Toem
Year: 2021
Rating: E
Time Played: 273 minutes / 4.55 hours
As someone who enjoys photography and video games, Toem was the right fit for me. A game where you go around taking photographs for people scratched that itch by making the photography like a fetch quest—providing goals to meet with each picture. The aesthetic in Toem is charming and cozy, and the choice to be almost entirely in black-and-white was interesting but understandable (as black-and-white photography is still a thing). And while there were a few control issues I had problems with, the game was just long enough for me to be entertained and accomplish most of the missions.
My only issue with Toem is the controls for the camera itself. Seeing as this is the core element of the gameplay, it was frustrating to encounter it every time I took a picture. Mostly, I found zooming in/out to be cumbersome as there wasn’t just a button to zoom in or out but instead needed the mouse to slide the zoom setting—the same mouse that is used to point the camera. I played this game on my PC, so I wonder if some of these issues would be resolved if I just connected a controller and played that way.
Most missions felt fairly straightforward, with only a few stumping me enough to just give up on them. Each little hint with each request usually gave me a brief “aha moment” before I headed off to complete the mission—some of which required multiple steps to complete. Fortunately, you don’t need to complete every mission in a level to summon the bus to move on to the next one. With a handful of levels, I appreciated that there weren’t too many “backtracking” missions that required photographs from other parts of the world.
A cozy photography game, I give Toem 4.0 stars out of 5.
