Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Zhu Siqi

It is the hometown of rich and colorful memories of the producers.

Before playing "Tchia", I was not familiar with the name "New Caledonia". New Caledonia, made up of a series of islands near the Tropic of Cancer, is France's overseas dependency in Oceania with a population of about 300000. Travelers may be more interested in learning about this place, which has almost all the most beautiful ocean scenery at low latitudes: blue water, white sandy beaches, gorgeous tropical animal and plant scenery. All in all, it's a good place to go for a diving vacation.

We can easily get information about this place from some materials, such as the indigenous Melasinians and European immigrants make up the majority of the population, and the official language is French. However, "Kiya" is the first time that I have come into contact with a great deal of customs and legends about this place, and it is far richer than we can see on the travel brochure page.

The first impression of the game is dreamy and beautiful "Kia" from French independent game studio Awaceb. The studio was originally set up by two friends who have known each other since childhood, and their hometown is New Caledonia. In 2016, the studio's first work, "Fossil Echo," was released, a difficult platform jump game with excellent pictures and music, mixed with a slightly dark folk atmosphere. However, the game was too hard-core in terms of difficulty design, which led to very polarized reviews. Many players say that the harsh game mechanism makes it impossible for them to immerse themselves in a story that is supposed to be good.

The artistic style of "Qiya" is in a continuous line with "Fossil Echo". In sharp contrast, "Chia" is full of relaxed and pleasant atmosphere from publicity to actual manual operation. Players play the role of little girl Chiya, running and exploring in the beautiful and vast tropical islands, and basically do not have to worry about careless operation, do it all over again. Developers hope that players can fully immerse themselves in beautiful scenery and folktale adventures, and will not be disturbed by other factors.

Open world, full of tropical style, it should be pointed out that the release date of "Kia" has not yet been determined, what I am playing is the media experience version, it is not a complete game. This version intercepts a short segment of the main plot. At the beginning of the plot, a child is listening to a story about Zia: she seems to be a native girl with both aboriginal and European immigrant ancestry. Suddenly one day, her father was kidnapped and taken away by a mysterious man. to find her father, she had to seek the help of the local notorious ruler.

In order to have a smooth audience with the ruler, Chia had to collect a large number of tributes everywhere. During the collection, she met some friends and got their help, but most of the time, Ziya had to search the island for supplies on her own.

The game is played in an open world, and the map is not small and can basically be seen as covering the whole of New Caledonia. The open part of the media experience version is only one of the islands, but there is already a wide range of places to travel.

In the version we play, players are free to explore on a major island. From the logic of arranging points of interest, the basic concept of "Zia" is similar to some of the familiar "canned" open worlds. Players can encounter some aerial points in high-lying places, and after "shouting" in the aerial points, they can show nearby points of interest on the map.

The types of these points of interest are very varied. The easiest thing to encounter is the collection, mostly woven decorations with local characteristics. In addition, there are some small challenges, such as diving, racing, shooting, and you can get corresponding medals after the challenge. If you encounter a statue of the ruler, you can destroy it with explosives. The map is also dotted with bonfires, physical fruits and other potential feeder adventures.

As the map is relatively large, it is time-consuming to run purely on legs. The game has prepared some travel aids for players. Long-distance travel can go directly by water. Explore along the shore and you can find the port near most of the villages. You can summon your own bamboo rafts at the port, or you can move quickly to other ports-provided Zia has already found them. The operation of the bamboo raft is slightly troublesome, and it is necessary to manually run back and forth between the sail and the rudder to control its speed and direction respectively. However, the voyage is also a very good way to enjoy the sea view, which is the closest contact with the blue water.

When driving a boat, you can see the most beautiful tropical ocean scenery on land, especially in the mountains. Chia can use her special "soul jumping" ability, which is equivalent to temporarily possessing and controlling some biological or environmental objects. It has been found that controllable environmental items include lanterns and stones. in addition, almost all living animals can possess them.

These animals, including birds, deer and so on, move very fast in the mountains and wilderness, allowing players to save a lot of running time. Each animal has its own special skills. For example, the cat's skill is night vision, and the wild boar's skill is to dig holes on the ground. The skill of flying birds is more confusing, which is "excretion". In the media experience version, the impact of these skills on the main line has not been found for the time being, but they should be able to be applied to some puzzles or tasks.

Possessing animals consumes soul energy. When soul energy is exhausted, Chia will be forced to "pop out", and players can jump out on their own when needed.

Chia can be attached to many kinds of small animals, making it easier to travel through the wild.

The abilities of some small animals are very useful. who doesn't want to become kittens running at night? although the painting style of these small animals is simple, they have a strange sense of cuteness, especially when they are possessed, they will wear a little flower on their head like Kia. very cute. Running in the form of animals in the mountains, there will be a special kind of relaxation and happiness. This is the best part of my experience in the game so far.

Another convenient prop is Kia's paraglider, which can help her cross some ravines or jump from height. But in the game, both rock climbing and gliding require physical exertion. When exploring in the map, if you find the fruit of physical strength, you can increase the upper limit of physical strength after eating it.

Among the scattered points of interest, bonfires are one of the most important, where players can sleep and eat to restore their physical and spiritual energy, change their clothes and play ukulele. In addition, if there is an accident during an adventure, such as fainting from physical exhaustion, falling from a height or running out of breath while diving, you will return to the nearest bonfire.

There is another possibility. Kia, who is exhausted, has a chance to find herself captured by a strange kind of soldier and locked in a cage. As long as you escape with the soul jump ability, you can begin to clear these soldiers and burn their cloth piles. This is the only combat element in the experience version, and it is quite easy to operate: you only need to throw out combustibles and explosives such as oil tanks or oil lamps. However, the bondage skills of these soldiers are troublesome, and once entangled in their strips of cloth, they will continue to exhaust their physical strength. If you don't break free soon, you'll have to go back to the cage.

Cleaning up the soldier camp is currently the only combat element in the game, the totem cave is another important point of interest. This is equivalent to a separate small level, players need to apply a variety of existing skills to complete the challenge. But to open these caves, you have to find a place in the village to carve totems. Put the totem wood carvings with the same pattern in front of the stone door to open these small levels.

Generally speaking, the current media experience version does not reveal much about the main plot, but only guides players to explore the world through various collection tasks. The open world of Chia has arranged many elements for players to interact and try, and most of them are more relaxed and enjoyable, so that players can enjoy the tropical scenery and experience the local culture. This is a big change compared with the studio's previous work that emphasizes "hard core".

This may have something to do with the creative philosophy that developers have changed.

Introduce your hometown to players, but not only that in previous interviews, developer Awaceb expressed a view that it wants to show the richness of the overall environment of New Caledonia, rather than just let you see the most typical scenes in tourism promotion, such as white sandy beaches and coconut trees. So during the visit, we will see very different landforms and landscapes, including mountains, grasslands, coral cliffs and laterite plains, as well as more modern factories and cities.

Some piecemeal play settings are very simple, there are few combat elements, but there is a strong emphasis on the player's autonomy and initiative. There are many details of the game that require players to manually control and participate, such as playing ukulele outside the plot and carving totems on the village workbench.

Playing ukulele is an important leisure activity in the game.

Carving totems is a technical activity on the one hand, and these activities have been made into Mini Game to fill the relatively empty process of open world exploration and add various ways of playing the game. For example, it is not easy to carve a totem. Players are required to carefully chisel against the collected signs. If they are not careful, they will have to start all over again.

On the other hand, it also means that developers want players to be more active in connecting with the local culture and have a greater sense of interaction and participation, especially iconic things like music and totems. Perhaps for the same purpose, in the media experience version of the plot, there are some animations that do not seem to be directly related to the main line. For example, Chia needs to ask the local villagers for a dead chicken as a tribute. Before that, however, she would bring the family ingredients to the beach, cook dinner with them, and take part in evening celebrations in the village. There are also musical challenges involving trophies during the celebrations, and Chia can take part in their show with her own ukulele.

The life of the local villagers is very happy.

The friends you meet along the way are also NPC who send tasks or provide help. This does not mean that "Chia" is a game whose mission is to promote the local culture. As can be seen from the current plot, the main line of "Kia" will still be a universal story about family affection and adventure that is easy for everyone to accept and understand. Those unique cultural elements are added to make the trip look more magnificent and interesting.

The main characters and some landmarks in the plot, although there may be some practical reference, are fictional after all. Some characters, especially villains, are not traditional, but have an exaggerated and strange sense of fashion. The game for players to prepare a variety of clothing and sailboat appearance, but also sometimes reveal the meaning of unrestrained and funny.

The styling fashion and national style of the characters in the game coexist, so after playing the media experience version, my impression of "Kia" is that it is a magnificent adventure based on the culture of the Pacific Islands, which is itself legendary. In the current version, it presents players with a high degree of freedom and a wide open world, allowing people to interact with native creatures and cultural treasures born and raised in the archipelago. Although it does have some areas that need to be improved, for example, some of the journey process is very empty, and the abilities of many possessed animals are not clearly used, the collection of main tasks is also lack of hints, and so on, but these should be improved in future versions.

In any case, the production team was indeed very successful in showing the beauty of New Caledonia and was able to enjoy it for players who had no prior knowledge of its culture. I think we can look forward to the adventures in the full version, when we may be able to harvest another story full of aura and touching.

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