This game was reviewed using Version 1.09. Your experience on future versions may vary.

A short, relaxing photography puzzle game full of personality and charm. Unique puzzles, adorable art style, and quirky characters are combined with a soothing soundtrack that's sure to keep your spirits high all throughout. At roughly 4-5 hours to complete, it'll make for an afternoon of calming fun--though you may want to take the game's advice to "stop and smell the flowers" to make sure you're getting your money's worth.

TOEM is a photography-based adventure game in which you set out on a journey to find and photograph the mysterious "Toem", helping solve problems for a wide cast of characters along the way. The bulk of the game is centered around helping people with various tasks through the use of exploration and photography-based environmental puzzles, such as helping someone photograph a person or object hiding somewhere around the map. The concept sounds rather simple, but TOEM manages to keep its core gameplay from getting stale through the creativity of its puzzles. The mechanics don't evolve too drastically, and there is a bit of overlap in what kinds of puzzles you'll find (e.g. the existence of the Photo Challengers Guild in every stage), but each one varies in its execution just enough so that nearly everything you do feels unique, and even recurring tasks don't feel recycled. The game's decision to use 2D sprites in 3D environments makes it easy to take great photos of the game's quirky and/or adorable characters--something you will almost certainly be doing a lot of even outside of tasks, because every area is chock full of them. The game's art style is an absolute delight through and through, and just about every inch of the game's landscapes are full of intricate details so no visual clarity is lost eveb despite its limited color scheme. The entire experience is punctuated with a wonderful calming soundtrack interspersed throughout, and I'll most likely be playing it in the background while I work for quite a while. I did wish the game would play its songs more often without me having to manually turn them on via the Hikelady, the game's built-in music player, but I'm glad that the option to manually select your own background music exists in the first place, and it's something I hope more games adopt in the future.

I did run into a couple minor issues while playing TOEM, most of which were due to the game's controls. I played the first half of the game using a mouse and keyboard and found myself struggling with certain actions--such as trying to take photos involving both precise timing and positioning--as I was only able to move my mouse so fast, and some on-screen buttons didn't have keyboard shortcuts (or at least none that I could find). This was made worse by the fact that the game doesn't offer much direction on the full list of available shortcuts when using a keyboard, and the shortcuts I could find had to be discovered by just pressing every key on my keyboard one by one until something happened. I ended up switching to a controller in the second half of the game and things went much, much smoother, so just keep in mind that the game seems to be optimized better for controller use, and using a mouse + keyboard might lead you to have some issues. Another important note is that there doesn't seem to be a way to remap the controls on either control scheme, and you're only given options to change the speed of camera movements and the like. All of this was more of an annoyance than a serious problem during my playthrough, but it's something to keep in mind if accessibility is a concern for you. As of writing this, however, the game is still being actively patched (one of which released between finishing the game and posting this review), so it's possible that these specific problems are fixed in an update by the time you're reading this.

It took me around 5 hours to beat the game and earn every achievement between my time spent on the demo and the full game, and I'd say it was 5 hours well spent. Despite the minor issues I experienced, I very much enjoyed my time playing TOEM, although a part of me wishes the experience would have lasted just a little bit longer. It's a fun, relaxing, overall pleasant way to spend your day, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a similar game that has as much charm as this one. TOEM marks the first full game that its developer, Something We Made, has ever released, and it's safe to say that the "something" they made is something that will stick with me for quite some time.

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[b][u]This game was reviewed using Version 1.09. Your experience on future versions may vary.[/u][/b] [h3][b][u]Short Answer:[/u][/b][/h3] A short, relaxing photography puzzle game full of personality and charm. Unique puzzles, adorable art style, and quirky characters are combined with a soothing soundtrack that's sure to keep your spirits high all throughout. At roughly 4-5 hours to complete, it'll make for an afternoon of calming fun--though you may want to take the game's advice to "stop and smell the flowers" to make sure you're getting your money's worth. [h3][b][u]Long Answer:[/u][/b][/h3] [i]TOEM[/i] is a photography-based adventure game in which you set out on a journey to find and photograph the mysterious "Toem", helping solve problems for a wide cast of characters along the way. The bulk of the game is centered around helping people with various tasks through the use of exploration and photography-based environmental puzzles, such as helping someone photograph a person or object hiding somewhere around the map. The concept sounds rather simple, but [b][i]TOEM[/i] manages to keep its core gameplay from getting stale through the creativity of its puzzles[/b]. The mechanics don't evolve too drastically, and there is a bit of overlap in what kinds of puzzles you'll find (e.g. the existence of the Photo Challengers Guild in every stage), but each one varies in its execution just enough so that nearly everything you do feels unique, and even recurring tasks don't feel recycled. The game's decision to use 2D sprites in 3D environments makes it easy to take great photos of the game's quirky and/or adorable characters--something you will almost certainly be doing a lot of even outside of tasks, because every area is chock full of them. [b]The game's art style is an absolute delight through and through[/b], and just about every inch of the game's landscapes are full of intricate details so no visual clarity is lost eveb despite its limited color scheme. [b]The entire experience is punctuated with a wonderful calming soundtrack interspersed throughout[/b], and I'll most likely be playing it in the background while I work for quite a while. I did wish the game would play its songs more often without me having to manually turn them on via the Hikelady, the game's built-in music player, but I'm glad that the option to manually select your own background music exists in the first place, and it's something I hope more games adopt in the future. I did run into a couple minor issues while playing [i]TOEM[/i], most of which were due to the game's controls. I played the first half of the game using a mouse and keyboard and found myself struggling with certain actions--such as trying to take photos involving both precise timing and positioning--as I was only able to move my mouse so fast, and some on-screen buttons didn't have keyboard shortcuts (or at least none that I could find). This was made worse by the fact that the game doesn't offer much direction on the full list of available shortcuts when using a keyboard, and the shortcuts I could find had to be discovered by just pressing every key on my keyboard one by one until something happened. I ended up switching to a controller in the second half of the game and things went much, much smoother, so just keep in mind that [b]the game seems to be optimized better for controller use, and using a mouse + keyboard might lead you to have some issues[/b]. Another important note is that [b]there doesn't seem to be a way to remap the controls on either control scheme[/b], and you're only given options to change the speed of camera movements and the like. All of this was more of an annoyance than a serious problem during my playthrough, but it's something to keep in mind if accessibility is a concern for you. As of writing this, however, the game is still being actively patched (one of which released between finishing the game and posting this review), so it's possible that these specific problems are fixed in an update by the time you're reading this. [b]It took me around 5 hours to beat the game and earn every achievement[/b] between my time spent on the demo and the full game, and I'd say it was 5 hours well spent. [b][u]Despite the minor issues I experienced, I very much enjoyed my time playing [i]TOEM[/i], although a part of me wishes the experience would have lasted just a little bit longer. It's a fun, relaxing, overall pleasant way to spend your day, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a similar game that has as much charm as this one.[/u][/b] [i]TOEM[/i] marks the first full game that its developer, Something We Made, has ever released, and it's safe to say that the "something" they made is something that will stick with me for quite some time. [quote]For more game reviews, check out my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42524563/]Curator page[/url]![/quote]