chia review
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need to know
what is it? Third-person open-world action-adventure set in a tropical archipelago
expect to pay: $30/£25
developer: Avasab
publisher: Kepler Interactive
Reviewed on: RTX 2080, Intel i7-9700K, 16GB RAM
multiplayer game? No
associate: Official Website(opens in a new tab)
How can I convince you to play Tchia? By telling you it has lushness, stunning beauty that rivals Sea of Thieves, and more satisfying treasure map side quests than Red Dead Redemption 2? How about the open world exploration and stronghold invasion of Far Cry 3, but with the glider and protagonist you actually love from Breath of the Wild? Maybe tell you that the world is full of collectibles, trophies, and highly original mini-games, all of which have a real purpose beyond simply adding a number to a menu screen?
Tell you what: I’ll even throw in one of the funniest in-game camera and photo modes I’ve ever seen, plus a ukulele that can be used to summon creatures, change the weather and time of day, and, Oh yes, play real music. Do we have an agreement?
I love chia. I finished the main story mission in 12 hours, but I played twice as long just to explore more, complete challenges, collect cosmetics, find secrets, add to my wildlife encyclopedia, and take pictures. At least four hours of those hours were spent tracking down a long line of treasure maps filled with hand-drawn landmarks and other clues, testing my detective skills and knowledge of the world to find them. I’m not done, far from done.
Tchia is a child living on an archipelago based on the real-world South Pacific island of New Caledonia. While beautiful and tropical, Chia Island is not paradise. An evil overlord named Meavora has populated the island with creepy, puppet-like cloth infantry, and a malevolent henchman has kidnapped Tchia’s father. Tchia sets out to free her father by using her newfound “soul leap” to enter animals and inanimate objects and possess their powers.
As long as her soul gauge is filled, Tchia can control what she has, creatures like birds, dolphins, and crabs, and objects like oil barrels, rocks, and coconuts.When I need to make a quick trip across an island, I aim for a bird, the soul jumps into it, and I yes that bird. I flap my wings and glide across the continent. When I reach my destination (or my soul meter runs out), I jump out of the bird and I become Tchia again.
The more I do it, the more interesting it becomes. I can control my soul to leap from running like a dolphin through offshore waves to the beach, then pop myself out of the water and have a passing seagull take off before my feet touch the sand. I was once a deer that can cross islands much faster than anyone, I was once a dog (they are useful when I need to dig things up) and a chicken (I can lay eggs, transform back into myself, and lay the eggs into my backpack), or even a cow – you can make them pull explosive poop, which is good for blowing things up.
Tchia Soul Jump”
Soul Leap is useful in crisis. Once I was climbing a cliff, exhausted and fell. Just before I hit the ground, I threw my soul into a rock that sat in the grass I was about to pounce on. No need to worry about landing safely when I can basically teleport to the surface.
self-reflection
And it’s not only useful for traveling, collecting items, and avoiding falls. While exploring, I once found a small opening in the side of a cliff that I couldn’t get through even with a crouch. I suddenly remembered that I had a crab in my pack, so I pulled it out, jumped in with all my concentration, and escaped sideways through the hole. Once inside, I left the crab and opened a hidden chest. Unfortunately, the crab had slipped away and disappeared, and for a moment I thought I was stuck in this little cave now. But there were some small rocks on the ground, so I jumped into one and rolled out through the gap. Infiltration and infiltration are a breeze when you can have almost everything you can see.
(Image source: Awaceb)
Tchia is a vibrant and capable traveler, even if she doesn’t use magic. She can scale almost anything, from sheer cliff walls to the sides of office buildings to vertical metal pipes, as long as her stamina holds up. Climb to the top of the tree, shake it back and forth, and she can use it as a catapult to launch through the air. She has a glider that she can use to jump off cliffs, then eject her parachute to float the last few feet peacefully to safety, and she can glide down hills with incredible speed.
The island quickly becomes a playground for acrobatic travel, and combining all of Tchia’s traversal options and soul powers has been the greatest joy I’ve had exploring the open world in years. It can be blissful peace or wild impromptu scramble across mountains, valleys and canyons. And if that wasn’t enough, I can also summon a raft at a dozen different piers to explore the ocean surrounding the island, taking in the views, occasionally stopping to dive for pearls or visit some of the islets scattered off the coast.
feeling burn
I can reduce an entire cloth monster camp to ashes in seconds without slowing down
When it comes to combat, though, it’s all about soul hopping. Cloth monsters live in small camps on the island (and later, several sprawling factories), and if they spot me, they’ll try to entangle me in weird cloth tendrils. These cloth golems can only be defeated with fire, so Zia’s other ability, “Soul Casting”, is required. I can throw myself into a gas canister or lantern, roll around, and target a bad guy, first lift my dynamite container off the ground, and then lunge at the enemy, and when the dynamite explodes, I jump out again .
Even better, if there’s some wood on a nearby fire, I can turn into a human and allow myself to roll over a whole bunch of bad guys and set them ablaze without having to devote my full attention to something new. Once I got really good at it, I could reduce an entire camp of cloth monsters to ashes in seconds without slowing down enough to get caught in their cloth traps.
Tchia Soul Jump”
Not many adventurers have as much fun gear as Tchia. With her ukulele, I could join in the many musical shows on the island, sometimes a quiet, sweet song sung by friends around a campfire, sometimes a lively celebration at a country party after a public feast. Notes fly into a radial menu, telling me when to play and what to play in a rhythm game format, which can often be quite challenging – but you can also put those songs on autoplay and enjoy them instead There will be no penalty.
The ukulele also doubles as a wand and can play magic spells I’ve acquired such as summoning animals (useful if no birds or crabs are around), changing the time of day, and even making it rain or stopping it. I can also use it to play (badly in my case) free-form music.
(Image source: Awaceb)
go sightseeing
I feel spoiled at this point, but Tchia also gets a great in-game camera. You can take a standard photo, or put it on a tripod and use a timer to get yourself into the shot and pose. There are a dozen different styles of film to choose from, you can adjust the zoom and focus, turn the flash on and off, and best of all, it works just like cameras did before digital took over.
Over the course of my adventures, I’ve grown to like Tchia himself
After you’ve taken your pictures, you’ll need to develop them at the island’s photo studio to see how they come out. It has some real returning satisfaction, and my photo album has both a bunch of great shots and a few where I made a mistake, framing or focusing the wrong way, or not posing the way I wanted quickly enough. Somehow it’s more fun to wait a while to see how your photos turn out than to see them right away. I laughed out loud when I saw the only photo taken with the flash on: Tchia blinked naturally, and her eyes were closed. cute.
Over the course of my adventures, I’ve grown to like Tchia herself–and not just for her cool gear and amazing time-traveling skills. She’s a sweet kid who’s shy with strangers, loyal to friends and family, a friend to animals (you can pet not just dogs, but every creature in the game), and a food lover. Her coming-of-age story has some relatable awkward moments, lots of funny encounters (trying to invent a cool secret handshake with a new friend and failing made me laugh), genuinely tragic and disturbing events, and even A little sweet and wholesome childhood romance.
When not looking for her father, there are many things to do. The sealed temple depicts totems with various facial features, and a strangely satisfying mini-game challenges me to carve a wooden totem to match it, letting me enter the temple and challenge it inside – it could be a game, A platforming challenge, a slingshot range, or a tricky Marble Madness-like course in which I have to roll my way through a moving maze.
Tchia makes searching and collecting well worth your time
Even the standard open world collection of trinkets and pearls has a real purpose, allowing me to trade them in for some of Tchia’s hundreds of cosmetic options, including hats, shirts, dresses, sunglasses, and backpacks, some traditional, some modern Yes, and some really silly ones, like umbrella hats or chick costumes. My ukulele even has skins so I can make it look like a banjo or an electric guitar. Every time I go to the campsite to eat and replenish my soul meter, Tchia’s clothes are tinkered with to try out all the new clothes and accessories I find or trade.
Heck, even the trophies you can earn by completing challenges like cliff diving or animal races are real physical trophies that you can carry in your backpack and drop into an arcade-like claw machine to extract even more new ones. Equipped with prizes. The first time I saw little icons for collectibles and challenges all over the world map, I was concerned that they were the type of pointless distractions you find in most Ubisoft open world games, but Tchia makes searching and collecting very Worth your time.
Tchia Soul Jump”
The island itself is beautifully and convincingly brought to life. Developer Awaceb is from New Caledonia, and the voice acting and music (the game is entirely in French and Drehu) are also performed by native New Caledonians. I knew very little about New Caledonia before playing Tchia, and I’m sure I still don’t know that much, but I can’t recall the last time I played a game with such an obvious love for a real place time and its community.
Tchia (The Game) is a delightfully fascinating world filled with adventure, excitement, beauty, physics-driven fun and many charming characters, none more so than Tchia (The Kid). She may throw her soul into crabs, birds, fish, and coconuts at will, but her heart always stays where it is.
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