Once the action starts, Tembo the Badass Elephant manages to offer some very enjoyable core mechanics, allowing players to jump, float, dash, spin and use water to extinguish flames as they progress through the level. It's silly, but there's no malice in the storytelling and the bright visuals mix well with the narrative, creating an alternate reality that supports the action well without getting in its way, even if the actual events depicted are pretty dark. Tembo the Badass Elephant takes place in a world where an elephant can be trained for war and then called into service when his country comes under attack, the only hope his nation has to stop the invaders.
#Tembo the badass elephant series
The title is important because it represents a first foray outside of the Pokemon comfort zone for Game Freak, the company best known for working with Nintendo on the series that made Pikachu and his friends famous. Tembo the Badass Elephant is a side scrolling 2D platformer title which takes some of the core elements of the genre and implements them in new ways, offering gamers a chance to control a protagonist that is comically unsuited to fast and precise movement and then creating an interesting set of mechanics around his very limitations.