Beautiful Adventure Game Tengami Needs to be on Your Radar - Preview

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You probably haven’t heard of Tengami, an upcoming iOS, PC, Mac, and Wii U adventure game from indie development studio Nyamyam. So sit up and pay attention, because this game needs to be on your radar.

Tengami is an adventure game set in ancient Japan, but this isn’t a gritty, grey and grounded affair, like so many games of today. No, Tengami is bursting at the seams with artistic brilliance and creative genius. The world is brought to life in the form of a pop-up picture book, and as a player it will be your job to manipulate that world in order to solve puzzles and discover secrets.

It’s immediately apparent that a great deal of love and attention has gone into creating the profoundly mysterious world of Tengami. The Japanese art style is flawlessly realised, and when you combine that minimalism with some clever use of colour, you’ve got yourself one truly gorgeous game.

Now, let’s talk about gameplay. Wait, scratch that. Let’s talk about the experience. You see, from my time spent with the game, it’s become obvious that there wont be much in terms of traditional gameplay. Moving your character is as easy as double tapping the screen, and beyond that you’ll simply be manipulating the pop-up environments in order to solve puzzles and access new areas. This isn’t an example of shallow gameplay though, this is an example of a purely interactive gameplay system that succeeds in completely engrossing a player.

After finishing the demo I began to draw comparisons between Tengami and Journey. Both don’t have much to do in terms of pure gameplay, however the art style, the music, and the interactivity in both games does more to immerse a gamer than any amount of gameplay mechanics could. I was hooked from the moment I turned that first preposterously detailed pop-up page, and when my time with Tengami was over I left the booth with huge reluctance.

Tengami appears to be channeling the wonderful notion that less can in fact be more, and I’m looking forward to losing myself in the fascinating world Nyamyam have created when it releases on iOS this summer.

PC, Mac and Wii U release dates are currently unknown.

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