Tiny Auto Knights

A first release built on a decade of mobile porting experience

Tiny Auto Knights is developed by Mumpitz Games, a German studio founded in August 2024 by three former colleagues from HandyGames, where they'd spent over a decade working on mobile ports of titles including Titan Quest, Wreckfest and Endling, alongside contributor Stephan Wetzel. Published by Mumpitz Games and Gamersky Games, it released 7 November 2025 for PC, following an earlier public demo period that let the developers gather feedback before launch. Its structure sits squarely in the auto battler genre popularised by Super Auto Pets and Teamfight Tactics: players recruit heroes from a rotating shop pool, merge duplicate copies to level them up and unlock stronger abilities, arrange them across a 3x3 grid where position determines attack order and targeting, and then watch battles resolve entirely automatically against other players' recorded teams. Runs continue until a set number of losses accumulate, with relics and item slots layering additional strategic choices on top of the core recruitment loop.

Earning the Super Auto Pets comparisons

The praise that dominates Tiny Auto Knights' review corpus centres on how well-executed that familiar formula feels in practice. Reviewers repeatedly and specifically compare it favourably to Super Auto Pets, with more than one flatly calling it a stronger version of that genre-defining game, while others frame it as a worthy, distinct entry in its own right rather than a direct imitation. The tutorial draws specific credit for easing new players into systems that can otherwise feel opaque to genre newcomers, and the roster — reported by reviewers at around sixty heroes spread across five rarity tiers — draws consistent praise for the sheer number of viable synergy combinations it supports, with one detailed review specifically highlighting how differently the same hero can perform depending on grid position and the opponents it happens to face. The genre's characteristic lack of a turn timer during the building phase draws its own repeated praise as genuinely relaxing, with several reviewers specifically recommending it as an ideal companion activity for watching a stream or listening to a podcast, while still delivering real strategic depth once a match begins.

Small creatures with a real sense of escalation

One specific, recurring detail reviewers credit adds real texture to the merge system beyond raw stat growth: heroes visibly evolve in appearance as they're leveled up through merging duplicates, turning what could have been an invisible spreadsheet mechanic into something players can read at a glance across a busy board. One detailed review captures the effect vividly, describing the surprise of watching a humble slug sprite gain visible muscle definition and a previously unassuming worm hero suddenly capable of one-shotting a much larger, tankier knight once its merge tier and item stacking came together. That kind of legible escalation matters specifically in an auto battler, where players need to read an opponent's board at a glance during the shop phase to judge threat level before committing currency to a counter-strategy, and reviewers who highlight it treat it as a small but meaningful piece of the genre-standard formula Mumpitz Games has assembled competently around its own central hook.

When one build breaks the metagame

Set against that praise, the most consistent and detailed complaint in Tiny Auto Knights' review base concerns a specific balance failure: a hero build centred on fire-based damage reportedly became so dominant in competitive play that, at its worst, matches against it were effectively decided before a player's own strategic choices had a chance to matter. One detailed review specifically credits an earlier period with three or four genuinely competing optimal builds, only for that same reviewer to report the fire update collapsing that diversity down to essentially one dominant strategy, undercutting exactly the kind of build variety the genre depends on to stay interesting match after match. That same reviewer, notably, still recommends the game overall specifically because of how strong the pre-imbalance experience had been, a distinction that runs through several of the more detailed critical reviews: the core systems are sound enough that a single balance patch, rather than a fundamental design flaw, is treated as the actual problem.

Grinding toward the good stuff

A related, more structural complaint concerns progression pacing rather than in-match balance. Reviewers describe the process of unlocking new heroes through account-level leveling as unnecessarily slow, with one detailed review specifically noting that low-rarity heroes cost the same unlock currency as legendary ones, meaning players spend disproportionate time and currency securing options that add relatively little strategic value, while the exciting, build-defining heroes stay locked far longer than the reviewer felt was reasonable. That pacing complaint compounds the fire-build imbalance for some reviewers, since a slow unlock curve leaves newer players with an even narrower practical toolkit to work with while the metagame's dominant strategy remains largely out of reach. A smaller, more specific complaint concerns matchmaking: despite the game's asynchronous design, where players battle recorded opponent teams rather than live players, at least one detailed reviewer reports real connection waits of roughly twenty seconds per match during weekly challenges specifically, a friction point that seems at odds with the format's core promise of instant, always-available matches.

Value

At its current discounted price of NZ$10.99, down from an original NZ$21.99, Tiny Auto Knights sits in a much more comfortable position than the pricing several detailed reviewers criticised at launch, and more than one reviewer who initially balked at full price specifically credits the subsequent adjustment alongside genuine post-launch content additions as evidence the developers listened. The Very Positive score — 177 positive against 37 negative across 214 reviews — reflects a review base that largely finds the core recruit-and-battle loop, hero variety and relaxed pacing worth recommending despite the real, specific balance and progression complaints raised by a detailed and credible minority. For genre fans drawn to Super Auto Pets-style strategic depth without a real-time reflex component, and willing to accept that a young, three-person studio is still actively tuning its first release, this is a reasonable pickup at its current price; for players who need a consistently diverse, settled metagame from day one, the review corpus suggests checking recent balance patch notes first. </content>