TSIOQUE Demo

TSIOQUE, a point-and-click that’s refreshingly original and prone to cause some good chuckles along the way. It’s a handcrafted indie game that’s built frame-by-frame, meaning it looks and plays out like a cartoon, and a very good one at that.

The protagonist of the story is TSIOQUE, your typical princess, with big blue eyes and blond hair, but with a personality that doesn’t quite match anything you’ve seen.

To summarize the story, her mother, the queen, leaves the castle on urgent kingdom related business, something about a Phoenix, during which, the Evil Wizard takes control. As you would expect, she gets sent to the dungeons until the evil boss figures out what to do with her. So far, it’s your standard ‘princess get’s captured’ plot. However, the manner in which TSIOQUE’s story unfolds is rather unpredictable and certainly amusing.

TSIOQUE doesn’t waste time talking her way out of the predicament; she gets right to business. What that results in is probably the game’s best feature. You see, the heroine is blessed with that kind of unusual bad luck that always ends well for her and very bad for those who get in her way. For example, dropping her little medallion triggers a series of little events that end in a soldier getting zapped into non-existence in a blink of an eye. In between those points you a few skeletons and an octopus participate. TSIOQUE will delight you with lots of humorous predicaments that are charming and surprisingly tricky to discover.

The game is built using frame-by-frame animation, meaning that every second of motion you see is made out of multiple hand-drawn frames. That’s something actual cartoons are using less of, so to see it in TSIOQUE, it’s just wonderful. Moreover, it’s not just the use of the technique that’s appealing, the way it all looks and plays out is great as well.

In point and click games, you have time to take your time. In TSIOQUE that remains a thing but you also have moments in which you need to move fast, making the gameplay enjoyable and pulling you closer into the story. And speaking of, the game is also gifted with class A voice narration, and when it’s absent, you don’t need it. TSIOQUE’s movement, interactions, and even mannerisms say plenty.

There are a lot of reasons to like TSIOQUE, after all, it’s a game with a lot to offer. The demo, although very short is also very convincing of that, if you need more details or want to show your support for the project, stop by the TSIOQUE Kickstarter page. The cover of the game features a war zebra and a king duck who looks like he means business, two more reasons to be curious about what this game is all about.