Tchia will leave the PlayStation Plus Premium and Extra game catalog on March 19. And you really need to play this charming open-world adventure that I called “a new coming-of-age classic” in a four-star review before it’s gone.
Released in March 2023, Awaceb and Kepler Interactive’s Tchia is an open-world indie adventure heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda titles like Breath of the Wild and The Wind Waker. It stands out by transporting players to a world inspired by the Pacific islands of New Caledonia and immersing them in its vibrant culture and mythology while telling a captivating coming-of-age story.
That it released just a couple of months before The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom meant that this game flew a bit under the radar following its release. But with Tchia leaving PS Plus in a couple of weeks, you have ample reason to revisit or discover this game.
Tchia follows the titular character, a young girl whose father is kidnapped on her 12th birthday. Although she’d lived most of her life in isolation, her journey to stop Pwi Dua and Meavora and save her father brings her to new islands and villages where she forges friendships and relationships and learns to handle grief and take responsibility for her future. It’s a heartfelt story that’s not afraid to get dark at times — one of the main villains eats a baby at one point — but Tchia also keeps the adventure vibrant, colorful, emotional, and wondrous.
This is a game I’ll still turn on and play for a few minutes, even almost a year after reviewing it, to vibe with the beautiful world Awaceb created. Tchia is a game where it’s fun to interact with everything you come across just to see what you can do and where you can get to. Climbing is a stamina-based system like in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, but Tchia also makes it easy to swing from tree to tree. It’s satisfying to get across a large chunk of the map by launching myself off a tree on a cliffside and then paragliding down from there. You can even go sailing, swimming, and diving too.
Players can also possess objects and animals in Tchia, which gives players new abilities like flying as a bird or opening locks with a crab’s claws. While it takes full advantage of those systems when it comes to puzzle and mission design, I still appreciate them as a set of tools that makes exploration even more entertaining. Add in a map that only gives players a vague idea of where they are, not a precise location, and an open world scattered with beautiful vistas, neat hidden secrets, and plenty of collectibles and side objectives, and Tchia is a game I have no problem getting lost in.
An outstanding soundtrack by John Robert Matz also enlivens that experience. Influenced by music from the region of the world Tchia is set in, it doesn’t quite sound like any other video game soundtrack I’ve listened to. Some rhythm game segments within Tchia even allowed me to engage with the songs on a deeper level, as does a ukulele-playing mechanic that can grant the titular character additional abilities.
Tchia’s soundtrack not even being nominated for that award at The Game Awards 2023 was one of the show’s biggest snubs. Give the soundtrack a listen on Spotify if you don’t believe me — maybe that’ll convince you to pick up the game. Check it out for no additional charge with a PS Plus Premium or Extra subscription while you still can, or give it a shot when it launches on Steam sometime in March. That Steam release will also come with an update that adds ability perks to Tchia’s outfits and new melodies to play on the ukulele.
Tchia is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and PS5. It will be part of the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog until March 19, when it will leave the service alongside some other heavy hitter games like Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Outer Wilds, and Neo: The World Ends With You.
