A cozy adventure built around your shapeshifting companion
Taival puts you in a handcrafted blocky world where the last Henki — a shapeshifting creature that keeps the world in balance — has lost the fragments of its heritage. Your goal is to find out who destroyed the Heartstone of the Henki, restore it, and bring your companion home. The world itself is made of seamlessly connected realms: rolling highlands, dense forests, ancient ruins, each with its own inhabitants and secrets. It's a PvE adventure, so everything you run into is part of the journey rather than something another player throws at you.
Playing as a group
You can travel with up to 4 players, each with your own character, your own companion, and your own skill tree. The setup that makes Taival unusual is that you can mix local split-screen and online players in the same session at the same time — one friend on the couch, two more joining remotely, all in one adventure. When the group hits a quest decision, everyone follows the same dialogue, sees each other's cursors, and can suggest a dialogue option, so the choice ends up being a group one.
Forms, quests, and progression
Your Henki companion is the core mechanic. When you meet new creatures out in the world, Henki absorbs their essence and shifts into that form, each one bringing its own abilities — a heavy beast that eats damage, a fast mount for scaling cliffsides, a predator that strikes from shadow. Exploring more of the world unlocks more forms, and you pick the combination that suits you or fits the party. Progression runs on two tracks at once: your character unlocks abilities, improves combat skills, and even levels up fishing, while Henki masters new forms and mount abilities.
What to know before starting
Quests come in varying lengths and vary in tone. You might settle a house ownership dispute between two goblins or track down a stolen barrel of plants, but you'll also be fighting a beast at a barbarian camp and doing pest control against insects your own size. It's a cozy game, not a quiet one. Taival is in Early Access, so expect the experience to still be taking shape as you and your group play through it.