I figured it was prudent that, before August ended, I actually played one of these cozy summer vacation vibe games instead of the current unseasonal mix of horror games and my usual explormer bullshit. Toem is very much in the same wheelhouse as A Short Hike or an Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, setting your little Moomin-esque protagonist off on an adventure to photograph the elusive titular "Toem", helping others and snapping curious sights along the way as they pass through various locales like a forested village, a busy city, a mountain resort, and a sunny harbor. It has that open-world sandbox approach where you're left to your own devices to complete as many side-activities as you want, or can find, with the target number necessary to access the next part of the game usually being around half or less of the full number of objectives available.

The game has a top-down perspective but uses 3D (at least, the topography is 3D; all the characters are sprites) to let you move the camera around and check out every angle of each "diorama" of the current area, sometimes allowing you to find hidden objects or wall art. The primary means of exploring the world and making progress is through the viewfinder of your camera: most quests involve taking pictures of things or, once you found the right camera peripheral, making loud noises or maintaining eye contact with your target long enough to draw their attention. It's also entirely in monochrome: I figured this was a stylistic decision that was perhaps borne of wanting to reduce the amount of work needed but the game paid this choice off towards the end of the game. Toem's decent sales were enough to encourage the developers—Sweden's own Something We Made—to add one last region to the game that is accessible after the main story: a tropical island with more objectives than any previous location, which was effectively given away as free DLC to thank those who had contributed to the game's success. That gregarious generosity really represents the game's tone in a nutshell, as you go around helping people largely for the sake of just brightening the place up.

As a photography game you have the usual combination of objectives that might involve lining up a shot opportunity that comes about every few seconds or else setting the scene by manipulating the environment ahead of time. In addition to your quest objectives, including several odd cosmic cubes that transform the nearby environment if you snap them, there's also a wildlife compendium you can work away at similar to those nature photography systems seen in Beyond Good & Evil and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. All you're given for these little critters is a name and a general location: it's down to the player's resourcefulness to find them all. The game also lets you play around with goofy filters (they're occasionally involved in tasks too) and your protagonist ends up acquiring a bunch of cosmetic items to change into, a few of which offer concrete gameplay advantages like sneakers that make you faster or shades that give the ability to speak to ghosts (who, naturally, also have odd jobs for you). There's much to see, snap, and discover throughout Toem and the four moderate-sized areas (plus the aforementioned larger post-game one) provide a decent amount of content that might take in the region of five to six hours to experience in full, which feels about right for a game like this.

While Toem has the cheerful, "messing around during summer vacation" atmosphere of A Short Hike the game it mostly closely resembled in my eyes is that Hidden Folks game with the huge animated tableaux of crowds that you're meant to pick apart for your targets. There's a similar focus on your powers of perception here too, and both the music and the goofy a capella sound foley are reminiscent of Adriaan de Jongh and Sylvain Tegroeg's little people finder as well. Speaking of, the soundtrack has that wholesome Indie lo-fi business going on—you can switch the music around on the fly as you continue to collect cassette tapes featuring the OST—though it almost feels afraid to intrude on your fun most of the time, as the flashes of music were fairly intermittent and usually only present when you enter a region for the first time.

On the whole, Toem's a delightful adventure that I was naturally always going to like for its focus on photography-based puzzles—there's a reason Beyond Good & Evil and The Wind Waker are favorites of mine—but it grew into something that became increasingly impossible to dislike between its goodnatured attitude and relaxed approach to its gameplay cycle. I might've appreciated a map for a few of those regions since it's easy to get turned around but they're not so maze-like and huge to really necessitate them either. Even if I respect the stylistic choice, the lack of color was a minor disappointment too, if only because you could've done some fun things with the photo palettes or had access to more factors to build puzzles around (while keeping in mind those with color blindness of course). That said, I generally don't have a negative thought about Toem and I greatly enjoyed my time with it: very much one of those friendly casual games recommended for those of any age or any disposition/skill level when it comes to games. Now to pick something gritty and unpleasant for next week before I get too soft...

Rating: 5 out of 5.