I grew up playing Point and Click adventure games on consoles, a genre I really love. However, there was a drought of them for a long time on consoles, I don’t believe this was the case with PC but I was never a big PC gamer, in fact, we didn’t even get a home computer until I was about 22! This is probably crazy and hard to believe for most people reading this, but back then not everyone had one or felt the need to own one at home! These days I prefer playing my console but I do dabble with new and interesting games on my laptop, TSIOQUE just happens to be one of those…
OhNoo Studio, creator of Tormentum, a dark Point and Click adventure game which is inspired by the late H.R. Giger’s sadistic artwork, is back with another beautifully presented game known as ‘TSIOQUE‘. TSIOQUE is available now on Steam with influences coming from old-school games such as Day of the Tentacle for its colourful design, and Pajama Sam for it’s simplistic ‘pick up and play’ mechanics. It was also born from a successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2015 – We’ve seen quite a few Kickstarter funded projects this year, they’ve all been pretty good as well!
It seems like a far cry from their previous release on the platform, but how does this new colourful approach come across? Let’s find out…
TSIOQUE, pronounced ‘Chock’, is a Point and Click fairy tale adventure about a princess aptly named ‘Tsioque’. Her mother, the Queen, has gone off to fight a war but Tsioque is left behind at the castle. However, the Evil Wizard overtakes their ancestral home and locks the poor princess in the dungeons, this is where your adventure begins. Tsioque must escape and stop the Evil Wizard, his demon-like minions, and his evil plans – with the help of you of course!
Priced at £10.99 on Steam, TSIOQUE is a very attractive Point and Click adventure title. The controls are simple enough, even though there is no official support for a controller (which is the input method I’m more comfortable with), but I had no issues operating the game with it’s simplistic literal ‘Point and Click’ mechanics. There are some parts that require timing so I recommend NOT trying to play it with your laptop touchpad like I started to do. I had to dig out a mouse to make it easier and more enjoyable for myself.
Along your adventure, Tsioque will have to avoid and outsmart the beautifully drawn evil dungeon guards which look like creepy black demons with long pointy noses. When you inevitably get caught by one of these, for being too slow or clumsy, you’re sent back to an auto-saved checkpoint. I’m happy the devs have kept the game nice and accessible with this as I would have hated it if it was realistic and sent me back to the dungeons every time I got caught!
This is where I was slightly surprised, I’d read that there were influences from games such as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, an adventure game in which you can die. However, with the cute aesthetic of TSIOQUE, I didn’t expect there to be death mechanics within the game – I was wrong. As advised above, when you ‘die’, you’ll reload at the last checkpoint you hit, so the consequences aren’t as bad as they could be, but it does make you think about each action you make and it also adds a sense of danger and pressure to the time limits given for certain segments.
Not everyone is the enemy though, you can make friends with animals along the way by helping them out of a jam. This way, you can all escape the castle and the Evil Wizard’s clutches together.Â
The puzzles in TSIOQUE are a nice mix of finding the right object, find a clue and speed-based reactions. Some will have you scratching your head for a while but none of them had me really stuck for too long. It took me between 4-5 hours to complete the game in one sitting. I thought the playtime and the difficulty of the puzzles were just right as it can be frustrating when you get stuck for hours and either can’t continue or have to admit defeat and resort to YouTube or a guide. How fast you complete TSIOQUE will be entirely down to you and how familiar you are with Point and Click adventure games. I love the genre, so I have a fair bit of experience, but I was overall happy with the difficulty of the puzzles as nothing seemed illogical or seeping into ‘Moon Logic’ territory.
There is no hint system within the game, a mechanic that developers usually opt to include if they feel their consumers may need a push here or there. However, Tsioque will talk to you and let you know if you’re wasting your time trying something stupid or if you’re on the wrong track. TSIOQUE has 31 steam achievements to unlock, but by the end of my playthrough, I had only unlocked 25. So, there is some replayability if you wish to unlock them all. Plus, the game has Trading Cards for those of you out there who like to decorate your profile (or sell them off to raise a little cash).
Official Trailer:
Final Conclusion:
TSIOQUE is a pretty, yet dark, Point and Click adventure game that is definitely worth checking out. It’s priced just right, in my opinion, for the length of the game and does have some replayability if you wish to hunt for all of the achievements. If you don’t want a game too difficult for its own good, but still want to feel challenged and get that sense of achievement for getting past the puzzles without looking at a guide, then I highly recommend it.
TSIOQUE’s beautiful aesthetic, spot-on humour, great voice acting, and the amazing soundtrack is just waiting for you to add it to your collection today!
A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes
TSIOQUE
£10.99
The Good:
- - Good price
- - Attractive game
- -The right level of difficulty
The Bad:
- - Skill based speed challenges can be a little frustrating
- - Perhaps a little shorter than other similar style games
- - No controller support
