The eternal twilight gives way to a day-night cycle rung in by the changing of the soundtrack. The same is true of the towns, which gradually evolve from shadowy mazes into balmy expanses of bridges, temples and cobblestone streets, populated by feline quest-givers who ask you to do things like pull up weeds or track down (read: mercilessly destroy) escaped balloons. They are by and large a cakewalk, but there are trickier, hidden lanterns to find when you revisit with new abilities. The dungeon challenge rooms involve familiar props such as floating or falling platforms, giant rolling cylinders, small networks of teleportation pads, and aerial paths that turn invisible every few seconds. While exploring Sacred Tree Shrines, you can pop a few coins into a donation box to teleport straight to the end. In any case, Tasomachi lets you skip anything that gets on your nerves. The platforming mechanics and movement are hardly Mario-grade - Yukumo is a floaty avatar and I'd have appreciated a ledge-grab move - but they're sturdy enough, and the generous camera zoom is helpful when roaming larger regions. Here you'll gather coins, mostly spent on outfits and decorations for the temple in the first area, together with the aforesaid lanterns that unlock the doors to Sacred Tree Shrines, where you'll carry out more focused platforming challenges.īeat all the shrine challenges to open the door to the Sacred Tree itself, which bestows a new ability - there are exactly three, a ground-pound, a double-jump and an aerial dash - while extinguishing the flames outside and blowing away the fog. There are four separately loaded districts (plus a couple of lategame areas that are explored only by airship), each shrouded in mist at first, with routes blocked by flickering blue flames. It's a game of gentle town-and-dungeon symbiosis. You drift about, breathing slowly, poking your nose into leafy doorways and drinking in the lovely piano score. It's the equivalent of the bit in a classic JRPG when the plot has inflicted a serious arse-kicking and you must lie low in a village, resting and reflecting. But the result is that, even at its most challenging, which is not very challenging at all, it feels liberated and contemplative in a way I often forget games can be. Tasomachi is a sidequest moved to centre stage, in other words, which might sound like a putdown. She's not here to right any great wrongs, but help a bunch of cats get their house in order. Yes, she's asked to save a world, but it's a small world, and the calamity in question is really just a lingering case of bad weather. But within the game, she's just a girl interrupted on her way to somewhere else. There were times when I wondered, looking at her unblinking expression, if she was actually a villain of some kind - the footloose arch-nemesis of some epic narrative involving the creators of vases and balloons, which later puzzle quests ask you to destroy. Outside the game's world, Yukumo could be anyone - a travelling sage or mercenary, a heroine of repute. One of the resident cat-people advises you that to fix up your ship, you'll need to lift this curse by gathering lanterns called Sources of Earth and seeking the blessing of Sacred Trees.Īnd that's pretty much all there is to this five-hour tale. To-en, you soon learn, has succumbed to a mysterious magical fog. You play Yukumo, a nimble and usefully fall-damage-proof girl with a big hat, whose airship crashlands in the town of To-en during a trip along the coast. Integral to Tasomachi's charm is that it's inconsequential. It is the thinking behind A Short Hike applied to one of the towns from Breath of the Wild. It's explicitly designed to be low-key, with no threats, no player death and no major goals beyond collecting things - an action it invests with a quiet intimacy that gently overpowers the element of repetition. The work of Tokyo-based indie nocras with a score from Youtube star Ujico*, it's an idle afternoon in the daydreaming mind of a seasoned triple-A artist, whose credits include Zelda and Final Fantasy - a distillation of lessons learned while composing geography and architecture for grander, more combative experiences. If you're looking for an attractive 3D fantasy world that doesn't require a moment-to-moment tithe of blood, this is your game. Mopping the guts from my face and shaking flattened bullets from my coat, I peered woozily at the opening shot of an airship trundling down the seashore and all but burst into tears. I stumbled into Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight after 30 more-or-less consecutive hours of Outriders, a game of ceaseless killing and looting. A simple but quietly captivating 3D collectathon with a gorgeous setting.
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