There’s been a trend in indie games of putting players in the shoes of a helpless character lost in a frightening world. The most prominent examples are Playdead’s Limbo and Inside, about small cute children fighting through a terrifying environment teeming with monsters and other dangers, but there have been other followers over the years. Tamashii takes things a step further, centring on a small creature conjured to a corrupted celestial plane by a mysterious deity. You’re not exactly helpless here; while there are puzzle elements reminiscent of Limbo and Inside, the greater focus is on action-platforming. In fact, given the spectacularly responsive controls, the respawn system that puts you back in the action a second after death and the brutal precision required of some of the jumps, Tamashii often plays like if Playdead was commissioned to make the next Super Meat Boy sequel. But that helpless feeling persists due to the context of your mission. You’re not helpless because you’re completely powerless; you’re helpless because you’re born of a malevolent God for the sole purpose of facing these trials, and you don’t have enough knowledge outside of his influence to escape.

The most remarkable thing about Tamashii is how immediately and effectively this oppressive atmosphere is established. The game opens in the void where your master lives, as he towers over you and commands you to cleanse his temple of a corruption seeping through it. The temple, and the chambers within, are decorated with unsettling religious and sexual imagery, as well as art drawing clear influence from H.R. Giger. There’s a motif throughout of eyes silently watching you, sometimes more subtly than others, as well as the creatures you encounter having their eyes removed as they blindly follow the whims of their creator. Sometimes the game spoils its haunting atmosphere by pushing things a bit too far - particularly with the jump scares - but for the most part it’s very effective at plunging you into a world where you feel constantly surrounded and constantly alone.

This idea even bleeds into the puzzle design. The puzzles revolve around creating clones of yourself to activate switches and mechanisms that are only working when in contact with another living creature. It’s not a wholly original idea, but there are lots of clever implementations of it and it serves well to break up the harder platforming. Yet the clones you create aren’t really clones of yourself. They’re lifeless, cackling spires that mock the idea that anyone is coming to help you in your mission, while serving as the only aid you receive.

The story is slight, but the sparseness of it only helps build this feeling that you’re involved in something cosmically bigger than yourself. You’re not given a fuller picture of the situation until near the end of the game, and even then many of the details are vague, though it feels appropriate that you’re only filled in after you’re able to prove yourself. Just as you don’t explain to the clones you generate why you’ve created them, the Gods don’t disclose their plans to you.

Tamashii doesn’t quite take full advantage of its ideas due to its short runtime, my playthrough taking only two and a half hours, but what it manages to do in that time is impressive. It hits that crucial sweet spot for platformers where there’s enough challenge for it to stay engaging and any mistakes you make feel entirely like your responsibility because of the pitch-perfect controls, strengthening your resolve to get it right the next time. The art design is inspired and there’s a case to be made that the best reason to be keep moving forward is to see what weird creature or environment you’ll find next. There isn’t much in terms of story, but what is there is thought-provoking and resonates because it’s told so conservatively. Given the wealth of ideas on display, I have no doubt the team here could do something interesting with a bigger budget, and Tamashii is good enough to prove that they deserve another bite at the apple.