Geekpr0n Reviews Tengami

2014’s Tengami, which landed on iOS devices from U.K indie developer Ynamyam late last year, probably didn’t register on your radar even if you often do your gaming rounds on the indie circuit. The landscape of the App Store provides a sort of natural camouflage for games that look as though their screenshots and their actual gameplay both offer about the same amount of engagement, so it wouldn’t surprise me if you hadn’t even heard of this one. But now in early 2015 this small artistic title has finally resurfaced on Steam for both PC and Mac where it is at least getting a bit more exposure to a wider audience of potential players. Players like me, for example.

Preeeeeetty!

What we have here is a visual puzzle game with a very unrestricted narrative in the same vein as something like Myst or the PS3 exclusive title Journey. The “visual” part of that description really gets the lion’s share of the spotlight as the entire game comes to us in the format of a pop-up picture book decorated with richly detailed Japanese art and craftsmanship. It’s a treat for the eyes from start to finish to see all of this work put into creating something so elaborate and yet quite believable. (The developers have even stated that everything seen in the game could in fact be recreated in reality, moving avatars and NPC wolves not withstanding.)

As with most artistic indie games the soundtrack and audio work is also beautifully implemented. The music matches perfectly with the cultural aesthetic of the art style, and the real world sounds of running water, falling trees and local wildlife are not only subtly magnificent but add to the wonderful sense of immersion one would imagine a child enjoying a pop up book like this would get lost in.

Inception at the swipe of a finger!

In fact, the effort Ynamyam has put into the realization of the pop-up book may have worked too well. I got the sense as I was playing through this game that the only things really holding back my complete engagement in the simple non-story of a nameless, voiceless character traversing this gorgeous paperback world were the actual gameplay elements themselves. Using the mouse to point and click my character from point A to point B was serviceable enough but the main character was in desperate need of some running shoes by the time the game was closing in on its conclusion. It occurred to me as I was playing that maybe this was deliberately done by the developers to force a slow pace through all the pretty scenery. And you know what? That’s makes total sense if that’s the case. That said, near the end when the puzzles started to get on top of me, I was double clicking out of sheer reflex hoping that my little 2D man would at least put a bit of jog in his steps.

If only he had a jump button!

As for the puzzles themselves well I didn’t struggle too much with them. The fact that most of them simply required pulling pop-up book tabs or flipping small independent patches of folded geography up or down was very cute, but don’t expect anything to stump you for too long if you’re a seasoned puzzle gamer. And even if you do get stuck (like I did on the last puzzle for longer than I care to admit), there’s a small hint button up in the corner that will all but GIVE you the answer if you decide to use it.

If you often look to these small indie games for the thoughtful stories they often tell then Tengami might offer you up a bit of a different flavor than you are used to. There’s definitely something for the poetry lovers out there as the whole game plays out with imagery of changing seasons peppered with occasional haiku but since you’re pretty much on your own for the whole trip with no inner dialog or written background on anything you come across, it pretty much falls on you to interpret what happens in Tengami and what any of it means.

“Would you kindly…”

Where Tengami literally comes up a bit short of being a true champion of artistic indie gaming design is its gaming value. There’s a place in this world for games of all lengths, and far be it from me to deny that there’s isn’t something transcendent about a tightly packed three minute sprint through a game like Pac-Man or a two hour venture through something like Portal. But with no DLC (as of this writing), no alternative gameplay mode other than the main story, and literally NOTHING that can be done with the game after you’ve spent an hour and a half or so completing it besides… completing it again, the whole thing feels rather anemic. And for 10$ on Steam (bumped up from $5 dollars for the iOS versions for no discernible reason), that’s asking a lot.

Still, I enjoyed the game for what it was. (I even Let’s Played it! Check that out!) Rarely do we see games fully embrace a sense of tranquility and serene atmosphere in this age of gaming, and rarely does so much work go into executing that kind of approach so well. Here’s hoping that Ynamyam keep up the high caliber of quality with their bigger future projects and hopefully apply it not just to the presentation but also to the game play and story mechanics. That, I think, will yield some more games I’ll definitely want to play!