Tamashii Review

Demonic statues, skinless freaks, a temple full of traps and more can be found buried within the new 2-D side scroller horror from Indie developer Vikintor. Tamashii is dark and mysterious and will have you jumping and running quicker than you can imagine. Based off the Japanese style puzzlers back in the 80’s and 90’s you will find yourself confronted with a series of challenging obstacles you will need to complete before moving to the next stage of the game. From the start of Tamashii you find yourself in a room being instructed what to do. From there lies a temple full of smaller rooms, each room being a stage to complete.

Each stage is broken down again into separate puzzle rooms which you will have to complete to reach the next room. Occasionally you will come across a set of doors which give you the option to take the hard path or the easier path which you can always return to if you are finding the challenges a little tricky. I found myself picking the easier challenge towards the end as the puzzles become quite challenging and can take a little time to figure out.

The puzzles in Tamashii are quite smart and see you using a clone of yourself for many tasks. Say for example; You may walk in front of a certain symbol which will make a wall of bricks disappear but when you move the bricks come back. No problem, just leave your little clone standing in front of the symbol to allow you to pass the bricks. Below screen gives you a meter of how many clones and how long they will last adding the speed factor and trying to rush to complete the harder challenges.

Gameplay is a plus in Tamashii giving pinpoint accuracy on the controls to aid those tricky tight jumps because believe me you going to need it. Some of these creative rooms leave no room for error, even just a slip or missed jump out of place can lead you back to the start of the puzzle room. Accuracy is key in Tamashii.

Graphically Tamashii falls behind using retro 16-bit style graphics and a distorted filter which flashes and causes the screen to go into fits as you play along, and sometimes even the occasional jump scare. Actually at one point I actually thought I broke the game but I’ll let you find that out for yourselves. The theme and level design used  throughout the game is impressive though and well used. Statues and weird gaping mouths appear in the background and some rooms may even see you releasing eyeballs from the ground as you walk. The whole experience left me thinking WTF! But it was a good WTF as the constant moving gameplay, levels, and twisted boss fights kept me wanting to finish that room and see what was next.

Tamashii is an addictive 2-D retro puzzler bringing great design and solid gameplay even though it may fall behind in the graphics department. With plenty of challenging puzzles and a horror theme screaming WTF!. It was a hair pulling experience I enjoyed and hope others find pleasure in this title also.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox One. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.