The platforming in TetherGeist – in terms of its sheer quality, imaginativeness and variety – is as good as Celeste. A bold claim, I know. But all the key elements in this razor-sharp precision platformer – the movement, the responsive controls, the level design, and the weight and feel of the protagonist – are absolutely top-drawer. Amongst the best I’ve ever experienced.
Then there’s the main platforming mechanic itself, which is a unique manoeuvre that’s somewhere between a dash and a grapple hook, but more flexible and tactile than either. As you’d expect, it’s a hard game, but there are instant respawns and forgiving checkpoints. Most importantly, it consistently provides thrilling opportunities to string sets of death-defying movements together, making you feel like a super cool speedrunner. Everything about its platforming is just right.
Like Celeste and Love Eternal, it also has a story to tell (with less realism than the former and more cuteness than the latter, but still dealing with very human themes). The main story concept, in its broad outlines, harmonises beautifully with the tough gameplay; that is, when you’re actually in the midst of the joyously difficult platforming. Unfortunately, the telling of this story, the actual writing – especially the dialogue – is not quite on the same level as the stellar platforming mechanics. However, TetherGeist is still a landmark addition to the genre.
You play as Mae, a teenage girl who is suffering from a mysterious illness that is stopping her from embarking upon ‘The Binding’, an important rite-of-passage in her culture. Everyone in Mae’s shamanic village has a ‘geist’, a soul or spirit that they can literally separate from their bodies. Mae’s, however, remains tethered to her (this is, it seems, the cause of her sickness). She can only project it a very short distance. Thus, while all her friends are leaving their bodies to make the long journey to the mysterious Fount of Souls, the purported home of the Mountain God, she is left behind in the village. But Mae is not so easily dissuaded. She decides to travel there too, even though, in her corporeal form (albeit with a little help from her tethered geist), the journey will be arduous.
It’s a perfect story setup for a difficult precision platformer. The main mechanic – Mae’s fettered spirit – and the motivation to help her along on her journey come together to create a compelling sense of ludonarrative harmony.
The platforming is a dream. An increasingly complex aerial dance, full of imagination and variety. There’s no combat. It’s precision platforming all the way. The main geist mechanic is established immediately and built upon in delightful ways as the game progresses. In what amounts to a form of astral projection, Mae can use her geist to reach seemingly inaccessible platforms and move through certain obstacles. You can arc this movement in a most pleasing way in order to swerve and swoop your way through the beautiful, treacherous fantasy world of the game. It feels remarkably responsive and, once you’ve gotten used to it, highly intuitive.
With each new stage, a new spirit ability is added. Mae can hold up to five at a time. These single-use abilities are picked up as you move through a level. Each has a different visual design and colour and, once collected, is loaded in a metre bar on the top left of the screen. You often have to plan exactly when you’ll need each different ability and line them up accordingly. For instance, you might need to first project Mae through some thorns and then shoot her onto a massive spinning wheel before throwing her off and wall-jumping to safety. (Later in the game these combinations become even more complex, spanning numerous screens). It’s all very intricate but soon becomes second nature. And it opens up so many possibilities for traversal. Puzzling your way across a screen is almost as fun as executing your plan.
The game plays with all these mechanics in delightfully creative ways. There are so many fresh ideas constantly reinvigorating the movement. And it all runs silkily smooth. I often marvelled at just how well the developers have got all these different mechanics working in unison. It’s virtuoso game design and programming.
Between these remarkable platforming stages you stop in at towns, which provide much-needed respite from the intense gameplay and also function as worldbuilding and storytelling hubs. They look fantastic. Indeed, all the environments in the fantasy world of TetherGeist are very beautiful. The pixel art is expansive, colourful and picturesque. The landscapes Mae is travelling through are varied and rich in detail (look out for all the different little animals in each area), and the animations are lovingly rendered. The art is on the cuter end of the spectrum, especially the character portraits, and in the comic book-like panels that precede each new area.
Each of the towns has its own social norms and culture, and there are lots of NPCs to chat with. There are also two main recurring characters whose stories interweave with Mae’s. One of them, aptly named Foyal, acts as a kind of foil to Mae. These narrative pit stops add considerable depth to the fictional world, and help give a sense of, and emphasis to, Mae’s journey.
Alas, the dialogue itself is disappointing. All of the characters speak in slangy modern American English. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with this. Celeste, for instance, uses a similar linguistic register. However, TetherGeist, unlike Celeste, is set in a fantasy world, and there’s no attempt to adapt the language to this specific fictional ‘reality’. I found this jarring. There’s nothing unique or arresting about the word choice, syntax or conversational flow in the game. The language feels inserted into the world, as opposed to being a natural part of it.
The writer(s) have not conjured up a believable discourse for their fantasy world. This wouldn’t necessarily entail constructing a whole language like in, say, the Planet of Lana games. It could be as simple as using a plain, non-specific register, onto which players can project, without the baggage of a specific vernacular. This lack of focus on the language is a shame, especially so given the game’s structural concern with building a rich fictional world through Mae’s journey and experiences.
The best ‘writing’ and storytelling is embedded in the gameplay itself, in the struggles of Mae to reach her geographical and spiritual goal. But there’s little deep or meaningful exploration of the main themes outside of this. Given the main mechanics and themes of the game, this feels like another missed opportunity. There’s so much to say about the relationship between the body and the soul and between the corporeal and the spiritual worlds, as well as the role of religion in mediating between them.
Perhaps the game isn’t aiming at this kind of profundity, but the potential is there, lying frustratingly dormant, at the very heart of its story and mechanical premises. It sometimes feels like the game’s playful, cutesy, classically chirpy video game tone – which was the norm in an earlier period of video game history – and the (potentially) more serious content of its story are at odds.
Despite this, I loved my time with this brilliantly engineered precision platformer. And I spent quite a lot of time with it. My first playthrough took just under 20 hours, and that’s without going for most of the collectibles (which are embedded into the world beautifully, by the way, either hidden in the verdant flora or in very difficult-to-reach places). Admittedly, I’m not the fastest player, but it’s a long runtime for a game in this intense genre – especially when you’ve got a review deadline to meet! However, the game always kept me hooked with its creative iterations on the main movement mechanic. And I will definitely return to it in order to grab those collectibles, to hone my platforming skills and to get my death counts down. Hopefully the speedrunning gods will be smiling down upon me.
