Tchia is developed and published by a small Montreal-based studio named Awaceb, whose wish to introduce players to the sights, sounds, and cultures of their native homeland of New Caledonia in a colorful open-world adventure game. Tchia was first announced during the 2020 Game Awards for PlayStation consoles and Microsoft Windows, and despite a minor delay, it is set to launch sometime later this year in 2023.
Players are put in the role of Tchia, an island girl whose father is kidnapped by mercenaries. To save him, she must journey across a fictionalized version of New Caledonia and gather the things she needs to gain an audience with the mercenary leader who rules the island. The preview build is set a few hours into the game’s story, with Tchia arriving at the small village of Weliwele. The locals are suspicious of her, so she has to earn their trust by helping them gather food and supplies for their dinner.
Tchia plays out like a typical open-world sandbox game, with players exploring the colorful landscape, collecting valuable items, and performing music using Tchia's playable ukuele instrument. One of the game’s selling points is its free-form locomotion system, which lets players climb trees and other landmarks, swim through the clear blue lakes and rivers, and even glide in the air above. However, gliding drains Tchia’s stamina, and she can be knocked out if she lands too hard from a treetop or drowns in a lake. When this happens, the player has to reload the game from the last checkpoint. As her adventure goes on, Tchia will gain various tools to help her, such as a slingshot that can be used to knock fruit from trees and a camera to take pictures of the many unique sights she finds.
One of Tchia’s most noteworthy assets is her ability to Soul Jump into various objects or animals, as shown in past Tchia Game Awards trailers. To do this, the player holds down a certain button, which causes time to slow to a crawl. Objects or creatures that can be jumped into glow green, and it is a simple matter of aiming the targeting reticle and pressing the corresponding button to take control. However, possessing a creature or item drains the green Soul Meter at the bottom of the screen, and once it depletes Tchia must wait for it to fill back up before she can use her power again.
Tchia can also sail across the rivers and lakes on her trusty boat, but controlling it is a more involved process than it usually is in exploration-based games. To control the speed and direction of the boat, the player must actually move to the sail and helm and directly interact with them. It takes a while to get acclimated, but sailing through the beautiful waters is rather soothing once the player has a handle on the controls.
There are also various minigames, such as rolling tortillas for dinner, stacking stones on a pile, and playing along to a musical number on Tchia’s ukulele to advance the plot, change the time of day or even summon animals to Soul Jump into. Tchia can customize her outfit with items she has unlocked at campfires, as well as eat, sleep, and practice her ukulele.
Tchia features a cel-shaded art style that adds beauty to the island setting and calls to mind other open-world fantasy titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Likewise, the music is simple and soothing, adding to the game’s overall laidback tone. Tchia's voice acting is performed by native New Caledonia residents in Drehu and French.
Tchia still has a few bugs and animation glitches in the preview build, and the ragdoll physics can be wonky at times. However, these issues can be smoothed out with more development time, and what has been shown so far looks very promising. Should Awaceb use its remaining development time wisely, then Tchia could be a beautiful and relaxing trip through a mysterious and magical island full of wonder and adventure - one that draws heavily from the real-life lore and culture the developers grew up with.
Tchia releases on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Microsoft Windows in 2023. A digital Epic Games Store code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this preview.
