A game from the heart, soul, and spirit of native New Caledonia. Navigate and explore through an open world island and follow the story of Tchia as she tries to find her father.
This game is comparable to a lot of things, Wind Waker, Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, though the story is a little more linear. Tchia is a game about following a young girl on her adventure after her life is upended. This involves a lot of rafting around between the two large islands and many smaller ocean locations, and then exploring on foot or by swinging in the trees to follow the trail of adventure, and maybe also figure out what’s going on with the floating pyramid at the top of the city.
I said this game is from New Caledonia, and I genuinely do mean it. The game is fully voice acted, but in their languages, not yours. The natives and the tribes all speak in the native Drehu language, whilst the citygoers, and some of the younger members of the world in the game speak in the colonial French. Tchia naturally knows and speaks both, which helps when you have to talk to the French speaking characters in the city. My partner is French, and she can confirm the accuracy of just how dismissive the secretary is.
In terms of gameplay, there is a story to follow, but you can follow it at your own pace, which is nice when there is so much other stuff to do. Almost all interactables glow, making them easier to see at night, and rather early on you collect a ukulele that lets you change the time of day. The world is fun to explore, and unlike a lot of open world games, it very explicitly does not mark your location on a map outside of a few very specific and predictable circumstances. This forces you to look around and find landmarks in order to locate yourself on the map, then follow your compass to reach the next area you want to go. (Un)fortunately for this gameplay decision, the game does mark important story waypoints on your compass to follow, but it’s only the main story waypoints, not side content or collectables.
I mentioned Mario Odyssey, and thats beacuse one of Tchia’s main abilities is her Soul Jump, which lets her possess any animal, rock, or explosive in her viscinity. Animals help with mobility and some have abilities like crabs cutting chains and dogs digging up treasure. Fish and birds allow Tchia to swim without worrying about oxygen, and fly around the map at tremendous speeds. Throwables instead can be thrown at enemies or bombable walls, though enemies will only ever be found at marked enemy compounds and camps. All the transitional areas between are safe to navigate however you wish. This power does have a limit though. Tchia can only possess stuff while she has energy for it. This energy replenishes automatically while not posessing anything up to half, and can be refilled fully with food.
This game, like the culture it’s based on, has a huge focus on music. Almost every chapter ends with a musical minigame, starting with a simple one button percussion interlude, then progressing up to Tchia’s ukulele, which has 8 different notes to play. During the minigames, and while casting Soul Melodies (which is the thing I mentioned above about changing the time of day), you only have to hit the right note when directed, but you can also switch into free jam mode, where each face button corresponds to a different strum (down, up, pluck, and pluck high), the triggers change the pitch, the bumpers change the quality, and the right stick pitch bends. It’s an incredibly fleshed out music system that allows for complex songs and melodies, and every chord is animated accurately to how the ukulele is played. For a culture with such a focus on music, it would seem like blasphemy to not properly animate the instruments, so I’m glad they did.
This game isn’t really difficult, it’s first and foremost telling a story, the whole story of a young girl. The pain of loss, the determination to protect the people she cares about, and all the awkwardness that comes with finding love and going on an adventure. And it blends beautifully with all the traditional food, the stunning flora and fauna, the tribes and people she interacts with, and the storybook framing of the tale of Tchia, a mystically gifted girl, as told by an elderly caretaker to the children in her care around a campfire, on an island, in New Caledonia.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1496590 £29.00
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/tchia £24.99
Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Tchia-2559216.html £26.99
Leave a Reply