Indie Game of the Week 401: Tchia

I probably still have enough Indie games left over to sate me in my retirement and beyond, so my 401 plan instead will be to tell you all about Awaceb's Tchia. The ambitious next project from the developers of Fossil Echo (which I reviewed around this time last year) sees the studio once again lean on its native New Caledonia roots—a French-owned Pacific island just off the east coast of Australia—for its concept and cultural flavor. Tchia sees the eponymous pre-teen heroine separated from her beloved father by the mysterious tyrant currently in charge and, with her newly-discovered ability to "soul jump" into animals and inanimate objects, takes off on a boat lent to her by a family friend to rescue him. Along the way, she discovers the origins of her power and makes many friends across the isles, usually by winning them over with a quick musical number on her ukulele (and, honestly, the idea that pulling out a ukulele can win you friends seems even more fantastical than the Super Mario Odyssey possession mechanic).

Ambitiously, the game is built like a Breath of the Wild Zeldersatz complete with many traversal tools that make getting around easier between a glider for long drops, climbing up any surface for as long as your stamina lasts, or sliding down hills to build speed. You could also possess a bird or a fish to quickly get around the air or water respectively, though your "soul meter" is constantly ticking down while in control of a creature (though it refills if you find food, which isn't too tough). Otherwise, you're following the story and its mandated fetch quests, or just scouring the island for collectibles after doing the usual song and dance of finding the tallest point in the vicinity and then, uh, yelling. Seems to do the trick?

Speaking of song and dance, I wasn't kidding about the ukulele. The game is prone to these little musical interludes with songs performed by speakers of either the native New Caledonian language of Drehu or the occupiers' language of French. This provides the lion's share of the game's authentic island vibe though it can sometimes feel like I'm playing a Moana tie-in that never was; it doesn't help that these sequences are very challenging due to a radial input wheel for the music notes that simply can't be maneuvered around in time to hit all the notes flowing in from every direction. Fortunately, the game doesn't care if you fail these things or not and will even take over and auto-play through it if you're not into rhythm games. Far as I know, you also can't replay a song once it's over: they're little story moments, after all, not one of the many open-world mini-games. On that note, you have the usual hoop checkpoint races, a diving mini-game that was pretty tough until I heard about the main high-scoring trick (hint: mix it up), shooting galleries for your handy catapult, and a claw machine that can net you free cosmetics if you drop a trophy into the coin slot (which is what you earn from doing any of the rest, and just sit around taking up your limited inventory space). There's stamina fruit to increase your initially limiting stamina gauge, and everything else—chests, clam pearls, native braided trinkets—will either get you more cosmetics or the currency needed to buy them elsewhere. I'm near the end of the game and I've got quite the wardrobe now: they're not just for aesthetics either as each carries a specific buff that can be stacked up to three times, incentivizing you to mix and match your ensemble to make the best use of these boons.

Tchia's not always the most stable game and its animations can be a bit framey and janky in equal measure but that's really part of its overreaching charm. It's not easy to make a game in this model if you don't have Nintendo, Ubisoft, or miHoYo money to throw around and at the risk of sounding patronizing the game is a surprisingly substantial contender for its weight class. Its movement tends to be rapid and player friendly for the most part, possibly owing to its younger target audience, in that climbing up or swimming around or dashing from one place to another for as long as your stamina persists feel very accommodating and stress-free. No sliding off mountainsides in the rain, for example (though that might've just been prohibitively tough to program in). There's very little combat, besides throwing flammables at enemies made out of fabric, and if you should fall off a mountain and die it'll just reset you at the nearest campfire checkpoint no worse for the wear. I will say that the map is deliberately withholding, since it never marks where you are and you have to go by waypoints and signposts that drop a marker on "your last known location" like you were a missing child, and fast traveling to and from anywhere is relegated to just a handful of docks you can park your boat at. The boat too has some interesting mechanics associated to it: the tiller and the sail are at separate ends, so you have to disengage with one to interact with the other. That can mean pointing the boat in the right direction first, increasing speed with the sail, and then hopping back to the tiller in case you need to alter direction in a hurry, and then getting back to the sail once you've closed the distance and need to stop. You can always just leap off the boat too, or drop anchor: either will cause it to slow to a halt without your input.

You can definitely feel the love the developers have for their little island sorta-nation in every inch of Tchia's expansive map, from the settlements of natives and French ex-nationals to the tropical fauna and flora (which is tracked in-game, if you wanted to learn more), and the local history-infused wooden totem carvings and the trinkets. How parts of the island are giving way to potentially devastating industrialization and modernization and how the islands' forces of nature, both mystical and otherwise, are fighting their private war against it. The authentic islander meals you eat at the food stands, the happy or rueful songs you strum along to, or the many pieces of clothing and ship sails that bear symbols of New Caledonia. It's an enchanting enough game for all that alone but, you know me, I love collectible hunts a little too much to understate how much they're adding to my enjoyment also. And hey, while I say Tchia is for kids it behooves me to point out that there is a scene where the bad guy, introduced just moments before, eats a for real human baby right in front of you. It's not all ukulele jams and hanging out with (or as) sea turtles: this game frequently ain't messing around.

Rating: 4 out of 5.