Tchia, for all its faults, is still one of the most wonderfully unique and charming games I've played in a long time. The story, while maybe it could've used being a bit longer to flesh out some characters a little more, is such a wild ride that constantly had me laughing whether because it was being legitimately funny or batshit insane (it was often both). Its also surprisingly dark for something that looks like an animated movie for kids. We're talking a villain who eats babies whole and a visual gag of a headless chicken with blood included. Also fucking like a bunch of people die, its crazy. While doing all the side content will probably take you 4x as long, the main story should only take you around 5 hours or so and I really think everyone should give this a shot especially if you got it on PS plus last month just to experience it. Also it features lesbians! Girls kiss! The story also gets wholesome with it so that's like an extra five stars.

Where Tchia will lose some people is the gameplay. The charm is absolutely still there, you can literally pick up a dog and hold it over your head, its hilarious. It also features a really cool mechanic where you can posses nearly every small animal or object. Some of the animals have different abilities you can use, like Cats have night vision. I did not find almost any of that really useful but its a cute little thing. However I did always have several birds stored in my backpack to use them to fly around when needed. And yes, the birds do have a dedicated poop button, if you were wondering. Now yes everything I've just described is awesome but then the open world stuff comes in. You've got your usual clearing out camps or doing races and stuff. None of it is bad but, I just never really wanted to do it. It just felt like a distraction when all I cared about was the story. Unfortunately as well, a lot of the gameplay in the story amounts to fetch quests. Finding an animal or item for someone and bringing it back to them. Its pretty boring, if I'm honest. There also some combat, which just involves soul jumping into explosive objects and launching yourselves into enemies. The soul jumping is fun but the combat is just pretty eh, and the enemies can be pretty annoying to deal with in dense areas where they'll constantly trap you, drain your stamina and force you to do a little qte. That's another thing, you'll drain stamina from doing almost everything. You're encouraged to find fruit around the islands to increase your stamina but they are very minor increases. If you run out of stamina too you'll basically faint and be returned to the nearest campfire. Thankfully there is an option in the settings to basically make it so you'll never faint. This really isnt a game that benefits from being difficult, and the challenge really is just annoying more than truly hard so I'd really recommend playing with that option on to keep Tchia the chill fun time its meant to be. My final gameplay critique is there are way too many campfire rhythm minigames. I do actually quite like rhythms games (Miku gang rise up) but they were just a bit excessive here, sometimes happening within ten minutes of eachother or less. You do have an option to let them autoplay which I ended up doing most of the time. These are full length songs and while the music in this game, vocal tracks especially, is amazing it just is another part of the gameplay that feels repetitive.

Tchia may suffer from some common open world problems, it may not run the best, it may bore you sometimes but despite all this, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Its bold, its hilarious and it is downright unforgettable.

Trophy Completion - 0% (not the best trophy list lol)
Time Played - 5+ hours
Nancymeter - 81/100
Game Completion #75 of 2023
April Completion #5

Tchia was such a cute time, with an engaging twist on a tired open world formula. Shapeshifting into basically anything made traversal in the game pure joy. Exploring the island and its inhabitants inspired by New Caledonia has very unique vibes and it’s refreshing to experience something wildly different from the grim and brutal open worlds you usually explore. Tchia does a lot of cool things, but in the end only offers just enough for a rather short trip to its island. That’s not a bad thing, especially in times where open worlds usually are heavily bloated.

Então Tchia é um jogo que tem ideias interessantes, é inspirado outros jogos que fizeram certo, como Breath Of The Wild. porém acredito que ele erra, em pontos que não deveria, mesmo tendo coisas boas em um geral.

Pontos Positivos:
O jogo é inspirado na nova Caledônia, que é um arquipélago que fica na melanésia. E aqui fica o principal ponto positivo do jogo, a sua ambientação que é simplesmente sensacional, o cenário é de tirar o folego em alguns momentos, de verdade.

O jogo tem uma ambientação, como eu disse, linda e esplendorosa, e a forma como a cultura local é representada é bem legal, ao menos nos primeiro vinte minutos de gameplay.

A trilha sonora faz o seu papel na maioria das vezes que aparece deixando o jogador relaxado, quando necessário, e passando um ar bom, a maioria das vezes. As músicas cantadas na lingua local são muito, mais muito boas mesmo.

Pontos negativos:
Eu não gostei do design dos personagens, acredito que aqui tenha sido a escolha da direção trabalhar com eles dessa forma, mas não acho que tenha sido a forma certa. Em alguns momentos o contraste dos personagens, com pouca definição, com o cenário chega a ser assustador, e estranho, na verdade.

E sendo sincero com vocês, a história me passou muito batido, me vi em vários momento jogando apenas no automático pra zerar o jogo logo, aproveitando apenas os cenários e a música, que no fim, foram as únicas coisas que pude aproveitar concretamente ao jogar.

Conclusão:
Tchia é um jogo que tem inspirações em jogos como Sable, e principalmente Breath Of The Wild, mas que erra principalmente na forma como constrói e leva sua história, mesmo tendo uma ambientação e cenários magníficos.

An easy game to love, but also a surprisingly easy game to dislike.

The islands look so cosy, the protagonist is cutesy-cool, the animals you can become are lovely (not to mention that the ability to poop as any bird was a great success with the kids), there are many fun little touches (like being able to pick up animals above your head and deposit them in your bag for later use, or how you can dance on your boat while it speeds into a sunrise), and seeing Tchia kiss another girl made my queer-loving heart jump with joy.

And yet when I had taken photographs of a factory for a mission and the game then asked me to take pictures of three more factories, I couldn't help but feel my finger twitching for the “skip gameplay segment” button.

Because the problem is that the game doesn't have much to offer. The story tidbits can be cute, but most of the game is threadbare and just filler, sending you running across the island back and forth on boring fetch quests while filling the map with icons to gather like you’re in an Ubisoft game (and it's just as exciting as you can imagine). The possession mechanic isn't even as fun as I had expected - you can only possess a handful of things and creatures (no possessing a chair that somebody is sitting on), your stamina for possession is limited per day, requiring you to sleep and eat (boring things) to use the most fun mechanic of the game, and even then possessing items is nearly useless, as none of them have any actions that remain fun beyond the first introduction.

But the clearest sign that the game didn't respect my time wasn't even the factory quest, but when I had to talk to another girl to progress the story, so the game sent me to the other side of the island from her home village where I got the quest, and then gave a short cutscene when I arrived which ended with the girl standing up and walking up a path, calling me to follow. The cutscene ended and I didn't see her anywhere so I checked the map to see where she was and she was back at the village where they had just told me to find her here! A backtrack followed, because I was not ready to quit yet; unfortunately that didn't last.

There are things that are legitimately impressive about Tchia, but unfortunately I couldn't love it, and as it left PSN before I could finish it, hence the grade.

And what's worse - I had plenty of time to return to the game before it left PSN; but remembering the factories I still had left to photograph, I just didn't want to.

Really great score, great idea, and the best movement system in any game ever!

Playing a Ubisoft style Open World thing without being bogged down by SYSTEMS is just really chill! I'm sure the story is great but I lost interest in it so quickly sadly.

Won't win any awards but it's just really... nice! (Also it's obvs got a great Dev story behind it)

Tchia is a remarkable achievement and a special gaming experience. A team of just 12 created this robust open-world adventure game incorporating stories, designs, and music from the developers' home, New Caledonia. It wears its inspirations on its sleeves - most notably Breath of the Wild, - but the game is so rich with that small island's culture that such criticism feels petty and obtuse.

If anything keeps Tchia from being truly great it's its failure to properly explain/spotlight some of its gameplay elements. It took me a while to grasp how dynamic and versatile the soul-jumping mechanic was, but once I did the game came together in a beautiful way.

I'll have my eye on this team and whatever they choose to do next.

After about 30 minutes with the game, I had to give up. It controls so poorly. It feels, and also kind of looks like a game made in Dreams. Not at all what I expected. I understand you get different movement options as you go along, and those seem neat - but I have no desire to play more to get to them. After stumbling around for a bit and reading some dialogue, I was prompted to play an instrument. Cool! Yikes, it was also not engaging whatsoever.

I feel bad because it's clearly a game made from the hearts of the developers, but it plays so poorly that I just can't see anything redeeming about it.

Fofo, divertido e com uma ótima trilha sonora. Tchia é relaxante em quase toda sua duração, onde o foco é desfrutar de seu mapa e da cultura que ele se propõe a criar e retratar. Sua história é simples, bem humorada e curta, não deixando a bola cair em momento algum. Porém, ele parece querer ser mais do que é, principalmente por sua inspiração em BotW, mas nunca alcança tal ambição. Seu mapa aberto parece grande, mas é bem vazio pela quantidade de mato. A mecânica de assumir objetos e seres vivos é muito divertida, mas só começamos a ter algum tipo de desafio em sua reta final. É um belo jogo que lembrarei no final do ano, mas não conseguiu me marcar.

Really cute little game! A ton of fun mobility options with your boat, hand glider, and the ability to become birds, deer, fish and so much more.
Playing a game based on a culture and country that has seen basically zero representation so far (New Caledonia) was a wonderful breath of fresh air, jumping into their myths and experiencing their traditions was a ton of fun.

Speaking of fun, the game has a really silly but effective way of humor, made me laugh a few times and smile a whole lot more.

THe last act unfortunately drags the game down a good bit, in which Tchia moves away from the rewarding, free flowing Island exploration and towards three big weirdly forced stealth and combat encounters, that can be cheesed with your guitar powers (playing your guitar makes cool stuff happen, how much more of a sales pitch do you need) but were still a tedious break from what made the game fun up until that point

I really love what Tchia is doing, but I don’t really think the game itself is very good. There are certainly cool parts to it, but as a whole, I do not think it is particularly fun.

The heavy cultural roots of the game are so incredibly cool and a big draw. Admittedly, I had not really heard of New Caledonia prior to playing Tchia, but I love how the game pays tribute to the country and cultures there in ways that can be appreciated by someone like me who knows nothing of it. Gameplay-wise, soul-jumping into animals and random shit is dope. Jumping to a deer to sprint around the world and ragdoll into walls, or fly around as a bird to cover big distances quickly is rad. Don’t have an animal? Jump into a rock and then slingshot yourself into the air by chaining soul-jumps. It’s extremely cool! And I wish the game was just that, but it’s not. It has a boring story, long cutscenes, bad minigames, poor pacing, and a pretty empty world.

As described above, the best part of Tchia is the soul-jumping, but you have to play through a painfully boring 90 minute intro before getting the ability. And the opportunities to use the ability are entirely dependent on the objects around you. At one point I had to traverse through a large swampy area to find an item and the only thing I could possess within the area was a crab. While funny, after 3 seconds as a crab, I realized that my only real option to get where I needed to go was to just run slowly as this small child. And, man, that sucks. When I can be a cool bird or a fast-moving deer, any time spent as the kid just feels that much worse.

I played Tchia for 2 hours. In those two hours, I was introduced to about a dozen new minigames, 5 of which were not good rhythm sections. I love love love that the game used artists from the region to record original music. I do not need to play a bad rhythm game to experience said music. There was also a rock-stacking minigame with shoddy physics, a totem-carving minigame which requires a full restart if you make a mistake, a shooting range, and more. None of it really was worth doing

I wanted to love Tchia so badly. I wanted to experience this culture I was unfamiliar with in a new way, but man I just was not having enough fun to keep playing. I respect the heck out of the dev team for making this game and I’m so glad they did, but I think Tchia could’ve been a better game if the scope was reigned in just a bit.

+ Beautiful cultural representation for a country that never really appears in video games or media in general
+ Soul-jumping is rad as heck
+ Music is lovely
+ Ability to skip any segments you don’t want to play

- Intro is way too long
- Too many minigames
- Bad rhythm sections
- Not enough opportunities to soul-jump resulting in frequent, boring instances of running around as a slow child
- Feels a bit too ambitious for the small team they had

Tchia overflows with personality and its own ideas, in a unique game world based on the small island of New Caledonia Tchia knows it's strengths and make them count, the charismatic set of characters, the beautiful views of natural places, everything makes it's setting different from everything you've seen before.

The movement deserves it's own text because soul jumping is so much fun, sure you can just do basic stuff like capture a bird and fly away and that's nice, however you can also chain captures your way trough a lot of space, like using a rock to go from the beginning of one island to another and even chaining some captures along the way, is such fun times.

And yes Tchia has it's flaws, primary the combat (even tough the devs know that and you don't need to fight in anywhere after the tutorial, yes even on that place, you just need to do objectives) and both the city and the character models could be better, however it does fits the game the city being the least interesting thing, the game isn't about that.

In the end Tchia don't have the money or time of bigger games to have "perfect" systems and all models and such, but they know what the core of the game is, and that core, is such unique and well executed that leaves you wanting more.

I can only hope for more great games representing different places and cultures in the same way that Tchia does.

A lovely wee thing that gives a glimpse into a culture I never knew existed. A place named after my own country no less.

Tchia lets you just kinda mess about. Possess a bird and fly over villages. Make it do a shit. Play your uke to summon a plant that bounces you into the air, or a bubble helmet that gives you infinite breath for deep diving. Take out a camp of creatures made from fabric by controlling a plank of wood to roll through a fire and burn them all to unlock some cool sunglasses. Do the palm tree thing from Beverly Hills Ninja. It's a bit of a simple wee playground, but the playground is big.

The story surprised me because despite not being anything incredible, it's quite dark and got me a few times while also being humorous in places. You can just tell there's a lot of love here. It oozes throughout.

I understand the BOTW chat at a glance, but please don't go in expecting that. The elements it does borrow are very light indeed, and we need to stop comparing everything with grass fields and a glider to it. The "collectathon" chat can be taken with a grain of salt too, because that's completely optional, and while there are a ton of map markers, you maybe only have to search out 20 of them unless you like just exploring.

In the nicest way possible, just chill out, switch your brain off, and take control of a chicken that lays explosive eggs.

Much to my pleasant surprise, I really enjoyed this to begin with. Tchia is essentially a 3D platforming collect-a-thon, but without the platforming... so I guess that just makes it a collect-a-thon. And boy does it not fuck around in this regard. New Caledonia makes Banjo-Kazooie look like a barren wasteland by comparison. And you know what, that's okay. Because Tchia is breezy and chill, and possessing the soul of some poor innocent bird to traverse the picturesque world in search of more shiny trinkets to grab is strangely satisfying. Some of the mini-games are fun too. Taking on time trials as different animals is a particular highlight, with the various fauna feeling decently tight and intuitive. (The rhythm mini-games are absolute shit, but hey, you can just put them on automatic and go put the kettle on.)

Yep, Tchia's open world is a charming haven of carefree exploration and relaxing atmosphere... for the first half or so anyway.

And then sure enough tedium sets in, and it all starts to get a bit rote. The same tasks are regurgitated over and over. And then the game commits of the fatal error of placing more emphasis on its turgid 'combat'. There are some missions later on down the line where you have to infiltrate enemy bases and take down paper monsters and sentinels and piles of fabric and it is TEDIOUS AS FUCK! I don't mind tackling the smaller camps where you can get them over with in a matter of seconds, but when the game asks me to clear out literal factories that have 30+ paper monsters wandering around using the same gas lamp maneuver over and over again, I start to question my sanity. The story never really seems to find its footing either and the cutscenes, from the animation to the general direction, tend to feel half-hearted, as if the devs know they don't have the time and budget to fully commit to what they want.

I was kinda hoping that Tchia would prove to be this year's Stray - an indie game given away for 'free' on Sony's gaming subscription service that would quickly go on to generate word-of-mouth buzz and become a darling amongst the gaming community. Unfortunately, it is most definitely not in the same league as the cyberpunk kitty odyssey.

Also, can someone tell these indie developers that heterosexual women are still a thing. I'm not against gay representation in video games, but I can't remember the last time I played as a female protagonist in a video game that was actually straight. Do they not exist in real life anymore?

Aside from a couple of slight annoyances with the 100% requirements, Tchia is an incredibly impressive, sweet, and fun game made by a really small indie team who wanted to celebrate what they love about their own home. You can really feel the love seep through from the locally composed music to the native voice cast, as well as the cultural landmarks and food. I noticed a lot of people complaining that the game is too slow or needed to have more to it, but the thing with this game is that it shouldn't be rushed through. It's supposed to be played at a slow and steady pace not all at once. Think Breath of the Wild meets Wind Waker that's just so incredibly relaxed. A lot of people saying that the game can be 100%'d in about 20 hours, but I honestly think that's too low as I clocked in about 30. Still, the game is almost definitely worth a playthrough on PSPlus seeing as it's free if you have the Extra tier or higher. If you finished the game and liked it enough, then definitely go for the 100%.