Tohu

Tohu was reviewed on a PC

Tohu is a joyful point-and-click adventure game that leans more on the puzzles rather than the adventure. You play as a little girl that can shapeshift into a bulky robot called Cubus. With a click of the mouse, you’ll switch between the girl and her mechanized alter ego that does the heavy lifting for her. Both the girl and Cubus are superbly animated. The girl cutely hums to herself, stumbles and sways while climbing on small platforms just like a child would.

That’s about all you’ll get to know about Tohu’s child protagonist, as the game does nothing to flesh out its characters. There’s no witty remarks here and no wall breaking quips and jokes. The game doesn’t even explain why the girl can transform into a robot. The game’s world is shrouded in mystery. Even the antagonist is a shadowy figure whose motives are unknown for most of the game. Aside from having an uncle called Juncle, there’s nothing to learn about the girl.

Shrouded in Mystery

The paper-thin plotline can be summed up in a few words. The girl lives on a peaceful fish planet floating in space, and the engine keeping this planet afloat is broken and in need of repairs.

You’ll spend the whole game trying to fix it by gathering all of the tools you need while the shadowy mysterious figure keeps sabotaging your plans. That’s the entire plot that Tohu has to offer. The lack of a strong narrative makes progressing in the game feel like a slog. It felt less like an adventure and more like a disjointed series of puzzles.

It’s good though that the puzzles themselves are wonderfully designed, and I did enjoy them thoroughly. They strike a perfect balance between being difficult enough to prove to be a challenge, but not too difficult to the point of frustration. There’s also no item-combining mechanic and your inventory is never too cluttered with items. You generally have a good idea where to use each item you find.

Straightforward Puzzles

A reason why the puzzles never felt annoying is that the stages of Tohu are mostly independent from one another. Solving a puzzle that needs a certain key item only requires you to look for the item in one or two areas, so you don’t have to worry about constantly going back and forth through tens of locations searching for it.

The game does contain a few frustrating puzzles that will push you to brute force your way through them, though you can usually use the game’s excellent hint system to guide you. Some of the more annoying puzzles require you to move your mouse’s cursor all across the screen just to find the next clickable item to collect. They irritated me at times, and made the game feel like a pixel hunt, but they were few and far between.

There are no limitations on the hint system and you’re free to use it as much as you desire. You’re forced though to play a short minigame to unlock the hint in each location. This minigame is the same though throughout your adventure so it can get repetitive after the first few times.

What’s impressive about the hint system is that the hints guide you, but they don’t offer you the solution outright. They’re comic drawings that illustrate the steps you need to take, and they nudge you in the right direction, without cheapening the puzzles or taking away from you the satisfaction of solving them.

Gorgeous Visuals

Where Tohu definitely shines is in the art department. Its cartoonish and wacky hand drawn 2D visuals are the exact definition of eye candy. I was always excited about visiting a new location, and the game never disappointed me. Each of the game’s settings are vibrant and filled with details.

The character designs are also wonderful. The bizarre creatures of Tohu’s fish planets all resemble exaggerated caricatures of marine creatures. They’re also imaginative and creative as some of the creatures look like a mix between everyday household items and normal animals or insects. Everything about the visuals is brilliant, and Tohu deserves the highest praise for that alone.

Overall,

The pacing is solid throughout most of the four to five hours of playtime, and you are never stuck on one puzzle for more than a few minutes. There’s only about three or four exceptions to that rule, but despite that, I enjoyed solving them.

Some of the late stages of the game felt like a drag to me, simply because of the aforementioned lack of a clear narrative, but I pushed on nonetheless. The excellent visuals and the large variety of creative puzzles are the reason why I pushed through and finished Tohu, they’re also why I adored its quirky and whimsical world.

Special thanks go to The Irregular Corporation for providing us with a review code.

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You should play Tohu if you

• Enjoy Colorful and Vibrant Visuals
• Enjoy Solving Brainteasing Puzzles
• Love Creative Character Designs
• Are a Fan of Point and Click Games
• Are not Expecting a Captivating Narrative
• Don’t mind the lack of character development
• Don’t mind the ambiguity of Tohu‘s world

Tohu’s Score

7.5/10