Many of you probably have not heard of the New Caledonia archipelago – it is not even a country or a state, but a French administrative-territorial entity. Only it is located not near the territory of Europe, but in the east of Australia. The founders of the Awaceb studio are from there, and in their game Tchia they tried to show all the beauty of their beloved region. The local version of New Caledonia looks really fantastic – I think the number of tourists who want to see this place with their own eyes will increase markedly.
Fabulous place
The main character, the girl Tchia, is celebrating her birthday. Together with her father, she walks around a small island and sings songs, when suddenly a villain arrives with a machete and kidnaps her father. The holiday is ruined, but Tchia is not going to sit idly by – she gets into a boat and goes to the central island to the local ruler to find out what her father was guilty of and how to return him.
You learn enough about the culture of New Caledonia through the game to make you want to read articles about it.
The beginning of the game is one of the strangest episodes of it, which can easily scare off users. Firstly, you don’t understand why you can pick up objects and put them in a backpack. I immediately noticed binoculars and a camera, believing that they would come in handy, but they turned out to be useless. Secondly, the project seems to be trying to resemble a musical with mini-games in the spirit of the children’s version of Guitar Hero, where you press the buttons at the right time. If you do not want to do this, you can turn on the automatic mode and just listen to the songs.
But as soon as you get to the island and start to explore it, Tchia is transformed. First, we walk around a small town, which is not very impressive with scenery, but outside it is a real paradise. A small studio has created one of the most beautiful open worlds. It’s not just about the diverse vegetation – each region has its own trees, bushes and ferns, thanks to which, over time, you begin to understand where you are now without a map. The thing is, how beautiful the sunrises and sunsets are, coloring the sky and water. As the rays of the sun break through the crowns of trees. And in general, how natural everything looks – no acid colors, everything is done with perfect taste.
Already the first small island impresses with views.
Therefore, I simply ran around the island several times and admired the environment, spending more time on it than on the passage of the plot. Tchia knows everything from the very beginning: she climbs rocks and walls, and jumps, and she has a kind of paraglider. One of my favorite things to do is climb to the top of a tree and swing, after which you can make a long jump and press the button of the paraglider before landing.
The heroine is an unusual girl, and she has heterochromia for a reason. Her eye allows you to look at any creature and any small object and move into it for a while. For example, if you take control of an oil lamp, you will be able to roll somewhere and make an explosion. But it’s much more fun to use this skill on animals. When you run through the forest and want to climb a mountain, it is better to find a bird or locust nearby and become it for a while. Well, to just have fun, you can subdue the crab and walk sideways along the beach.
Thanks to this mechanic, traveling around the islands is not boring. When in the image of a bright parrot you fly over an equally bright jungle, the beauty and sense of freedom take your breath away. None of the open world (except perhaps the last “Zelda”) did not give me such an unforgettable experience.
Games – separately, history – separately
However, at some point, the authors decide to put too much emphasis on the plot. The first two-thirds of the game is a wonderful journey, during which you meet locals, collect items for offerings, admire the views, listen to beautiful music, reminiscent of Disney cartoon soundtracks. And in the last third, we part with the jungle and forests for a while and go to local textile factories, the destruction of which will prevent the main villain. At this point, Tchia turns into a mediocre game, and its magic begins to dissipate rapidly.
The desire of the developers of such games to add dull episodes in dirty and gloomy locations was never clear to me. I had the same complaint about Stray – I don’t want to run through the sewers in such a beautiful game, but I have to. However, if this episode ends there rather quickly, then here you need to visit as many as three different factories, and then return to the first one and finish some more things there. These locations are practically no different, there are much more enemies there than outside them, and in order to destroy buildings, you either have to move into lamps and exploding stones, or call totems and shoot at targets.
Impressions are blurred because of this – you begin to regret that you decided to follow the plot, and you want to finish it as soon as possible. The story itself is not the worst – it is banal and predictable, but cute, and this is much more important in such games. However, it is strange that the ability to move into animals and objects is practically not used in story missions. If you do not explore the islands, you will remember this “feature” only at the very end of the game.
Without offerings and ceremonies, local tribes cannot exist.
But outside of the story missions, you enjoy the gameplay of Tchia. There is an analogue of towers from Ubisoft games here – if you climb a mountain or a tall building, you can “scan” the area with one button and mark points of interest on the map. Numerous fruits allow you to increase stamina, so you can climb walls longer. Rag enemy camps are more fun to clear than late-game factories, as there are many fewer enemies there, and you get cosmetic items as a reward. And in order to open local dungeons, you need to carve totems from wood, following the instructions, and bring them to sealed doors – this will increase the energy that is expended during soul transmigration.
In most cases, the rewards are not very useful, but the process of obtaining them does not cease to please. Diving to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to get pearls, exploring treasure maps, opening chests, collecting trinkets – whatever you do, everything is fun. It doesn’t matter at all that you get a hat or sneakers that you will never wear as a gift – I am ready to “vacuum” such fantastic locations endlessly. By the way, if you are trained in musical notation, then you can play some melodies on the ukulele – almost The Last of Us Part II!
Totems take up space in your inventory, so don’t cut them out unnecessarily.
You forgive the game for minor flaws like a sloppy interface. On the world map it is difficult to understand where you are and which way you are looking, so you regularly have to put marks yourself. Instead of a mini-map, there is a compass, but you need to turn it on by pressing the stick, and then it disappears after the next video on the engine, then it remains. The interface looks too cheap against the background of such graphics – quests cannot be pinned to the corner of the screen, the menus seem to have been made at the last moment … Fortunately, you do not have to interact with all this very often.
It was easy to fall in love with Tchia after watching the trailers. In the end, the game turned out great. The open world looks luxurious – this applies to flora, and fauna, and weather phenomena, and sunsets with dawns. Here you do not strive to run from one task to another in order to complete everything as quickly as possible – you want to immerse yourself in the beautiful world of New Caledonia for a while, fly over palm trees in the form of a bird and jump over the mountains like a deer. The storyline takes the game in the wrong direction and doesn’t even encourage the use of the most interesting mechanics. But as soon as you decide to do something other than passing the story, you start to get an unforgettable experience from the gameplay.
Pros: beautiful graphics, thanks to which tropical locations are breathtaking; the ability to move into animals on the fly makes exploring the island exciting; additional activities like treasure hunting and collecting knick-knacks are enjoyable; great music (and the ability to play the ukulele).
Cons: the best gameplay mechanics are almost not used in the plot: the final third of the story lubricates the impression of the game by running around dull factories; messy interface.
