Tchia, the second release from French New Caledonian developer Awaceb marks the studio’s first open-world sandbox game. The game has its fair share of weight on its shoulders right away, as Awaceb’s team not only have to impress in their first sandbox release, but also represent their native New Caledonia Ya.
At its core, Tchia is a love letter to that tiny island in the Pacific. While it changes the names of places, people and animals, from the environments you roam to the food you eat, you’ll be reminded of the places that inspired Awaceb and Tchia in general. Awaceb’s passion for New Caledonia is palpable when you play, and there’s a strong sense that the creation of this project feels like a dream come true.
Playing Tchia, this passion is greatly expressed through the game’s many features. Its visuals make the island sandbox an incredibly beautiful play space, and a special emphasis deserves special emphasis on the water, which is mesmerizing enough that when you take a long journey on a raft, it feels as if it’s flying by in a matter of minutes. The way the water catches the light at sunset can be breathtaking. The appearance of Tchia’s characters, animals, etc. also has this cartoony charm, which contributes to the light-hearted moments throughout the game, adding visual gags and bits of physical comedy. These moments are further supported by a soundtrack, which is also full of pleasant, calming tracks as you move from one goal to another. While it feels like you’ve listened to all the songs after a while, they’re captivating enough to warrant repeating.
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Music is a big part of Tchia, because between the main quests, you’ll often find yourself gathered around a campfire, playing a ukulele or other musical instrument you’ve been exploring in areas you’ve been exploring. These musical mini-games are fun enough that it might be a challenge to get 100% engagement, but since the cutscenes take place in the background, you might feel like you’re missing out on the story when you’re playing some of the musical parts.
Tchia does have one main goal, other than just wandering around and taking in the sights. You, as the titular character, are on a quest to save your father from Meavora, an evil being who has taken control of the island you call home. During this journey, you’ll meet some friends, some enemies, and have to travel across land and sea in hopes of getting your father back. While it might not be Tchia’s main selling point, its main story is pretty good. There are a few twists and turns that got me hooked on the game, and the charm at the core of the game seeps through again, but it’s not a game that makes you play the story over and over again. This is good.
The real beauty of Tchia is its sandbox-style gameplay, which gives you a lot of mechanics to try out in-game. Soul Leap is a real highlight of the gameplay, as it allows you to have almost every animal and object you’ll come across, giving you a lot of options when traversing the map. Also, this is how you beat combat encounters. They might not appear very often, but if you want to add to your decorations, or just take down some fabric monsters, you’re going to have to be stuck with the combat system. Combat in Tchia is essentially a more aggressive version of Garry’s Mod item hunting, where you have to fire flaming objects and explosives at fabric enemies to burn them to a crisp.
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Beyond soul hopping, there’s a whole host of ways you can navigate the world. From your trusty glider to your raft, you don’t always need your soul-jumping abilities to make do, one of the most fun ways to jump I’ve found is to jump from tree to tree, using what you can The power is obtained by swinging back and forth on the tip. When traveling in Tchia, you have to watch your stamina, which is also your health. This can be consumed through climbing, diving, using a glider and many more strenuous activities. There are ways to increase stamina, but it depletes very quickly, meaning you can’t use it for more than a short period of time.
Among the aforementioned features, Tchia has a lot more. There is a camera for you to take pictures, a small game of stacking rocks, a small game of mask carving, competitions, a slingshot shooting range, and more small activities waiting for you to participate. However, while Tchia certainly has many moving parts, the sum of those parts does not always form a working whole. It’s a little difficult to point out the glaring flaws in a passion project like Tchia’s, but the cracks are there. For example, the open world isn’t as complete as it first appears. Aside from the odd activity that can be done quickly, there isn’t much to do other than picking up trinkets and fruits that increase your stamina. The world may be fascinating, but not necessarily full of life. You don’t stumble across any secrets during your exploration, there are no side goals to expand the world or its characters, and while there are occasional people on the same path as you, it’s clear that you’re the only thing in the world with any kind of agency.
There are plenty of gameplay elements too, but not all of them stick to the ground or feel like they contribute much to the overall experience. For example, the camera proves useful in one task, but it actually feels like the main goal is to make sure you don’t forget about the camera, rather than feeling like a photo is a necessary solution to a given problem. The ukulele also feels like it was left out at some point, as the music gradually becomes a cute side attraction rather than a necessary part of the game. Soul Leap adds to its importance throughout, but it just makes it feel like this deserves more attention. Rather than having five different enough things, one great mechanic can give a game a less hectic feel.
Finally one must also mention the visual bugs in Tchia, which are rare but appear at the worst of times. Without spoiling the story’s ending, the final cutscene refuses to load the environment, meaning it looks as if all the characters are floating if they’re not stuck in an awkward T-pose.
Tchia is a game of ambition, passion and charm. However, it doesn’t quite live up to its ideal version. There’s a lot to like about Tchia, and if you’re just looking to explore a visually impressive world with a solid soundtrack, go ahead. But it seems like it has to do a lot more to really stand out in the genre. Hopefully Awaceb continues to develop on the ideas in Tchia as many solid foundations have been made.
