and-dragging to make little adjustments and tweaks and thinking "Oh my gosh, that looks divine."
That was probably Tiny Glade, which feels similar to games like Townscaper: a completely relaxing sandbox with no goals or objectives where you basically paint beautiful little castles in a lush green world. Get mesmerized by the trailer above, which was revealed at the Wholesome Snack presentation before the Game Awards today.
I love the way the world reacts to your movements, the stone walls and fences almost feeling alive with how fluidly they spring up, shrink down, and reshape themselves under the mouse pointer. Click and drag and you can pull a chunky stone wall across the meadow. Click the ground and a dirt path appears, and if you drag that path into the wall an archway will be formed to let the path pass through. Pull the path through a shorter wall and a wooden gate will appear as if by magic. It just looks so dang good.
And while you're drawing paths, keep an eye on that stone wall you just built. You'll see leafy green vines slowly growing up and over it. Is there a chubby little sheep wandering around nearby? Take a break from your castle to give it a pat. Delightful.
Tiny Glade is the work of Pounce Light, a two-person development team. Here's Tiny Glade's Steam page to anxiously camp while you await a release date.
