The perfect example of style over substance, with a couple of good ideas that can't hold the game together. Such a shame that a game that cares about movility in an open space with no handholding to let you breath its space doesn't have any sense of cohesion.

Tchia seems to be a pretty comfy game with low stakes but builds itself on top of a "save the world and the person you love the most" plot, with enemy camps and an actual villain that ruins the atmosphere every second it stays in the way of its mechanics. And the actual "leit motif" of this game, to celebrate New Caledonia, doesn't feel more developed than to read a panflet made by a tourist agency. It's nice to play songs and see local dishes, but there's never a compelling character, a tale about its history that actually teaches the player how this culture functions and how has been built and developed.

And that is my main problem with Tchia, it doesn't know what it wants to be; and the point that's supposed to articulate the game is flat and condescending to the player and to the place it was meant to celebrate. The celebration of a culture can't be sincere without showing the conflict that culture has been transformed by, and the refusal of any political conversation by telling the story as a kids tale is intrinsically problematic when that estructure only shows the "tourist friendly" side of the place is trying to commemorate.