Playback: TSIOQUE

As her mother, the beautiful queen, von Dannen moves, the resolute little princess Tsioque is on her own. The evil magician, in whose care she is left behind, puts the little one in the dungeon – but she doesn’t like to be imprisoned…

From rain to eaves

The little princess with the almost unpronounceable name (Tsioque, according to the intro, speaks similarly to the English word “choke”, only mumbles to the “O” with an “I” somehow) has to be careful of guards as soon as she has piled up out of the cell and has come up with a plan to put the evil magician in his place. In an old point-and-click manner the game makes use of numerous manipulable objects, some of which can be included in the inventory. This inventory is represented by a bag, which you can enlarge during the adventure to carry oversized armour items. The expansion of the bag, however, already involves solving several puzzles and playing a small mini-game. The story is coherent and offers a twist – which might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I personally liked it.

Tsioque in the dungeon

Beautiful lock

The really beautiful scenery makes it a real pleasure to explore the castle. The backgrounds are lovingly drawn by hand and the characters, from the main character to the guard, are all animated wittily. It should be especially emphasized that the figures also perform funny actions in the background, apart from the absolutely necessary, sometimes funny ones. This gives life to the castle and its inhabitants, which is very good for the immersion in the game. Additionally, some allusions to the current pop culture loosen up the action. That the role models of Tsioque are of course to be found in the LucasArts point-and-click games of the 1980s and 90s is just as obvious as the influence of Dragon’s Lair – the latter, however, unfortunately not always for the better…

Trial and Error

So there are several places in the game that you can only solve by trying them out. This applies to puzzles, but mainly to the few passages that are designed in the style of Quicktime events. A couple of times this has annoyed me in the test particularly, if a puzzle was correctly solved, but the game wanted to accept this solution only if I failed before (I mean a place with a kind of chemistry kit set, without spoiling here)… If you should fail more often at a Quicktime event, for example if you are untrained, or your cat pukes on your foot while playing (yes, happened to me…), you can also skip the event – unfortunately, you can’t switch to break. The “Esc” key opens a menu, but the event continues in the background. This may be less disturbing for some, but for me it’s a No-Go.

The varied rooms of the castle also include this icy wet room

Formatter

With its hand-drawn look, Tsioque is also reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon or the Pyjama Sam game series, on which Grandmaster Ron Gilbert himself had worked. But the whole thing also looks like Old School in the most positive sense. The boxed edition of the Kickstarter campaign was made available to me for my test. It contains the game in a cardboard box, as they had old PC Games, and it reinforces this Old School feeling even more. It’s a shame that this version isn’t available regularly, it’s really beautifully designed. It contains a bound booklet with the printed version of the intro, which was kept in the fairy tale book style. Besides concept drawings there is also an installation DVD for Mac and Windows in the booklet. The disc is not needed for playing, the game starts directly from the disk. The regular digital version is available on Steam and GOG. The game of the Polish developers is completely translated into English. There is currently no German soundtrack, but the language barrier is very low and localized subtitles are available, so you don’t need any English skills to solve the puzzle.

FAZIT

Despite its weaknesses, Tsioque is a really entertaining, lovingly designed game that can be recommended to every fan of point-and-click games. A twist in the story may not be everyone’s cup of tea – but for me it was fitting and coherent. Attentive people might find clues to this twist a little earlier… The only difference is that the game is played in 2-4 hours, which is a bigger drop of bitterness. Here it could have been more. But since Tsioque is not a full price title, this circumstance is justifiable. Because of the whole interface I assume that the game will be adapted for mobile platforms sooner or later. It would be suitable anyway – if then a pause mode is inserted.

What is Tsioque? Lovingly hand animated Point and Click Adventure
Platforms: PC, Mac
Tested: Mac
Developer / Publisher: Oh Noo! / Smile Studios
Release: 7 . November 2018
Links: Official Website, STEAM Page, GOG-Page, Oh Noo, Smile Studios