Tamashii from Digerati is definitely something. I mean, I knew it was a puzzle-based horror game and I’d heard it was creepy, but honestly, I had no idea. I mean, it’s kind of cutesy graphically. How bad could it be, right? Turns out, pretty damned unnerving!
You start off in Tamashii as the offspring of a rather evil god. Your task, set forth by your creator, is to cleanse his temples of the foul leavings of a rival god. Seems straightforward. Things stay this dark the whole way through, with evil religious iconography and a general sense of unease reinforced by the plentiful and clever graphics tricks strewn throughout the game by Vikintor, a fantastic Brazilian indie designer and the architect of the horror that is Tamashii.
Now, this isn’t your typical game by any means. It’s more of a puzzle game than anything else, though there are some seriously epic boss fights. But it’s not your normal puzzle game either. You don’t have any kind of gun or weapon. Instead, you have weird magical clones that you can drop, three of them in fact. You use your clones to trigger various switches and progress through levels. You can also blow them up by holding down the Y button. They’ll blow up on their own if you take your time too, so there’s a bit of a push to get things moving when solving puzzles. This is a weird mechanic that takes some getting used to, but it works and it’s refreshing!
In solving puzzles in Tamashii, you’ll have to get creative. You’ll be jumping through areas, dropping clones, plummeting off precipices, and generally attempting to think outside the box. All sorts of things can kill you and a fair amount of precision is required, but it’s not outrageously difficult so much as it’s mind-bending in weird ways. Once you get a handle on the mechanics, the game proceeds fairly quickly though. You’ll find that while you are jumping around a lot, you spend just as much time pondering the best way to proceed or how to solve a particularly nasty puzzle. I got stuck for an hour or so on one about a third of the way through myself and if I had hair, I’d have been pulling it out, especially after I realized how simple the solution was. And on top of all that, there’s the imagery.
Tamashii is one of the most unsettling games I’ve seen in a while. Even portably on the Switch, it just oozes fear and paranoia. The backgrounds, the enemies, the imagery, everything has a feel of dark unreality. It’s almost as if Vikintor took Silent Hill, mixed it with H.P. Lovecraft, stirred in some Illuminati imagery, and then sprinkled it with a zesty mix of H.R. Giger and Satanism for good measure. I’ve honestly never seen the like of it and for a small indie title, it presents a sort of awful majesty, both compelling you and making you cringe with revulsion at the same time. Some scenes have seemingly no purpose other than to raise your paranoia levels. Bosses and cutscenes are particularly unnerving, and even the dialogue makes your hair stand on edge just a little bit. Mind you, these aren’t jump scares. This is an entire atmosphere of horror, built piece by piece through the entire construction of Tamashii. Oh, and in case you think the screenshots don’t seem all that creepy, wait until you see the game in motion. It’s utterly jarring constantly, and everything is moving around in the the background. There are also a lot of really disturbing effects that don’t translate to still images at all.
Chances are you won’t spend an incredibly long time on Tamashii. You can beat the whole game in about 3-4 hours if you’re decent at puzzle games, but you’ll have a hell of a good time playing it. Tamashii is a darkly brilliant wonderland that makes the dark corners of your mind come alive. It might be a 16-bit style game, but it’s a visual masterpiece and it will haunt you well after you are done playing, and for only $12, that’s pretty great! There’s a lot of subtle nuance to the game as well, including hidden messages, easter eggs, and a lot of religious iconography and implication. Even after you’ve beat the game, you likely will end up coming back and trying to solve some of the more obscure riddles presented to you. Do yourself a favor, take an evening alone in a dark room and check out Tamashii. You won’t regret it…or perhaps you will!
This review was based on a digital copy of Tamashii provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Tamashii is also available on Steam, PS4, and Xbox One! All screenshots are from actual gameplay. Maybe you should go buy a nightlight, just in case.
