There’s trouble down in the south pacific. A set of beautiful islands is under the heel of the tyrannical dictator Meavora. Tchia’s father, Joxu, has been kidnapped by Pwi Dua and brought to Meavora and it’s up to Tchia to save him. So Tchia sails around a set of islands inspired by New Caledonia, a French occupied set of islands in the south pacific. The unnamed islands have been invaded by the Maano, a strange creature made from cloth that appears to be taking people and holding them up in their cloth factories? All Tchia has is her trusty slingshot and an ability to soul jump into animals to fight this powerful evil.
Tchia
Developer: Awaceb
Price: TBD
Platform: PS4, PS5, PC (Epic Games Store)
MonsterVine was provided with a PS5 code for review.
Based on that pitch alone, I was interested in Tchia. Its cartoonish appearance and non-violent approach to the beaten-into-the-ground open-world action-adventure genre seemed like a breath of fresh air. Tchia starts out with some interesting narrative beats. We see an adult bringing a child to an orphanage, getting them acquainted with some of the other children, and sitting them down to tell the story of Tchia. We take control of Tchia as her father is teaching her how to use her slingshot before they settle in at the campfire for a nice rhythm game. The rhythm game parts, while not super rewarding, are definitely the best parts of Tchia. As the intro progresses you’re introduced to going to high places to shout, not unlike your bird’s eye view thing from the Assassin’s Creed games. It’s also where Tchia shows you how inconsequential completing your side activities will become.
Arguably the worst part of Tchia is that nothing you do really matters. Ascend to the highest areas to shout like your father taught you, but to what end? You’re not given a better lay of the land, or territorial control. You’ve merely checked it off on a small checklist next to your map. The primary enemies of the game, the Maano, have camps all over the unnamed islands. When you enter camp, you’re given an objective, to kill all the Maano and destroy their piles of fabric. But when you do it, that’s it. You get a little chest with some cosmetic gear but the state of the islands remains the same. Everything you do is inconsequential.
So I simply stopped doing things. Instead, I made a bee-line to finish the main story because whatever I was doing outside of the main story didn’t seem to matter. Nobody’s lives were being improved, I wasn’t doing any of these objectives to give me an advantage in any way. They’re just there for the sake of being there. And just like the game design elements that are so shallowly implemented into Tchia, the story as well didn’t seem very cohesive at all.
Tchia is a very meat and potatoes story about a girl fighting an overwhelming evil, and only she can do it because she has this soul jumping ability. And at every story turn, the necessity of Tchia’s soul jumping ability is absent. When her father is kidnapped, she manages to soul jump into Pwi Dua’s machete and cut him, that’s it. The player doesn’t do it, it’s in a cut scene. She goes on to meet various town chiefs/elders and tries to impress them, but the focus is on cultural accuracy here, so there’s no soul jumping. Soul jumping seems to primarily serve as a means to allow the player to participate in races, by soul jumping into a deer, or travel, by soul jumping into a bird.
Sailing the boat is okay, you adjust the speed by going to the sails and then sail it by taking the helm. It’s not perfect but once I got the hang of it, it felt satisfying. Sailing around you can find clam pearls for trading and flashing light buoys that indicate cosmetic chests you can dive for, which unlock a lot of costumes and accessories. Along with the rhythm portions, the accessories and costumes were very cool. I’m reminded of older RPGs where you’d obtain costumes regularly throughout the game as a reward instead of DLC.
You can fast travel from dock to dock but only if you’re already at a dock. Tchia has no idea where she is on the map, you’re able to push in the L stick to circle a general idea of where she is on the map. You can find an exact location if you walk by a street post. There are Maano factories around with objectives in them but completing them offers you absolutely nothing. When you complete challenge games like shooting ranges or races you’re given trophies that you can trade in to play a claw machine. There are collectibles all over the place called Braided Trinkets and, though I had over half of the total collected, I never managed to find out what they were used for.
Tchia ended up becoming a frustrating and boring mess of a game. While it functioned well, I wasn’t given anything except narrative for my efforts. Which would be fine if it felt like the narrative beats were worth exploring. I was promised a coming-of-age story and instead received a clunky children’s story. The cities and towns in the game felt soulless and empty, primarily the main city, Aëmoon. While exploring, I didn’t feel like I was exploring a lived in world. I’d walk or sail around only finding empty factories or towns without people in them. Contrasted with going to find these points of interest and finding backpackers hanging out there with things to say about the area to you. The areas that were supposed to be populated were empty and the areas that were supposed to be empty had some people in them.
I ran into a few technical issues as well, which I hope are resolved on release. Primarily, the texture pop-in on the Playstation 5 was abysmal. Some cutscenes would start out and you’d see the character in an open field and over the course of the cutscene the house and rooms they’re in would eventually build out. Likewise, there were several times where a cutscene would end and I’d be in the water underneath the world. Luckily, I was presented with an option in the review build that I hope is carried over into release, Skip Current Gameplay Segment. This pulled me out of a bind a few times, allowing me to progress when I hit a bug or dumped underneath the world.
Tchia had the promise and scope of a well-designed, professional product but was executed like a college class project. Foundationally, Tchia has promise and if I was told this was in development, I would have high hopes for this game. But with the release looming around the corner I can only advise that, aside from the cultural offerings Tchia presents, you’d be better off playing something else.
The Final Word
I wouldn’t presume to know what went wrong with Tchia’s development but I hope the team at Awaceb is able to figure it out because Tchia has a solid foundation and I’d like to see more games from them in the future.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2 out of 5 – Poor
