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Cute photography game Toem is coming out on September 17th

Like A Short Hike with photography, maybe

Toem - The viewfinder of a manual camera in a greyscale world. A character poss with a foam finger beside a bear receptionist. The camera interface has a room bar and several other buttons.

Toem is a hand-drawn adventure game in which you meet strange people and solve their problems by taking photos. It's got A Short Hike vibes, we named it one of the best games of E3, and Lauren dug its demo a lot.

Now it's got a release date, September 17th, and a new trailer below.

Watch on YouTube

I am thoroughly onboard with games that borrow the aesthetics of Nintendo but which are bent in some new interactive direction. Toem has wrbl-wrbl voices, and wobbly onscreen text, and pipes you jump into, and tunnelling screen transitions, and a happy cast of oddballs to help. It looks light and charming and fun - and then, the photography adds its own flavour to things.

It also sounds like it's a todo-list game of the sort I was writing about last week. A game where everyone wants a favour - normally a photo of something - and you either know immediately where to go to take that photo, or you file it away as a thing to look out for on your travels. In either case, it's relaxed and moreish and I bet I'll be up late doing just-one-more-favour for a balloon.

The demo Lauren played is still available now via Steam, and the game will launch there on September 17th as well as on the Epic Games Store.

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Graham Smith: Rock Paper Shotgun's editorial leader, corporate dad, and breezy evening news writer.
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