This gaming handheld is the complete opposite of Steam Deck – but no less compelling

TinyCircuits has been doing great things with tech – making its own fully working, retro-style gaming handhelds and televisions, but in miniature. It already offers a playable Game Boy-alike in keychain size – now it's in the crowd funding phase for a follow-up.

The Thumby Color is, as the name suggests, a full colour gaming handheld that's styled around the iconic Game Boy Advance. The big difference is that it measures just 51.6mm across.

That's less than a quarter of the size of a Steam Deck.

Unlike most retro gaming handhelds available today, its size means it is not capable of playing the best classic games through emulation. Indeed, as The Verge points out, its 16MB flash memory could barely fit three SNES games, let alone a catalogue of titles.

Instead, as with the original Thumby, this latest mini-machine will come with original games preinstalled. These will include shooter Monstra, a dungeon crawler called Thumbgeon 2, Tag and puzzler BustAThumb. You'll also get the suite of games that came with the black and white Thumby.

Developers are encouraged to make new games for the console, so there could be more to download in the future too.

Remarkably, the Thumby Color manages to pack in a D-pad and two action buttons on the front, plus shoulder buttons top left and right. There is also a rumble motor crammed into its tiny shell. And charging is performed through a USB-C port.

The device is currently undergoing crowd funding on Kickstarter, but has more than doubled its funding target with 32 days still to go (at the time of writing).

TinyCircuits is offering backed versions from $49 (around £39) and claims it will ship from November to "anywhere in the world".

The standard colour is purple, like the original Game Boy Advance, but there are also clear plastic and black variants available to back. These might cost a little more.