Humor? Darkness? Suspense? Check!
A dark but playful point and click adventure, hand-animated in glorious frame-by-frame 2D.
Tsioque is a hand-drawn Point-and-Click Game by OhNoo Studios.
The story begins with the titular young princess, Tsioque, living with her mother the golden-haired Good Queen in their castle during a time of peace. But one day, news arrived that a dangerous beast called The Phoenix was on its way. To prevent it from reaching her home and daughter, the Good Queen led an army to fight the monster. The Queen's royal wizard, however, took her absence as an opportunity to take over the kingdom himself, casting dark magic to corrupt and transform the castle and summon demons to command.
And in the center of all this is little Tsioque, whom the Wizard throws in the dungeon, kept under lock and key. But the princess isn't one to wait to be rescued, and takes things into her own hands to escape the Wizard.
Tsioque is available on Steam
. A free demo is also available, which can be downloaded here or through Steam here.
Tsioque provides examples of:
- Absurdly Long Stairway: The spiral staircase in the tower.
- Abusive Parents: Played With — The Reveal that the Wizard and the King are one and the same, and Tsioque's attempts to flee the castle at the end hints at this. Subverted by the ending, as the girl's father catches her about to fall down the stairs and is clearly worried and horrified. While he is probably having a stressful time being a stay-at-home dad and a video game developer at the same time, which may have inspired the wizard, nothing suggests he was in any way abusive, just busy.
- All Just a Dream: Hinted at by the Anachronism Stew (see below). In the end, it's revealed that the whole thing was the little girl playing pretend while her mother was out of the house.
- Anachronism Stew: A lot of out-of-place things start to appear after Tsioque tries to use the antidote on the Wizard.
- Art Shift: A small example—in the end cutscene, the girl's features are not as stylized as princess Tsioque's, notably lacking the princess's enormous eyes.
- Beard of Evil: The Wizard sports a long, pointed beard with a thin mustache to go with it.
- Big Door: The castle's front gate, and the literal door that it turns into once reality starts seeping in.
- Big Eyes, Little Eyes: Tsioque's eyes are huge.
- Chekhov's Gun: An invisibility cloak is used briefly during the initial escape. It is later retrieved in time to help Tsioque hide from the Wizard inside his own study. It even comes back at the very end of the game... when the Wizard uses it.
- Cool Horse: The Good Queen rides one with a unicorn horn on its mask.
- Crystal Ball: The Wizard has one.
- Cutscene: Several throughout the game. Some, including the opening cutscene, include a narrator reading as if from a storybook.
- Damsel out of Distress: Tsioque is captured and put in the dungeon but uses her wit to escape her cage and move forward.
- Dark Is Evil: You can't even see the Wizard besides his eyes and mouth, he's so dark.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Tsioque is helped along her way by a tentacle beast, who gives her the key to escape the dungeon room, and a black spider who turns off lights for her to protect her from monsters that are coming after her.
- Disney Villain Death: In the staircase area during the escape, by turning off the lights you cause several demons to trip and fall to their doom.
- Dressing as the Enemy: Tsioque has to assemble a suit of armor in order to fool a guard.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The Wizard's voice is deep with a slight distortion and echo effect to it.
- Extra-Strength Masquerade: Toward the end, it becomes more and more difficult for little Tsioque's imagination to cast everything in a fantastic light. You end up with rather lame fantasy-ified things like "black sparkling liquid" (a bottle of soda) and "explosive pebbles" (Mentos). It's not until the very end that she gives up on pretending and we see, once and for all, that she's just playing in her house.
- Failed a Spot Check: Even if you put the Invisibility Cloak on in front of the Imps that come to find you, they will run right through you into the next room and back through.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: After annoying the Wizard by making a lot of noise in the dungeon, he'll teleport in and zap the poor sap who was watching over you.
- Tsioque is able to meet with some of these herself if you mess up, such as falling into a barrel of tar or being eaten alive by a monster.
- Flaming Hair: The Wizard has yellow fire for hair to match his magic power color.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Wizard has a set of these to stick out from his completely dark figure.
- Hand Blast: The Wizard prefers to deal with things by zapping them with magic from his fingers.
- Heroic Mime: Tsioque never speaks, only grunting occasionally or huffing in frustration.
- Invisibility Cloak: Tsioque gets one of these after solving a puzzle in a small crypt. Pity it doesn't stay long.
- I Shall Taunt You: At one point, Tsioque must taunt a guard to allow the cat to escape from under the barrel he's sitting on.
- Magitek: The magic mirror and the wand used to control it are an awful lot like a TV and remote, and the Wizard's crystal ball is a lot like a telephone. Probably because that's what they really are outside the protagonist's imagination.
- Mirrors Reflect Everything: Near the end, a hand mirror is used to reflect the Wizard's petrifying Hand Blast.
- Missing Child: You go to help people and leave your daughter all alone, thinking she will be nice and safe while you handle protecting the kingdom. But while you're gone, she's captured and has to try and escape the clutches of evil all by herself.
- Most Writers Are Writers: In the end, the little girl's father is shown to be an aspiring game developer.
- Only Idiots May Pass: A minor example—Tsioque will refuse to touch the alchemy set until she's found the recipe she needs, even if she already has all the ingredients.
- Plucky Girl: A little girl of what looks to be eight manages to escape a prison cell, outsmart various imps, and generally get past anything in her way.
- Potty Emergency: The guard at the base of the tower has to go, but he can't because the gold-clad guard refuses to take over the watch.
- Press X to Die: A lot of actions result in immediate failure, such as trying to handle the axe in the guard camp, or approaching the fairy queen in the grand hall.
- Princess Protagonist: The titular Princess Tsioque is also the character you follow.
- Protagonist Title
- The Reveal: When the Wizard uses his Crystal Ball, he's revealed to be Tsioque's father, the king.
- Scenery Porn: All of the backgrounds in this game look amazing and alive to go with the hand-drawn style of the game.
- Silence, You Fool!: The Wizard REALLY hates loud noises, And will punish ANYONE if they disturb him. By the way, almost all the puzzles in this game make REALLY loud noises in some way, either when solved, or during solving them. It's probably inspired by the father being similarly focused on his own work and not wanting to be distracted.
- Staircase Tumble: As the large Imp throws smaller ones at you at the stairs, they tumble down comically all the way towards you.
- This Is Reality: Mentioned during the end cutscene.
- Tickle Torture: Briefly employed to get a half-asleep drunk guard to move.
- Tied-Together-Shoelace Trip: Without the shoelaces. Tsioque uses sticky spider silk to prevent a guard from chasing her.
- Too Dumb to Live: The guard watching over Tsioque initially. After you drop the amulet twice on the plate and spook him, you'd think he'd hang on to it to keep you from making more noise to attract his master. Instead he gives it back. Twice.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Running from the guard down the Absurdly Long Stairway is more reminiscent of a Rhythm Game, albeit with fairly lenient timing, wherein you have to click the circles like quick-time events. There's an option to skip the sequence if you want.
- Wizard Duel: You can start one of these by having the Fairy Godmother (in the page picture) make enough noise. Yeah, The Wizard REALLY hates loud noises enough to get into a fairly spectacular magical duel with someone over it.
What is all this racket?!
