This game comes out of nowhere for me. A small team with roots in New Caledonia creates a small but fine action-adventure based on the group of islands that lies roughly between New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Tchia is a hearty exploration game with great chill potential but also a massive sandbox factor. Because there is a lot of interaction on these islands, and the tricks you learn over time will make your head spin after just a few hours of playing.
In the demo I played the girl Tchia, who acts as the titular godmother, who makes friends with the residents on the northern of the two fictional islands, solves tasks for them and has to put a stop to ruler Meavora. I know the latter from the Steam description of the title, not because it would have been particularly combative so far. The few confrontations with ghostly stuff creatures don’t follow the classic sword-shield-dodge roll pattern and are done quite quickly. Up to this point, the focus has been on discovering and exploring – and it’s a lot of fun.
Because Tchia has a special gift: She can slip into the bodies of animals and also into many objects and then control them! The giant centipede in front of you? Slip into it via “Soul Jump”. You see a dolphin from the beach? Take his body while your soul meter lasts! Even birds are not armed against Tchia’s magic, within seconds you reach dizzying heights, pop out of the poultry at the desired peak with a super jump.
Not every creature has its own ability, at least as far as I’ve seen so far. Many just walk around. But when, for example, the chains that kept a treasure chest locked called for the powerful claws of a palm thief crab, I honestly actually had one of these giant crabs in my inventory (did I mention that you can also pack the little creatures in your backpack?) . So pulled out and slipped into his shell!
Apparently there is quite a lot of collectible stuff in Tchia, which usually – so far – only unlocks cosmetics. So if you prefer to follow the story strictly or want to search the silhouette of the landscape for the outlines sketched on various treasure maps, you have a free ride. But I have to say: Although I’m not usually very fond of collectibles, this aspect also appealed to me, because Tchia is one of those games in which it’s a lot of fun just to be on the go. Not least because the map only shows your exact position when you are standing at a signpost. If you don’t do that, you have to examine your surroundings carefully if you want to localize your location.
But even more important is the how: Back to the flight as a bird from the example just now. The subsequent super jump out of the plumage was almost always followed by the opening of my glider and the search for a suitable place to land. In my case, it was often enough a steep descent down to the next valley. Because the way Tchia throws herself on the seat of her pants to endlessly slide down a slope is simply brilliant. It is wonderful how fluidly and at what speed one moves in Tchia.
Games that let you slide as long as the mountain lasts have always been my favorites (thanks Apex Legends for the lesson!). In general, there’s almost nothing I like doing in games more than sprinting into a long slide – and yet Tchia has brought another method of locomotion that I find even cooler: “tree-clipping”, as I call it for lack of a better term.
If Tchia uses her stamina to get to the top of one of the many trees, you can swing back and forth on her, bending the tree a lot and then using this swing to flick yourself 30 or 40 meters like a particularly cute booger. Ideally, straight into the next treetop, where the game continues. It’s only since this morning that I’ve known that you can still do tricks in the air, for example a roll to show off particularly hard. If you combine all these skills and moves, you can move very creatively across these islands. Who hasn’t always wanted to tumble down a gorge as a rock? I like this free-wheeling joy of experimentation.
Apart from that, Tchia convinces with winning, innocent charm and a great mini-game on a magical ukulele. It not only affects the time of day, but also has a few other useful spells in store that help in certain situations, such as when you have planned a longer dive. And of course there are the many heartwarming interpersonal scenes, for example when you develop a friendship with an islander and her mother.
Dreamy South Seas music with catchy tunes, mischievous character design, a great virtual camera, sailing that doesn’t just happen by itself … in Tchia you can really let your soul dangle, even though I know that a more serious conflict is probably looming on the horizon.
What developer Awaceb still has to work on is the technology. I love how this looks, but the performance still lags far too often to really do justice to the fluidity of the gameplay. But otherwise? Who would have thought, right? I’m not quite sure where the journey is going, but after a good five hours on this dreamlike island, I’m sitting a little impatiently on my packed suitcases.
Tchia is scheduled to be released on PC, PS4 and PS5 quite early this year
