The first island you visit in The Touryst is a tiny,
perpetually sunny place, and it's full of spots to have a sit or a lie
down. Having a rest doesn't achieve anything, but I found that my
immediate instinct was to give my character a moment to luxuriate on a
bed in one of the island's small personal rooms--this is a game about
vacationing, after all, and on any vacation it's important to relax. The
Touryst is a soothing and relaxing experience thanks to the lovingly
rendered voxel graphics and the (mostly) gentle gameplay, and despite
some occasional moments of frustration, playing it really does feel like
taking a mini-vacation.
You play as a moustachioed man
in a loud shirt who is tasked with travelling between different island
vacation spots and collecting cores that rest within the game's scant
few monuments--essentially short dungeons. You move between beach
parties under orange sunsets, lush tropical expanses, and Mediterranean
tourist spots, before diving into murky underground caverns that contain
jumping puzzles and non-violent boss encounters. It's a strange
combination of elements, but The Touryst wears its strangeness on its
sleeve.
This
is, above all else, a game about the joy of a holiday. As you play, you
unlock new islands to visit, and while each one is small, they also all
have their own distinct flavor, as well as unique activities to
discover and engage with. The superb voxel art style imbues each setting
with personality and makes the simple act of sightseeing a pleasure.
Simply existing in these beautiful locations is inherently enjoyable,
and while each new setting won't take long to fully explore, I found
walking around each one calming.
The monuments
themselves contain puzzles and tests of your dexterity, and working your
way through them is essential to unlock every island and complete the
game's story. They're ultimately the least interesting part of the game,
but they're certainly not without their charms. They can be quite
challenging, but the key is usually to just remember that there's an
optimal solution to the puzzles, even when it seems like they're just
asking you to nail precise jumps. Often, how you're manipulating the
camera to line up your angles and judge the space you're in is as
important as your ability to control your trajectory; if you're messing a
jump up often, it's because you haven't quite cracked what that room is
asking of you.
Even so, every now and then, the game
asks for a greater level of precision from your actions than the
controls want to give you. The controls are a bit floaty for how small
some of the platforms you're landing on are, and one jumping puzzle took
me, at a conservative estimate, 25 attempts to get. The rooms inside
monuments are viewed from an isometric perspective, which can make
judging gaps difficult. Any situation that requires you to throw an
object with great precision is frustrating too because of how the
throwing arc works, but these moments of frustration only stick out
because they are rare.
Outside
of these moments, The Touryst is a game with a lot of chill. One island
doesn't even have a monument at all--instead it has a movie theatre
that shows a short highlight reel of moments from the rest of the game,
an art gallery that you'll eventually populate with your own
photography, and, best of all, a retro arcade with three cabinets.
There's a racing game (based on the studio's own Switch game Fast RMX),
a strange platformer, and a Breakout clone, all offering brief
diversions that successfully sucked me in for an hour. Completing the
high scores in these arcade games (and earning the arbitrary cash
reward) is challenging, but there's something almost zen about a game
that encourages you to waste your time like this--it perfectly captures
my very specific childhood memory of discovering arcade machines in
local pubs while on holiday and shovelling coins into them. The Touryst,
appropriately, frames everything you do as an act of tourism.
Completing
sidequests will earn you money, but cash is largely inconsequential to
completing the game--by the time the credits rolled I had hundreds of
coins left with very little to spend them on. The sidequests play into
the shaggy nature of the game--you don't complete them because they're
helpful, but because you want to see everything the game world has to
offer. I spent a long time down a mine you encounter on one island,
engaged with a spelunking challenge that lets you collect gems that can
then be exchanged for money. I spent so much time down there not because
I needed money--I never even traded the gems in. I did it because the
mines are particularly enjoyable--they let you abseil down cliffs, swing
between ledges, and even ride rickety minecarts as you delve deeper and
deeper.
There
are plenty of other activities scattered across The Touryst's small
world. You can fix up a boring beach party, then liven it up further by
buying new records for the DJ; you can show off your sporting prowess in
surfing, soccer, and pull-up minigames; you can search the game world
for photography subjects with the camera you're given early on, or hunt
down several carefully hidden scrolls. The sidequests are often very
simple and easy but watching as island life slowly shifts and changes
based on your actions is a delight.
I found that as the
credits rolled on The Touryst's strange ending, I was keen for them to
finish so I could jump straight back in and mop up the remaining
objectives. Admittedly, even if you want to do absolutely everything,
The Touryst isn't very long—my completion total sat at 94% after five
and a half hours. But perhaps it's better this way--after all, the best
vacations often end before you've had a chance to really get homesick.
It's the next best thing to an actual holiday.