Now this BAFTA-winning game is on Game Pass, you have no excuse not to play it
“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart, and head.” So says Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French photography pioneer. Cartier-Bresson had the knack for capturing moments at their most intimate – he had an eye for the candid, and a mechanical sense of timing that came to define him. He understood that, in capturing moments, you were capturing whole stories.
It’s hard not to think about Cartier-Bresson when you’re playing Toem. The game – the BAFTA-winning debut title from independent Swedish studio Something We Made – is all about these small moments. And how you, as a young photographer driven to ascend a mountain to capture the eponymous Toem phenomenon, knits together a story through snapshots.
It’s something of a love-letter to photography, in its own way, showing you the world from different perspectives. Whether you’re looking over your unnamed protagonist’s shoulder as you guide them around the wilderness and meet a weird and wonderful variety of animals, or seeing exactly what they see through their camera lens, Toem is a wonderful exercise in being in the moment – and learning to put yourself in the shoes of others.
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