I’ve been quietly following TetherGeist for two years, checking out O and Co. Games’ devlogs as this astral projection platformer slowly took shape. As someone who is constantly tinkering with movement in my own rig project, I had more than a passing interest in whether this mind-attached hook would actually work once it was in my hands. Now that I’ve played the finished game, I can tell you more that it works. The rig here sits comfortably alongside Celeste, which is just about the biggest compliment I know how to give. Only the narration keeps him from reaching the crown.
Do it the hard way
You play Mae, a teenager in a shamanic culture where everyone can separate their spirit, their “geist”, from their body and send it wherever they want. This is how people travel, and coming of age means undertaking a rite called the Binding, a spiritual journey to the distant Source of Souls. Mae, however, is different. Her geist is attached to her by a mysterious illness, so she can only project it a short distance. Excluded from the Liaison and pitied by her village, she still leaves for the Source, doing on foot and by the skin of her teeth what everyone does in spirit.
It’s a beautiful design, because the story and systems are moving in the same direction. You feel Mae’s limitations on every screen, and the goal is to overcome them clumsily and effortlessly. The game even leans into it thematically, exploring disability with real warmth through Mae and her foil, Foyal, who spends her journey searching for a “cure” that Mae never wants. There’s a line later, something close to “it doesn’t matter if I did it wrong, at least I did it”, that sums it all up.
Movement is magic
The basic mechanic lands somewhere between a dash and a grappling hook, letting Mae throw her tethered geist to reach ledges, slide through obstacles, and arc through the air in long diving curves. It’s responsive, tactile and, once it clicks, wonderfully intuitive. Where it really shines is in the single-use spirit abilities, the Azae, that you collect as you travel. There are seven of them, you can hold up to five at a time, and each level becomes a matter of planning who to shoot and when, stringing together a sequence across one screen (and later across several) until a series of near-impossible moves unfolds like a dance.
The best of them lets you throw your mind like a ball that darts up walls and weaves through thorns, then launches into dissolving red zones to dodge, colorful portals to bend your path, and switches that only your mind can flip. This ability alone had me thinking geometrically for hours. Each new chapter introduces new ideas, everything flows beautifully, and the frequent checkpoints and instant respawns mean difficulty, and there’s plenty of it, without ever tipping into cruelty. Dying a thousand times is an achievement, and I understand why.
A magnificent world to cross
Between trials, you rest in towns, which also serve as the game’s narrative hubs, and they are beautiful. The pixel art is vast and colorful, the landscapes are full of small animals and hidden details, and each new area opens up with charming comic book panels. There are giant frog spirits, pineapple-obsessed aliens and sauna-bound ancients to bring a smile, and over two hundred collectible atropa flowers nestled in the setting for anyone looking for the true ending. My first run lasted almost twenty hours, which is generous for the genre, and I’ll be back for the flowers and to hang out my countdown.
Where it stumbles
For all its brilliance, TetherGeist is held back in two places. The first is writing. The platform and premise are searching for something meaningful, but the dialogue is entirely modern American English and slang that’s oddly set in a fantasy world of shamans and mountain gods. It’s not poorly written, but the tone is misplaced, and the deeper themes that the setup teases, body and soul, faith, belonging, remain largely unexplored. The second is that the platforming, as shiny as it is, can feel like you’re on rails. For all the tools you carry, most screens have an intended solution, so there’s little room to improvise your own way, and the occasional camera that can’t quite keep up adds a cheap death.
The judgment
None of this obscures what O and Co. Games has built. TetherGeist is one of the best precision platformers since Celeste, an inventive, beautiful, kinetic joy that turns a story about limitation into one of the genre’s most liberating moves. It’s only let down by a script that can’t match its mechanics and by a design that sometimes keeps you a little too firmly on the intended path. If you like challenges in the vein of Celeste, stick with this one. After two years of watching him grow, I couldn’t be happier with where he landed.
