TSIOQUE

If the Last Unicorn had a sense of humor, I think we would have had TSIOQUE a long time ago. It looks and feels as cool and ominous as TLU. Sans Jeff Bridges. And Mia Farrow.

OhNoo Studio put together a unique point and click adventure that is as difficult as it is beautiful. A hand-drawn game, TSIOQUE puts you in control of a young adventurer that has been trapped by an evil wizard’s castle. Your job is to find your way out, escape, and along the way make sure that you don’t meet a grizzly fate. Just the usual, right?

The gameplay component of TSIOQUE is not simply just a ‘point and click’ adventure. It’s a mutt of sorts when it comes to style. The controls driving the game are very much point and click, but a portion of that relies on your quick-witted movements to get you out of immediate danger. For example, there is a level early on that has you being chased by guards up a staircase. Prior to the chase, you obtain a cloak of invisibility, which you have to immediately put on as the guards begin to approach your area. This isn’t a ‘put on cloak’ then ‘guards show up’ sorta deal/activator, rather it’s a ‘guards are coming, you better do something quick’ situation. Most point and click experiences give you time to digest your gameplay decisions before actually making them. TSIOQUE isn’t interested in keeping you waiting when it comes to moves — it wants you to think quick or else. If you lose, you get death or end scenes, but then the game puts you right back in the situation you were in — immediately. It wants you to keep going and offers a branch of immortality to keep trying until you get it right. All of this combined, dare I say it harkens back to a Dragon’s Lair type of decision making, where you have to be quick or you’re going lose, but you’re thrown back into the scrum if you lose. I know that most of you have never experienced the likes of Dragon’s Lair, but trust me — it was fantastic. It made LaserDiscs awesome…for like a day. Regardless, this type of gameplay is unique for this genre, or at least with more popular p/c games. It’s definitely throwing a wrench into the slow and methodical ways of playing point and click titles.

Outside of this very unusual style of point and click, the game does feature traditional point/click/explore methods of gameplay, where you have to stop and think about your surroundings and what the game requires of you to progress the story. That’s something that the late/great LucasArts invented and perfected, and it’s something that OhNoo Studio maintained quite beautifully from the get-go. You’ll absolutely understand this at the beginning when the protagonist has to figure out how to escape from her confines. In the first scene, our protagonist has to get rid of a guard that is keeping watch of her and at times shushing her to keep her noisy self down. Clearly, the guard just wants to do his job without any trouble because that means he’ll get in trouble (all part of it). The protagonist has to find a distraction object in the room to keep the guard’s attention, or at least distract him away from her. While finding this object, the game shows off other potential solutions for the predicament, such as a tentacle monster trying to get out of the middle of the floor (you just see its tentacles flail about). On occasion, the guard will beat back that monster, which equals out to the monster having a bad taste in its tentacle mouth for the guard. Other elements around the room reveal themselves through mouse exploration, some useful, some not, and the job of the player is to figure out how all these things work together to show a solution to get out of the jail cell, and ultimately out of the room. Eventually, all of the elements combined, the distraction, the guard, the monster, maybe some other objects I won’t mention, they somehow work together to free our protagonist from her jail cell. This is what you paid for in a point and click adventure, and it works splendidly throughout various scenarios in the game. All of the above paragraph is what most point and click adventures consist of and OhNoo Studio brings that without a hitch. Another layer, though more traditional to the genre.

What’s also brilliant about this type of point and click is that there isn’t an obvious answer to the point and click puzzle. The game just says, “Here are the tools, good luck”, which is a gratifying type of point and click game. It shows that the studio has put thought into the situation on the screen and expects the player to really put a lot of thought into their solution. Good point and click titles require a lot from the player, even to the point where you have to save the game and come back tomorrow to continue the adventure, otherwise, you’ll risk frustrating yourself. That’s how most great games in this genre worked, even as far back as Maniac Mansion in the 80s, where you would run into a puzzle wall with no easily seen solution. Back in those days, you would have to save it or risk being grounded from the 386 because you have cursed at it while your mom passed by with laundry. I’m not saying that happened, but it might have happened.

Anyway, presenting a respectful challenge to players, one they were not going to beat in a day, is what makes good gameplay design for a point and click title. OhNoo Studio built this game to challenge players, but at the same time respect them enough to know that the solutions will sit right in front of them. Again, this is just thoughtful design that really does tip its hat to the origin of the genre. This is how LucasArts designed some of the most epic adventures to come out of its studio, such as The Dig (one of the best games of all time), and there isn’t much hand-holding in the process (as it should be). TSIOQUE seems to live by that same philosophy of design, where you truly have to figure things out and there is no obvious answer, even though it sits right there in front of you. That type of p/c design equals out to a gratifying experience.

If all this wasn’t enough, the game also adds items to collect that will affect your outcome as you progress, and it adds traditional puzzles that aren’t timed. While the items are nice and really do remind me of The Dig, they aren’t uncommon. The puzzles are the same, as they’re not uncommon from other point and click games. They act, as they do with other P/C games, more like rest stops to sit and calm yourself before you’re thrown back into a ‘think on your feet’ situation. All of the above gameplay elements combined makes for a complicated, yet satisfying point and click experience that separates itself from a sea of point and click games that most people seem to produce overnight. This is not a game that you’re going to get through immediately. This is a game that you’re going to savor like a fine wine. As it should be with this genre.

Overall, the gameplay of TSIOQUE is a layer of entertaining complication. It offers up a little bit of new and a little bit of old, and sprinkles it with a helluva protagonist that is fun to play. It doesn’t necessarily redefine the point and click genre, but it shows that there is more to it than you might remember. The gameplay is simply a methodically well put together masterpiece that will certainly make you wish for those LucasArts days when they ruled the roost in this genre.

You thought that was where the review ended? Pssshhh.

If the design of the gameplay wasn’t enough to keep you locked in and interested, then the hand-drawn animation style will certainly snag your attention. When I first loaded up this game, I had the impression that the animation was going to be some wonky Unity-driven style that would resemble that time period where people were doing flash games forever. That animation style where the parts of the protagonist seemed incredibly individualized and pieced together like a paper doll. This was my initial expectation of the title. As it is generally expected with assumptions, the game made me look like an ass.

The animation style is breathtaking, endearing, and passionate. What I mean by the latter is that you can see right from the moment the first level emerges that the animators were incredibly passionate about how this game was going to look, move, and feel. There is a lot of love put into the visual construction of the title. The cute look of the protagonist shows a darker, tougher underbelly that is just waiting to emerge from its depths. She has little fear and more motivation to get out of her kidnapper’s grasp. In short, she’s an absolute badass.

Beyond our protagonist, the enemies are brimming with life. They are demon/goblin like creatures that make sounds, movements, and bring a sense of life to the entire visual experience. There’s a lot to love here about them, as their life brings life and depth to the rest of the world that OhNoo Studio is trying to create with TSIOQUE. Both combined (good/bad characters) almost equal out to a cartoon I would watch on a Saturday morning with the kids. The characters are just so rich and fun to enjoy onscreen. It’s truly a unique experience for a game that didn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to back it.

And this is just the visuals.

Whomever went and recorded voices/sounds deserves some sort of award. Typically, bigger developers can achieve great things in this category, you know the ones that are with endless budgets, but the sound effects/voices/music are top-notch. Much like the animation, the sounds were given an equal amount of love, which, again like the visuals, adds more depth and reality to the world that you’re playing in with TSIOQUE. You can hear characters grumble, you can hear environment sounds add ambiance to the locations — there’s so much thought put into the audio that it might make a few movie makers at major studios rethink their methods.

I could go on and on about the presentation value of this game, but you get the picture.

Anyway, enough talk. Go check this thing out. It’s worth your time and your attention.