Game #1271: The Touryst

 I need some vacations.

 Ever since that fateful day in which The Touryst was revealed in a Nintendo Direct I knew that I had to play that game. It reminded me of the simple Flash games I used to play in my youth, in particular, a set of four games set in the Cartoon Network Universe set in a beach resort. And it came out, but a physical copy never materialized. And I waited. And waited. And waited, and thus, 2 years went by, but I never forgot about this game. Enter Super Rare Games, finally, a physical release. And here we are now.

 In many ways, this is the game I expected it to be. It's a super simple adventure, in which you go from small island to small island, solving very simple and silly quests. Sometimes it's as easy as helping a DJ pull off a party, by turning on the lights on the dancefloor and what not, in another case you have to bring fruit to a smoothie shop, and there are also some quests that span multiple islands, in which you have to take photos of people and places. Other quests are mini-games of various sorts, like doing pull ups, surfing or playing some arcade games. There's an Arkanoid clone and a Bomb Jack clone among those, which were pretty neat. Basically, there are plenty of small side-activities to partake in, which all adds up to a very chill and relaxing vibe.

 ...until the platforming starts. Most of the game is a load of fun, even some of the more lackluster minigames, however, despite this laid back atmosphere it's going for... the platforming challenges can be brutal. Honestly, some of these require pixel-perfect precision, if you don't jump at the last possible time you won't make it. And platforming challenges don't have checkpoints, mess up and it's back to the start. Early in the game a room had me stumped, you actually had to perform a running side jump. It felt so awkward that I thought I was doing an exploit, but nope, that's how you are supposed to proceed. There's another segment, in which I was stuck for about an hour, in which you have to jump on top of 8 spheres, problem is... perspective. Gauging your position and distance to every orb is impossibly tough due to the perspective. I hated the game at that point, thankfully, there wasn't anything as unfairly challenging afterwards.

 There were another bits that were a bit tedious, like the quests that involve swapping shirts, as you have to return to the same Island every time you need to change a shirt to trigger something. This could've bene easily solved by letting you carry all your shirts. Plus, buying every shirt would give a meaning to all the money you amass throughout the entire game, as after you buy the final ability, the double jump, money loses every meaning and purpose.... which is dumb, considering rewards for quests is always money. And this happens very early in the game. Letting you buy shirts, or rewarding the player with other shirts would've solved this pretty easily. Another issue was the camera, it's controlled entirely by the player. I think some degree of automatic turn towards the back after a few seconds would've been ideal.

 The Touryst is alright. It's not as amazing as I had hoped it would've been, but it did scratch the itch I was feeling, and I did enjoy most of the game. The pixelated, voxel graphical style is delightful, and they managed to make every place you visit a treat. If they ever make a sequel, I hope they ease up on the platforming, make quests more rewarding and add some sort of customization. For such a chill game about, well, a tourist, their gender and race doesn't matter in the slightest, so being able to customize your character would be perfect, and you could get more clothes as rewards, or heck, let you buy more clothes to give use to all the money you get. Heck, they could reward you with decorations for a hotel room of yours or something. What I mean to say is that the game is decent, but rough around its edges, and I feel that its premise holds a lot of promise for something better.

 6.0