Tchia is a game about exploring the beautiful South Pacific Islands based on New Caledonia. You play as a child, and interact with the world with the same child-like wonder as Tchia might do herself. The world around you is big, beautiful and begging to be explored.
Tchia has this ability to Soul Jump, and this is all about inhabiting nearby animals and objects. This means you can take to the skys as a bird, run and jump through the grass as deer, or hide in plain sight as a rock. Soul Jumping is the core mechanic of Tchia, and it offers up a lot of hidden surprises, and feel-good moments. If you get stuck trying to climb up a hill, no worries, soul jump into a bird and fly through the air. You can Soul Jump into a lantern and set things on fire.
There’s more than a little Zelda in this game too, with the ability to climb neatly every surface, plus you get given a glider early in the game as well, which allows you to jump from a great height and glide safely to the ground without hurting yourself. The trees in Tchia are particularly fun, given you can climb them and propel yourself off them, using them to create momentum, and then climb some more. There’s a decent gameplay loop of climbing, jumping, flying, gliding, and it all adds up to Tchia feeling pretty great to play.
Our New Caledonia-esque landscape is designed with Tchia’s abilities in mind. As well as soaring high in the skies, you can also dive underground and swim through the brightly coloured coral, picking pearls as you go. There are collectible goodies everywhere to be found. You can propel yourself from the tops of trees, jump on huts found in the village and climb little mountains found on the islands, it’s all very satisfying and gives you a sense of child like wonder, it’s like looking at the world through the eyes of a child.
In terms of the story it’s fairly surprising, it looks like it’s going to be all cute and calm, but actually you jump right into the action. People get kidnapped, some guy gets a big knife in the face, kids get eaten… it’s not really what I was expecting but it’s entertaining all the same. The gameplay takes the form of missions, where you have to work your way from A to B. From looking at the game as a distance, you might think this is a calm stroll on a nice island, but Tchia is dealing with hard hitting topics, and isn’t too removed from an early Far Cry game. At first glance you might think this is suitable for young childen, similar to Kirby, but I would think again on that one, given there is a little bit of machete action.
To back up the main gameplay there are plenty of things to do between exploring the islands, things to collect, coconuts to shoot from trees with your pea shooter, craving minigames, fast travel points to unlock and enemies to surprise. There’s an element of music rythmn games in here too, where you get to play guitars and percussion with leaves. It’s really good fun, while acting as a love letter to the islands themself.
In a word, Tchia is charming. At the start of the game we see photos of New Caledonia. To be honest I hadn’t heard of these islands before, I knew of some pacific islands, but not these ones specifically. Tchia gives us uneducated the chance to see a little bit of their culture, experience their music, food, languages and art.
Tchia is one of those games that will stick with you long after you’d played it. The main story is about 7 hours of gameplay, but being immersed in the culture, and the values of the people and families in this game will last much longer in memory.
Developer: Awaceb
PUblisher: Awaceb, Kepler Interactive
Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC
Release Date: 21 March 2023