Original link: https://yousazoe.top/archives/58c9c2ab.html
introduction
Embark on a joyful quest to discover the magical world of TOEM with your camera in this hand-drawn adventure game. Chat with quirky and funny characters, solve their problems by taking beautiful photos, and enjoy relaxing landscapes along the way!
About the game
Embark on a joyful quest to discover the magical world of TOEM with your camera in this hand-drawn adventure game. Chat with quirky and funny characters, solve their problems by taking beautiful photos, and enjoy relaxing landscapes along the way!
Take pictures with your camera, solve puzzles and help others!
Listen to relaxing music and enjoy the surrounding scenery!
Meet weird and interesting characters and help them solve their problems!
game live
Game experience
here goes
At the beginning of the game, you are sent by your grandma to go on a trip with an old-fashioned camera. Before you set off, grandma shows you one, only one, sparkling photo of “Toem”, taken when she was traveling when she was young, and “Toem” is her “eye of the universe”. She didn’t say what “Toem” was all about, but now you’re going on a similar journey, and at the end you’re going to see it for yourself.
By helping others, solve problems for all kinds of characters in the community (including people, animals, ghosts, balloons, snowmen, etc.), collect stamps on the “Community Card”, and you can get a free bus to the next area. Pass, one stop after another. Most of these troubles can be solved with a camera, for some reason, but some require your labor, like dating a ghost, retrieving a lost dog, etc.
There are several tasks in each area, but you don’t need to help everyone to get the pass. You only need about half of the people to stamp you and you can go to the car. The game also has some other collection elements, such as costumes and small animal illustrations. The costumes are obtained through missions, and the small animals are hidden in every corner of the map, waiting for you to discover them with the camera.
This clarifies everything about the game. From a system perspective, “Toem” is as simple as that.
Simple means more
In an article on EUROGAMER, the creators of “Toem” talk about their creative philosophy. Unlike other games that focus on taking pictures, or the camera mode that comes with the game, “Toem” treats photos as personal treasures without technical or artistic considerations. For people, the most important thing is photos Record that “moment”, and the mood at that time.
Under such a premise, complex camera functions are completely unnecessary. The production team has constantly reflected on the game development, “Does the XX design add unnecessary things to the game?” The final result is that the old camera in the game only has two functions of zooming and flipping, and the accessories only have a tripod and A loud horn. There are only black and white tones in the game, and all the textures are blurry.
Simplicity means more, and without complex systems and rich narratives, Toem needs to have a more vibrant and interesting world. As it happens, this is what the production team wanted.
The tone set by the magic sketch
There is also a memoir published in Game Developer detailing the past and present of Toem. From the beginning of the project, it is a project that pursues “comfort”, even if it has been pushed back many times, it has changed beyond recognition.
In 2018, Niklas Mikkelson and Lucas Gullbo had a long conversation about whether to give up their interest in game development due to their heavy academic workload. And as a result of the long talk, a sketch of eccentric characters and islands was born. Unknown at the time, this sketch would run through the next four years of their lives.
In their words, this sketch has a fun, wonderful aesthetic that they always wanted to reproduce through video games, and it should be a joyful adventure, free and pure.
“It’s not what we want”
A few weeks later, they entered a local game design competition in Sweden. This sketch became the prototype of the first version of “Toem”, which brought them back a bonus of 50,000 crowns (about 33,000 yuan), and they won. At that time, “Toem” was just a relatively rough adventure puzzle game, and it had nothing to do with taking pictures at all.
However, things were not all smooth sailing, changing puzzles, designing interactions, adding new mechanisms… After all kinds of attempts, they have never been able to get close to their ideas. This game is not interesting at all, and more appropriate gameplay must be found as a carrier. . After spending a lot of time reflecting and rummaging through the really enjoyable things in the game, the telescope, one of the earliest prototypes, was the inspiration.
Afterwards, travel with a camera, move on a bus, meet interesting characters, and a cassette tape. Step by step, Toem has undergone a rebirth, and things are finally starting to become clear.
2 points serious 8 points nonsense
Lots of fun, goofy, and cute stuff that fills Toem and ultimately gives it its soul. And almost all of these contents come from the brainstorming and brainstorming of the development team. In addition to the two main creators, other members such as sound design, soundtrack, and distribution joined one after another. They formed a temporary team (sound effects and distribution from their respective companies) and deeply participated in the production of the game. Games provide a constant source of inspiration.
In a regular meeting every week, in addition to spending 20% of the time talking about business and communicating with each other’s progress, the remaining 80% of the time is devoted to small talk, talking about each other, talking about trivial matters, talking about their own brains, and talking about stupid ideas. In order to better understand, examine, and figure out how to make those stupid ideas into the game, Lucas, who is in charge of art, will draw them all into sketches.
an essay
The finished “Toem” is so loose, so casual, there is no grand network narrative, no top-notch visual performance, all cool and complicated things are excluded. A world of cute and wonderful things.
You travel, meet people, understand their difficulties, find every place. The task is a little motivation, a little guidance, the camera is another perspective, an artifact, so you finally have the opportunity to carefully observe the world, every grass and tree, birds and beasts, ants and tall buildings, this is something you usually do not know. things to do, even in games.
There is no experience reward, no task props, photos are the only harvest, and the photos are all those irrelevant and fragmented details of life, each “moment”, which together constitute everyone’s adventure, let everyone Everyone will harvest their own treasures, which are engraved with beautiful emotions and surging wonderful spirituality.
I like cats and cats hanging on the clothesline, I like the bear brother who comes out to dance with his mother on his back, I like the fish swimming in groups on the bottom of the sea, I like the furry snow monster…
I also love the moment I get the props :
Like cassette tapes :
First of all, “Toem” has an extremely nice original sound.
Then, the ritual feeling of changing the tape, the freedom to watch the mood and the song at any time, the good memories of boarding on special tapes… I love the design of cassette tapes.
Destroyer of troubles, by your side
Those tasks, they may be a bit stupid, but they are also very cute, and the troubles in them may also be encountered by you: inspiration is exhausted and needs inspiration; mice become fine and swaggering; suspicious characters are found, and gossip is haunted; the dog is lost, Help me find it; I am a little confused about the future, and I don’t know how to take the first step…
Then, it’s time to let the trouble-shooters who are responsive to their needs – the little camera angels to help them solve their problems! The solution couldn’t be simpler, just click the shutter, take a photo, and the worries dissipate.
In fact, it’s not how powerful the camera angel is, it’s just a pair of different eyes. In the face of these big and small, strange, and everywhere troubles, please, don’t patronize troubles! Right under people’s noses, the “natural enemies” of troubles also exist quietly. They have the power to solve most problems easily. Please go and discover them!
What can a game be?
I found solace again in Toem. Now, when we talk about a good game, our common impression is: clear thinking, focused design, tight fit, polished everywhere, no matter how you drop it, it will not be broken, just take a point and analyze it for a clock, which makes people deeply shocked. Be inspired. But Toem isn’t that kind of good game, and of course you can think it’s bad. It is born “rotten” and does not pursue changes in gameplay, the pinnacle of emotion, or the pinnacle of technology. It is a comfortable game .
It is sincere and calm, which makes me reflect, what can a game be? What can I do?
It’s just “something we made”
Without deliberately talking about it before, Niklas and Lucas named their own small studio “something we made”. The following is the most prominent sentence on their official website:
Suppose… no, it’s true: life is good
Perhaps the answer to the question in the previous paragraph is that there is another feeling, passed down from “Toem”, which rekindled my yearning for life and gave life to the simple philosophy that was rotten by chicken soup for the soul.
It gave me a little impulse, maybe I could buy a second-hand old camera, go out for a walk aimlessly, take a small adventure, and meet each “moment”, which is engraved with beauty and surging with spirituality. It is a priceless treasure in life.
Epilogue
I have stroked the fur of a cosmic deer and a lost puppy I have seen trolls on the back of the mountains in a blizzard Celebrated a birthday for a family of three with balloons and a balloon puppy Made a melody for a musician I know snail shells and As smooth and hard as a meteorite I have seen shipwrecks and jellyfish on the bottom of the sea I have also taken the bus to the top of the mountain where I can see the gorgeous aurora. It really seems like a trip that would happen in reality. I have seen so many incredible miracles on foot. On the way home I couldn’t stop shedding tears
From raising the camera in search of a mission to involuntarily capturing every lovely moment with the lens
Like many characters in this story are not human or even creatures
It turns out that life is given by eyes that want to see beauty
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