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TOEM review
by NotPositive-XP

An incredibly relaxing fun time
«Sit back and relax»
«Underrated»

Other reviews3

I have this strange obsession with putting off playing, you know, proper beefy, what some would call “real games,” to play these weird little cute time-wasters instead. There is something nice about how it scratches a certain section of your brain to easily achieve things quite quickly in succession.

I have actually 100% achieved everything in Toem, and when my wife asked if I enjoyed it, all I could say was… I think so? Maybe? As a gaming experience, not a lot of it has actually stuck in my mind, it just kind of was, and now it is no longer.

Toem is quite a basic game, really. You take photos of anything and everything, from the banal, like a pile of sand, all the way to the fantastical, like a fish wearing a crown or a man that looks like a giant sock. It’s also about helping people, dressing up your little dude (I don’t know his name – I’m not even sure he has one) in different outfits, and listening to some jams on a tape player.

There’s no real challenge to Toem; nothing gave me a headache for long (except that one guy under the stairs who can absolutely go fuck himself, really), it’s just a very nice chilled-out experience where you have quite forgettable conversations with a whole cast of ghosts and pirates and fuzzy yetis, take a whole host of rubbish photos, and try to remember why you took them and who wanted them in the first place.

I’ve played quite a few of these indie puzzle-lite games, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Toem is not a bad game, but it is also not a good game. In fact, I’m reticent to even call it a game, really. Toem and its ilk are at their very core experiences to turn your brain down to minimal effort and half-arsedly achieve a lot of achievements.

https://questtozero.com/game-review/toem-a-photo-adventure-review/
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I really liked playing this game. It was a nice escape from the real world for a while, and it was fun to finish missions and collect stamps!