Tengami caught our eye well over a year ago at the Eurogamer
Expo back in 2013. Amidst the throng of noise and colour around the Nintendo
stand was an unassuming screen displaying a delicate looking game. A very apt first impression, this is a very
calm and thoughtful game that is much more about contemplation and the journey than
it is about simply getting to the end.
There is no real plot to speak of as your journey follows a lone
Japanese wanderer as he seeks to return four cherry blossoms to a bare cherry
tree. It’s very similar in tone to something like Journey where it is the adventure
that subtly writes the story into the minds of the player rather than having it
explicitly stated.
The main draw of Tengami is its art style. The world and
everything in it are created to look like a paper pop-up book. The game starts
by opening the book and as you progress you literally turn the pages. The environments are absolutely gorgeous and
no other game has had us continually reaching for the Wii U screen shot button.
It is also underscored with some lovely
sound to fully immerse you in the oriental world it is portraying.
Aside from wandering around beautiful environments you will
need to solve puzzles in order to progress. This is done via the Wii U pad and generally
involves sliding things around or making different parts of the environment pop-up.
There are also musical puzzles (normally revolving around bells), and puzzle
boxes that need to be unlocked by looking around the environments for symbols.
The puzzles range from being very simple to quite fiendish
in design. The puzzle boxes which require looking around the environment can be
very tricky – until you realise you may need to hold turning pages half open to
see some of them. It certainly makes you think and there is nothing here that
should stop you completely dead in your tracks for long.
Our only real gripe with the game is its length. We managed
to get through it in a couple of hours and though there are Miiverse stamps to
collect there isn’t really too much to come back into it for. Unlike journey
where the thrill of the ride is enough to replay, here you already know the
puzzles so unless you want to wander the beautiful world again there is very
little to draw you back.
This certainly isn’t going to be for everyone, it moves at a
fairly slow pace and there is a lot of wandering to be done between puzzles.
That said, we feel that everything it sets out to do it has accomplished pretty
much perfectly.
Overall, Tengami is unashamedly the game it wants to be and
there is little compromise to players that might not get it. For those looking
for something different this could be the perfect game. It merges the concepts
of art and video games and has created something unique. Yes it’s short, but
the fact we wanted more speaks volumes of the experience we had with it. There
are things here that will make you smile and show you small moments of magic
and for us that’s more than enough.
Overall 8/10
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