#Toem developer how to#

for over a year, I found developer blogs and stories to be an extremely useful source of information and inspiration. Toem launches September 17th on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC.As a first time, indie developer working on Plague Inc. Instead, it was a black-and-white game that asked me to photograph a deer DJ that brought me back to that time. When I played New Pokémon Snap earlier this year, I wanted it to recapture the feeling of discovery I had while playing the original on Nintendo 64.

And without any pressure or punishment to miss a photo, I was much more motivated to snap anything that looked interesting or seek out certain photos to help out a quest-giver. I always had my eye out for things like hidden animals in the trees, cool graffiti on walls, or even just somebody’s cat. Toem, by contrast, is a lot more relaxed and open, and for me, that lets me have a lot more fun playing photographer. I also didn’t like how you could miss photo opportunities it added an unnecessary level of anxiety to a game about calm nature rides.

I was really excited for New Pokémon Snap, but I found its structure, which forces you down curated routes that you have to play repeatedly (and, for a good chunk of the game, without any way to boost through them), to be frustratingly limiting. It also made me realize just how much I hope the next Pokémon Snap borrows from it.

#Toem developer how to#

The game encourages you to explore each nook and cranny, gives you a lot of freedom in how to go about things, and has a wonderful playfulness about it all. One quest involves finding this person’s dog. And you don’t need to do every available quest to be able to move onto the next area, so if you can’t figure one out, it’s not a big deal. Often, the tasks you can complete are quite silly, such as bringing a ghost to a perfect date spot or finding a lost balloon so it can attend its birthday party. Once you complete enough quests, you can advance to the next area. To progress through Toem, you accept quests to take certain photos or to find items in the world. There are a lot of pleasant music tracks that help you settle into the game’s relaxed mood, and characters speak in charming gibberish like what you might have heard in Celeste. The characters, meanwhile, seem as if they were plucked right out of a Nickelodeon cartoon.

Toem’s charming black-and-white art style is a joy to take in I especially liked how things looked like they’re made from paper and cardboard. That encouraged me to constantly pick up my camera as I was playing and scan the world around me. But sometimes, that first-person view is the only way to see some things that might be out of sight while in the isometric view, such as what might be under a bridge. Usually, you’ll use your camera to take pictures of animals, interesting landmarks, or specific things for a quest. The bulk of your exploration takes place from an isometric point of view, but when you use your camera, the game shifts to a first-person perspective, often giving you a whole new look at the world around you.

In Toem, developed by Swedish indie studio Something We Made, you play as a character armed with a camera who wanders through a number of different themed areas, such as a forest and a city, taking pictures of what you find along the way. And to my surprise, I enjoyed Toem a lot more. Its emphasis on exploration and low stakes felt vastly different from another photography game I played this year, New Pokémon Snap. Toem is a delightful game about photography.