TOEM: The Beauty of Taking Your Time

On the surface, TOEM, developed and published by Something We Made, is a relaxing game about taking pictures, riding buses and exploring the natural phenomenon of a nearby mountain, but on a deeper level, it’s about perseverance and growth with one very important caveat – it’s OK to go at your own pace.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first started, I was in my second-to-last semester of my college degree. I don’t need to explain what happened because we all experienced the transition to life on Zoom in one form or another, but opportunities I thought I would have, namely internships and networking events as a journalism student, suddenly no longer existed. The fall rolled around, I attended my Zoom classes, I graduated in December and, somehow, I was lucky enough to get a job as a reporter at a local community newspaper.

As much as I enjoyed my work in print news (and still do, just in case my boss is reading this), it was not where I thought I would end up. For years, I worked to build my freelancing portfolio, hoping to snag a job in radio broadcasting or the games industry, two already competitive fields that felt even more unattainable as I was confined to my bedroom my last two semesters of school. Although I was satisfied with my job, seeing my peers advance in their gaming and radio careers was hard. I was happy for them, but as someone who already graduated late in the midst of a pandemic, was it possible I was falling behind?

The answer, as TOEM taught me, is no. Life is not a race, and it never has been. When your grandmother hands you a camera (or your school hands you a college degree) and sends you on your way, it’s OK to take a few detours. More than that, it’s OK to relax, stop and take a breather every once in a while.

My approach to life before was like shoving myself onto a crowded bus in TOEM without all my stickers, trying to get to the top of the mountain and see the phenomenon of the lights before anyone else could. Instead of stressing myself out, doubting my progress and growth in both my career and my personal life, I could have simply stopped, smelled the flowers and maybe taken a picture or two of a cool bug, just for kicks. The biggest gift TOEM gave me, other than a fun platinum trophy to add to my collection, was a new life philosophy.

With a list of objectives in hand, TOEM sends you on a journey of personal growth, encouraging you to take pictures and earn stickers that, in turn, become free bus tickets. Earning these stickers isn’t just helpful for you, though. You need to assist other folks in the area by capturing specific scenes in your photographs to gain stickers, furthering both yourself and the community. The sticker and bus ticket mechanism is an important lesson in and of itself – helping others and having a connection to your community isn’t deterring you from your goal but enhancing it.

However, the ultimate goal is to experience the beauty of a natural phenomenon, aptly called TOEM, which your grandmother remembers fondly from her own adventure into adulthood. While it’s not difficult to obtain enough stickers to progress to the next area quickly, the game automatically encourages you to explore and complete other objectives when possible because of its simplistic nature. All you can do is speak to quirky characters and take photographs. The NPCs are kind and appreciate your help, and the cartoon, black and white world makes it easy to traverse throughout the areas, making the feeling of supporting others and getting each sticker even more rewarding.

The beautiful thing about TOEM, however, is the complete lack of pressure. You can complete all objectives or the bare minimum and still experience the beauty of the mountain. TOEM isn’t about the journey – it’s about the results, and those results can happen whether you spend two hours in the game just getting bus tickets or you spend seven hours completing every task that exists. Even if you do spend seven hours in TOEM, it’s for no one’s benefit but your own. There’s no one to save, there’s no impending doom threatening the world, there’s not even a reward at the end other than the lights of TOEM and the satisfaction that you grew as a person, helped some people and finished the adventure.

TOEM is so much more than a little video game about photography for me. In the first full year of next-generation consoles, the game that’s stuck with me the most is a black and white indie game about taking pictures, hanging out with your grandma and loving public transportation. There’s no external conflict because the message of the game is time – time for yourself, time for family and time for growth. It doesn’t matter how quickly others get their bus tickets. You’ll see TOEM when you’re ready.