Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight is a 3D platformer collectathon developed by Orbital Express. You play as Yukumo: a girl whose airship breaks down, forcing her to explore mostly abandoned, fog-covered towns to get the parts needed to repair her ship.
The art design is Tasomachi’s greatest strength. The game has a familiar but still charming and distinct look. Once you clear the fog, the colors are vibrant and the environments look gorgeous. The little cat people who inhabit the town are adorable, and their faces are always a welcome sight.
However, everything below the surface falls apart. The environments reuse so many models and layout formats that everything blends together, making it easy to get lost. Aside from Yukumo’s walk cycle and the catfolk’s constant dancing, the animations are awkward. Yukumo’s floaty jump, weak air dash, and ground pound don’t read clearly.
At the three-and-a-half-hour mark, I fixed my airship, which opened up each town even more. However, whether it’s a glitch or a design choice, I couldn’t collect lanterns when in my airship. I had ninety lanterns and I needed sixty more to access the next area. Realizing I’d have to spend several more hours combing through old towns again to find sixty more lanterns, I quit. Even if not being able to collect lanterns in the airship was a glitch that gets fixed, the game isn’t fun, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody.
Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight is available now for PC.
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Published: Apr 16, 2021 12:00 pm