Being a frequent watcher of TCM, over time I’ve seen and learned about director James A. Fitzpatrick’s documentary film seriesFitzpatrick’s Traveltalks,and in particular the role they played providing American audiences in the 1930s a look at various locations and cultures from around the world during a time when access to such locations was limited by various factors. That was something I thought about while playing Tchia, the new game from Awaceb, in particular how the evolution of various mediums throughout the year has provided us with the opportunity to immerse ourselves in these parts of the world even further with video games. Because while Tchia does take place in a fictional world, it’s heavily inspired by the culture of and is basically a love letter to New Caledonia, the homeland of the team’s co-founders, and a part of the world we rarely get to see.
Tchia centers around a young girl named Tchia, appropriately enough, who lives on a small island with their father in an archipelago. One day, her father is kidnapped by the tyrant known as Meavora, which kickstarts Tchia’s coming-of-age story as she sets out to rescue him, a story filled with mysterious possession abilities, enemy soldiers made of fabric, spirits made of wood, masked warriors and much more, but a coming-of-age story nonetheless. The story itself is fine, with a lot of great elements and even more than a few genuinely shocking moments, even if it’s hindered by pacing issues and a few other iffy bits, like one character that just pops out of the blue and exists only to serve as mission control for one portion.
The real star of Tchia, though, is the land itself. From the more modern capital city and the industrial areas around it to the rural villages and the valleys and peaks in between, this version of New Caledonia is gorgeous, and feels like a creative look at the country and its local charms, from the detailed cuisine that you can eat to the use of both French and Kanak languages by the various characters. It’s a vibrant and creative take on the land that pops out as you explore it, getting a good look at all of the love for the creators' homeland that went into everything. The use of folklore also lends itself to impressive character designs and story elements as well, giving it even more of a unique charm.
It helps that you’ll be traveling around the land in a variety of fun ways, be it sailing around on a raft, gliding from high places, inhabiting the body of a boar (more on that soon), and other ways provided to you. Movement is nice and fun, even if the physics-based platforming bits can get iffy at times. Still, getting around the islands can be a blast at times, and allows you to explore its various locations and secrets. The game also uses its map and waypoints in a clever way, sticking them on your compass and never showing exactly where you are, presented in such a way that feels like it encourages exploration, which works nicely.
But let’s get down to the core gameplay already. Tchia is an open-world sandbox game…and that basically sums up all the major gameplay right there. I wish I were kidding, but Tchia is pretty much the exact definition of the average open-world game. Or rather, the type of open-world game that litters the map in the exact same kinds of activities you’ve seen in every other open-world game, to the point where it feels like some sort of patchwork quilt made of the genre. There are the Assassin’s Creed-style lookout points on high places that mark all nearby points of interest on your map, the Far Cry-style enemy encampments to clear out, the Breath of the Wild-style stamina-based climbing, the numerous beaded trinkets and giant pearls to collect in order to unlock various clothing and ship customization items, etc.
It’s not that all of this isn’t fun, mind you. Tchia is still an enjoyable title, open-world or not, but it feels like it overwhelms you with stuff to do. You get introduced to at least three of these activities before you even make it to the title proper, including things like a rock-balancing mini-game to learn new soul melodies that can alter things like the time of day even though only seven rock balancing bits exist in the game’s world, and the ability to use a slingshot, which literally will not be mandatory until the very end. There are so many of these bits that even by the end I didn’t learn about one mechanic – being able to catapult yourself between trees – until it showed up in a loading screen. True, some of this also nicely shows off the local flavor, but you can’t shake the feeling that it all comes off as either padding, a fear that the player will be bored unless they’re constantly engaging with something, or both.
I would lean towards the padding at times, though, because the game does rig up more then a few moments designed to force you to trek across the land as much as possible. For one, there are only ten fast travel points, courtesy of five unlockable docks per island, and and you can only travel from said docks. But then there story moments such as when you have to acquire a chicken from a particular village. After completing a task for them, you’re told to go with up with one of the girls who provides the chicken, expect they’re in a hut on the other side of the island. So you head there, talk to them, play a little ukulele song, and then you’re told to meet them to get the chicken…back at the village you just came from? That felt like pointless travel and it sadly wasn’t even the worst example of it.
Speaking of those ukulele bits, the music in Tchia is amazing, perfectly incorporating traditional instruments of New Caledonia and its various musical style into an amazing score, pleasing to the ears with several lovely, welcoming tunes…but its rhythm game sections can be hit-and-miss. It’s not that they’re awkward to play or anything (and you can just set them to automatically play whenever you’d like, a good option), but again, they start to feel intrusive at times, as of the developers wanted any excuse to show off a new instrument or song. At one point Tchia is warned that Meavora may be coming for their loved ones, so Tchia sets out to warn them, and the first thing she does upon meeting them is…play a ukulele song? There’s a sweet moment that comes from it, but it just left me wondering if Tchia had their priorities straight.
The one truly notable feature that Tchia has gameplay-wise is soul jumping, the ability to have Tchia possess any small object or animal. It’s mainly used either for getting around by possessing faster animals, solving some puzzles or fighting various cloth minions by flinging oil lamps at them. It honestly doesn’t feel as big of a standout as it should (not until the second half, anyway, which faces Tchia off against larger armies of cloth monsters), if only because as highlighted in these last few paragraphs, it tends to be buried under a load of other mechanics/activities, but it’s a welcome touch that’s fun to play around and experiment with.
In the end, Tchia is a fun game, but one that arguably suffers from a bit of feature creep and/or overdevelopment. Things like soul jumping, sailing, gliding, playing ukulele and whatnot all make for great ideas for games on their own, but combined they clash. And combined with the open-world formula and the modest length, in the end you have something whose best comparison would be a game such asKena: Bridge of Spirits,being something that’s still fun overall, but not wholly original. Except while Kena struggled to find an identity while borrowing from other games, Tchia’s world gives it an impressive identity that suffers due to the huge amount of mechanics borrowed from other games winding up as too distracting. In the end, it winds up as a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
Closing Comments:
Tchia is a terrific ode to New Caledonia that’s sadly hampered by a bloated and standard open-world design that tries to do too much. Still, even if the gameplay isn’t wholly original, there’s fun to be had here, with truly impressive sights and sounds that can make the archipelago a delight to explore at times. Just attempt to maintain some focus as you navigate the numerous distractions and you’ll experience quite the impressive trip.
