Tchia – Coming to Game Pass | Review

Breath of the Child

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris July 3, 2024Last Updated: July 2, 2024

0 3 minutes read

Tchia is coming to Game Pass, and I love it. Set in a fictionalized area modeled after New Caledonia, you are Tchia, a clever child who can hop into objects and animals and possess them. Separated from your father, you’ll journey to uncover your past and help those you meet in a beautiful, somber, heartfelt narrative. As this one is coming to Game Pass let’s get into why anyone looking to shed a few tears and experience joy should give it a download.

Tchia

You’ll begin the game living on a secluded strip of land with your father. Events quickly occur and he is kidnapped and taken to the mainland. This is a world of magic, beauty, and death. Tchia holds no punches with its story as it is complemented by an incredible soundtrack that brought tears to my eyes on multiple occasions. Tchia is an open-world title, though far smaller in scope than that genre tends to be. There are two main land masses and you can 100% everything in roughly 15 to 20 hours. If you focus on the main quest you can expect it to last about 9 hours.

The game is best experienced as spoiler-free as possible. There are some hard-hitting moments in what is otherwise a beautiful, slow-paced adventure title with little to no “action”. You’ll traverse around via a possession mechanic that allows you to jump into objects and creatures as you solve puzzles and fetch items.

Possession & Gliding

The main game mechanic sees you aim at objects or animals around you and temporarily jump into them. You’ll have a limited amount of time to swim, fly, or roll around as fish/birds/rocks. There are ways to upgrade the amount of time you can possess creatures via direct meter upgrades and clothing choices. Tchia has a slingshot given to her by her father that she can put to mischievous use, as well as a thatched-together glider. Much like Link in Breath of the Wild, she’s great at climbing almost any surface and all of it runs off of a stamina meter.

You’ll get a small boat early on that will see you swapping between the sails and rudder to control the direction and speed it takes, and it all feels great. I played on PC with both controller and mouse & keyboard. Both worked well and the game is not demanding graphically, so chances are it will run fine on Xbox consoles. There are a decent number of mechanics that are slowly introduced to you over the game’s first few hours and worth discovering on your own as it’s one of the game’s greatest strengths.

Sites & Sounds

My favorite part of Tchia is its mix of simplistic, beautiful graphics and a stunning soundtrack. Tchia has a ukelele given to her early on. You’ll unlock soul songs that allow you powers like changing the time of day and many more, again worth finding out on your own. At certain parts of the story, you’ll take part in performing songs. You can choose to play these songs manually or press a button to listen along as you watch the characters perform.

I first played through Tchia over a year ago and since then its soundtrack has been one I hit up every few weeks. The game is fully voice-acted with characters speaking French and Drehu. I read that there were no professional voice actors that spoke Drehu. Those the developers at Awaceb were able to find were excellent, conveying clearly the emotional heft of the story being told.

Graphically the game goes for a simple look. It’s not a technical powerhouse but the art style and lighting work in tandem to make something gorgeous. Riding a raft into a golden hour sunset is breathtaking, and the draw distances (at least on PC) give an epic sense of scale when you’re flying around as a bird or circling the ocean as a dolphin.

Wrapping Things Up

Tchia is the latest, and one of my favorite, late ports to Xbox that’s arriving thanks to Game Pass. It’s a beautiful game, with an incredible soundtrack, fun gameplay, and an emotional story full of loss and love.