![]() There are some things you can get a photo of that are special, like unique animals hiding around, or citizens you've made exquisitely happy by helping them. The new melody for a singer on the beach had to be filtered through two other people first, for example, but then it called forth the King Fish I needed a photo of for someone else. Some puzzles have several steps, or loop in to solve something else. There's a camera club, of sorts, who give you requests for photos of certain things, some of which are specific and easy (one guy asked me for a photo of a tree, in the forest) while others will require more lateral thinking, like the one who wanted a photo of something 'rad'. This is lucky, because you will face a varied list of requests. The camera is omni-purpose in Toem's world. You can direct a crane with your viewfinder. ![]() You get a horn to scare pests like seagulls. Not only do you get to keep your photos in a nice album, but later on you get a tripod, so you can take photos of yourself in one of those face-in-hole photo boards and pretend to be a farmer. At any time you can switch to your camera to take a picture, with a simple zoom and focus slider. NPCs are flat and will always turn to face you, but buildings are proper 3D and trees are somewhere in between. And it's 3D in the way that a paper model is 3D. You can explore different streets in the city, for example, and you can zoom the camera right out and spin around almost 360 degrees to look at everything. This is partly thanks to the art's strong, clean lines, but also the character designs themselves, which range from cute (balloon child that has blown away from his balloon parents small fluffy dog creatures skiing bird) to wacky (punk lion feeding parrot instead of pigeons security guard bear assessing how cool you are ghost demanding sandwich). The whole world of Toem is in black and white, but remains expressive throughout. And there are always more puzzles than stamps you need, so you're unlikely to get stuck. ![]() Helping someone out gets you a stamp on your card, and enough stamps means you can go to the next area. You travel between them via a bus, and the currency is Being A Good Citizen. This journey takes you through a tranquil camping forest, a seaside town, a busy city, and a snowy resort, each of which is full of locals with problems. It's a sort of unofficial rite of passage. You task is to travel from your little home, where you live with your nan, to the highest peak of the highest mountain to take a picture of the light phenomenon that occurs there. I was here, I did this thing, it was good. This is photography as a joyful insta-record of your life. This isn't really photography for the camera nerds interested in lenses or different exposures. Wonky-focused snaps of a flower, or a ladybird, or a nice building (poorly framed because you can't get all of it in shot). Not because you are able to make disasterous or whimisical fashion choices - you very much are, mostly in the hat department - but because you just take photos of everything, for the fun of it, to remember this thing you saw. The little black-and-white puzzle adventure game Toem, in which all problems are solved with a camera, reminds me of that. These are the photos that come up on your Facebook Memories, reminding you that for a brief period during your final year of school you started wearing 50s-ish neck scarves, for some reason. Remember that brief period in the 00s where everyone had a mobile phone, but none of them could take decent photos, so at least one girl per friendship group also had to have a small digital camera? Laboriously uploading and tagging. Exploring and taking photos to solve puzzles in Toem is somehow nostalgic and modern all at the same time, and it's sweet, wholesome fun.
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