I enjoyed photography adventure gameToem, but I felt like it was a little slow. The devs from studio Something We Made agree. During my hands-on session with Toem 2 atSummer Game Festlast week - which had me smiling and giggling the entire time - the devs said trying to go back to the first Toem after playing this one would feel like a slog. Toem 2 isn’t just more Toem, it’s also a denser, more gratifying Toem.
The quests, discoveries, puzzles, and solutions come at you nonstop. I’d almost call it exhilarating to play, if only the photographer had a machine gun or a jet pack. That little dopamine rush of helping someone and being rewarded with a little stamp in your travel book was pretty well dialed in with the first Toem, but Toem 2 feels like it doubles the amount of favors-per-minute you’re able to achieve, and I found it almost impossible to put down.
One Photographer’s Mission To Help Everyone
At first glance Toem 2 does just look like more Toem. There are some nice visual upgrades, objects have a 3D rendered look now that gives them more depth, and there’s a lot more life in each room thanks to little touches of detail, like the glitter of sunlight coming through windows or the wind gently shaking a tree. But if you weren’t looking at the side by side, you might not even have realized it’s a different game.
The general structure that Toem is built on hasn’t changed. You are a helpful little photographer who has volunteered to take on the whole world’s problems in exchange for stamps. Most puzzles are solved by taking pictures of things and showing them to someone. A grumpy troll wants you to help him find his three missing goats, so you go find the goats and take a picture of them. Stamp well earned.
The gimmick that makes Toem special is the way using the camera changes your entire perspective of the world. As you run around and interact with characters, you’ll see the world from an isometric perspective. But when you whip out your camera, you can look around in first person. It’s an impressive effect that still feels novel in the sequel, even more so now thanks to the new tools.
You have a lot more to do in camera mode now besides just taking pictures. The first tool I got was a hammer which, predictably, you use to hit things. You can only use the hammer when you’re looking through the camera, which gives you the precision to destroy blocks in your path or break down secret walls. Later on you get a pair of scissors that can, well, cut things.
Adding tools to your camera bag opens up a lot more options for puzzle solving and gives you more ways to interact with the environment, which is a big focus for Toem 2. There’s a lot more platforming in the sequel, and it’s common to find ladders, bounce pads, and hidden jumping puzzles that lead to collectibles and mission objectives all over the world. This time, there’s much more to do than just walking around and taking pictures.
Set Cameras To Burst Mode
These new features seem small, but together they create a sense of freedom of exploration that wasn’t present in the first game. The world feels like a playground filled with things to interact with. The quest log no longer feels like a checklist of tasks, it’s more like a list of clues to nudge you in the right direction as you explore.
That feeling of freedom has a lot to do with just how much is packed into Toem 2. From the very first level - a medieval land filled with knights and castles - you can see there’s so much more to do than there was in the original. Each individual tile of the level is filled with quests, creatures, photo ops, jumping puzzles, and solutions tootherquests inothertiles. As soon as you start you’ll be pulled in a dozen different directions at the same time, but it’s up to you how you want to approach your to-do list.
You can hardly take two steps without stumbling into a new NPC or a curious thing demanding to be photographed, even if you’re not sure why just yet. Because of this, I took a very free form approach to completing quests, and I highly recommend you do the same. Whenever I entered a new tile I’d talk to every person there and gather up all of their quests, while looking around to see if I recognized anything around that I needed for any of my other quests. If I got a new quest and I knew what the solution was, I’d run off to get the photo I needed right away. After that, I wouldn’t necessarily run right back to the quest giver. If something else piqued my interest, I’d pursue it.
That approach led to non-stop moments of discovery and reward. Toem 2 is set up in such a way that you will likely complete a whole bunch of quests while wandering around, and then turn them all in at the same time. There’s an MMO-like quality to the little NPC hubs you’ll find, like the tavern in the first level. The structure allowed me to let my ADD take the wheel and flit all over the place, grabbing and completing quests at a breakneck pace until, before I knew it, I’d helped every single person in the level.
I left my demo of Toem 2 wanting more, maybe evenneedingmore. The constant stream of dopamine hits it delivers is something I haven’t felt since Balatro took over my life last year, and it’s not something I was expecting from this little puzzle adventure game. This is a better version of Toem, and what more could you ask a sequel to be?
