Publisher: EDGLRD
Platform(s): PC (Steam), TBD
Release Date: 2025
“Just one more go.”
“I need to try again. I’ve almost got it this time.”
“Just one more…”
As I was playing through my hands-on three-level demo of TAMASHIKA by quicktequila at GDC 2025’s Day of the Devs in West Hall, all I wanted was to try. One. More. Time. Even now, as I am writing this between media appointments, my mind is back in those psychedelic, color-dripping, graphics and run-and-gun-and-knife gameplay. I only got most of the way through level two, but I want to go back and make it to the end.
First, the basics: TAMASHIKA is a corridor shooter that arms you with only two weapons: a gun with seven bullets (that you press ‘X’ to reload) and a tantō blade. You use the gun to shoot enemies and the tantō blade to both deflect and to behead enemies, before they can lop your top off first. When an enemy tries to knife you, you have to wait a half-second during the mini quick-time-event to slash back. You can also use your blade to block the enemies’ shots. Other than that, you just shoot at everything that moves while you’re always staying on the move. You have to keep moving because if you linger in one spot too long, the game will purposefully desynchronize, and you will lose.
And what happens when you lose?
Everything rewinds and dumps you back at the start of the corridor to run and try again. The enemies stay in the same place, so you learn just a BIT more every time you die in TAMASHIKA and you go back to the start of the level. With no real punishment for losing, and the fact that -if you pay attention- you can not only get back to where you were in moments (the levels are designed to be short), it means that TAMASHIKA creates that kind of gameplay loop that becomes crazily addictive. I got through two of the three levels of the demo before I put down the controls, since my time with the game was up.
There are no other guns and no other blades to unlock. This means that TAMASHIKA comes down to how well you can pay attention to your prior runs, how quickly you can react to what is happening around you, and how much free time your friends and family have with you as you say, “I will put it down after this one last run. Okay, maybe the one after this one.”
The graphics and music in TAMASHIKA make this game stand out, too. Whereas Call of Duty and Battlefield are darker, dingy colors, TAMASHIKA is a color explosion on your screen. Your fingernails are different colors, the walls are bright, and you cannot help but be drawn in by the hand-drawn graphics. More importantly, the enemies do not blend in with the background but instead patently stand out against it. The music is up-beat and thumping too, and it suits the gameplay well while lending it a real arcadey feel.
I talked briefly with the developer, who said that he wants to create a ‘short form experience’ that has one new procedurally-generated level a day, and he wants to encourage speedrunners to see how fast they can get through each level. And honestly? I see it happening.
The developer, Vidhvat Madan, said on X back in January 2025 that TAMASHIKA “feels like a leap of faith for me at this point in my life“. Well, if the final game is anything like the demo I played at GDC 2025, then it is a leap of faith that is going to pay off when the world at large gets to play it later this year, and I can’t wait to see it on the GDQ main stage.
Are you excited for TAMASHIKA? Did you play quicktequila’s prior game, Lovely Planet?
Let us know in the comments below!
