In an attempt to honour classic adventure games, it falls short of having a personality that you’ll recall days removed. But as unique, quaint, and cute as the hand-drawn approach is, the monochrome take is somewhat forgettable in the end. The Scandinavian-inspired landscapes all but force the player to stop and smell the roses. It’s understated and simplistic in the same way Scribblenauts used to be, while managing to be distinct all at once. Toem’s black and white, hand-drawn aesthetic is certainly pretty. They all tie in to the game’s problem solving and, like the horn, add a deeper layer to the experience.
A reporter’s hat gets him backstage at a fashion show while a cool set of sunglasses, which also aid in communing with the spiritual plane, see him waved through at a woodland rave. RELATED: Redfall Review – Just A Biteful Of FunĪs a shutterbug, our hero can also don several garments to help him stand out and, in some cases, be granted access to places he might be bounced from otherwise. Though derivative, I loved how Toem leaned heavily into the fetch nature of Pokémon by giving us a log of animals to snap and, in a roundabout way, collect within the world, it encourages exploration of a world that welcomes exactly that. Though it makes sense in-lore to limit the hero’s album, being able to only snap just over one hundred photos in a world where Instagram exists feels like a bizarre choice. It’s point-and-click in a non-traditional sense, and though the game gives you specific things to snap, it’s also nice just to wander, take in the sights and fill your album up. Getting around is pretty intuitive as large arrows at the edge of areas dictate the ins and outs, while you simply hop on the bus to transit between regions.Ī lot of the remarkable sights you’ll see in Toem will be through the lens of the hero’s modest camera.
The regions themselves, which range from a storied fishing village to a lively metropolis, are decently sized and, as mentioned previously, populated with all kinds of critters to log and magical people to meet, including an adorable family of balloons who doesn’t fare well against a brisk mountainous breeze. In my experience, a couple of the bite-sized quests did turn out to be headscratchers, although it didn’t impede my progress as the condition for passage is set low enough to not gatekeep anybody. The goal is to complete enough menial tasks around town to receive stamps in your logbook which in turn grant you passage to the subsequent region.
Homelanda, the place of origin for our hero’s spark of adventure, and the final mountainous summit of Toem aside, the game features four dense regions. With an elusive goal and a world of people and cute, adorable critters to immortalise on Polaroid, it’s hard to argue that Toem isn’t formulaic despite its clear style. Of course, this time it isn’t to catch ‘em all, it’s to photograph Toem - a natural phenomenon that the nameless hero’s grandmother had been witness to in her younger years.
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Toem takes the region-trotting exploration of the mainline Pokémon titles and combines it with the two-time photography spin-off Pokémon Snap to give us something that, in the same way, Bugsnax did, feels familiar and warm like a safety blanket.Īll of the opening beats scream Pokémon as you break free from a quaint, provincial home-life to chase a singular goal.
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