The Touryst (Xbox One)
When The Touryst kicks off, it looks like it will be a little game about going on a vacation. A nice little sunny island with a beach, some cabins, and some nice historical monuments for photos sit in the very small starting area, and with the complete lack of music, it seems almost like it’s trying to establish a somewhat realistic vacation atmosphere despite the world and characters using a blocky voxel look. However, once you stumble into one of those monuments and have a run in with an unusual form of ancient technology, your vacation is suddenly changed to be about assembling the advanced artifacts tied to these monuments… which just so happens to require doing a lot of tourism.
The Touryst’s premise of contextualizing your vacation activities as part of unraveling the mystery of a strange advanced culture of the past is certainly an effective way of roping leisure activities into something required for progression in a game’s plot. Getting to new islands and opening up the way into the ancient monuments seems to just so happen to line up with minigames and challenges that tie into the kind of activities you’d find in a travel brochure. Scuba diving, throwing a party on a beach, surfing, and interacting with the native islanders all play a part, and while some activities may seem optional at first, even the ones that don’t tie into the direct goals given to you initially can play a part in wrapping up the game’s story. The monuments are perhaps the only part where the game really breaks away from that vacation aesthetic as platforming and puzzle solving become a huge focus. There is a mine where you can get gems that involves a lot of careful jumping and descending safely, but the monuments have guardians who must be outsmarted since you have no direct way of dealing damage to them. These moments pack the most punch of anything you’re asked to do as falling down pits or getting pushed around by the ancient technology can make these require dexterity and problem solving skill, but messing up just leads to a puzzle or room reset so there’s never too much pressure during your island trip.
The monument exploring is the backbone of the adventure, but The Touryst is certainly more interesting for how it can take tourism activities and turn them into something lightly interactive. Activities like surfing and canoeing are fairly basic but amusing minigames where you need to hit some requirement but the game doesn’t require too much out of you to succeed. The monuments are pretty much the only place where things get really challenging and thus sometimes the minigames can feel like they’re giving you the win a bit too easily, but there are some like the arcade games where getting the high scores require some skillful play to succeed. In general though, it feels like the concept of the game is meant to be the appeal, and it is nifty to see what the next island might ask you to do. Some islands like Soggy Island and its constant rainfall are more plot oriented while others like the city on Leysure Island are focused on providing a bunch of activities and sidequests, so you never really have a good idea what might lay ahead and the islands do a good job of differentiating themselves.
Exploring the islands is one big aspect of The Touryst and there are plenty of secrets to uncover as you play. Bottled notes float out in the water, secret caves hide from view, and certain actions on one island can only be completed after you’ve done something elsewhere or acquired the right item or skill. When you drop onto Santoryn you find a jazz club you can’t enter until you get the right outfit much later in the adventure, although the game’s short length and generally small locations means that getting around is easy and the zippy boat rides between islands don’t impede your desire to solve cross-island problems.
There are a lot of neat little concepts touched on in The Touryst with their own controls and rules for success, and while some can certainly feel shallow because of it, they also come and go so quickly that their nature as momentary amusements helps with the tourism aspect. You’re not taking a deep dive into any one activity, although some of the mechanically deeper ones like the mining have multiple stages to conquer. Instead, you’re meant to enjoy the procession of new gameplay styles that all loop into the idea of being on an island adventure, the protagonist flitting from one activity to the next as he gets the most out of his vacation. Even the monuments all come at the puzzles in a new way, the central gimmicks and boss encounters all playing with some new interpretation on platforming about a space.
Surprisingly, The Touryst also looks rather lovely for a game that deliberately renders its world in such a rough cut style. Everything may be blocky and characters move with a degree of rigidity due to their squat stature, but the effects used to bring the environments to life do surprisingly evoke an island getaway. Locations feel distinct and look inviting as they try to imitate different types of tropical destinations, and when the game wants to be atmospheric either with something ominous like a dark and rainy island of mystery or a beautifully lit sunset beach it pulls them off in style. Perhaps it is because the game keeps the scope of activities small while being so evocative in regards to the touristy mindset that it’s fairly enjoyable to 100% complete the game, and while filling out the museum’s collection or solving the photo-taking riddles of the art gallery are some of the more involved side quests, they do provide the same simple sense of satisfaction that The Touryst continues to provide across it’s island-hopping adventure.
THE VERDICT: The Touryst does a surprisingly good job of turning a relaxing tropical vacation into a set of goal-focused objectives. The laid-back atmosphere of an island tour is still maintained by keeping its mini-games and activities simple but enjoyable, the act of dabbling in a new gameplay type easy and quick. The monument tour everything is built around provides some sound puzzles and platforming challenges even though the game in general certainly leans towards the easy side. It’s easy to forgive that low difficulty though as you continue to find new secrets while exploring, participate in fun and silly side quests, and interact with a good batch of major locations that provide bite-sized quality chunks of what you’d want to see from a both an objective-focused adventure and a low pressure island getaway.
And so, I give The Touryst for Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. While individually a lot of its activities are a bit straightforward or only put up a little bit of a fight, The Touryst isn’t just about things like the drum playing, photo taking, or surfing. It’s about how all of its little activities hang together as one larger experience, the player moving from idea to idea with a good degree of speed and only needing to really dive into some of the deeper activities if they found them interesting enough to stick with. The Touryst keeps the scope of its adventure surprisingly tight, meaning searching for secrets on an island is a challenge but not to the degree it’s hopeless and the monument puzzles are around just long enough to get you thinking before the boss fight wraps things up with its own new gimmick. The Touryst travels from idea to idea and presents them like a buffet, not everything on offer exceptional but the experience helped by the incredible amount of options and the many chances the game has to land a hit. No attempt really feels like it completely missed the mark either, and while some things like the surfing game are definitely lacking in any sort of challenge, it’s cute to get out on the waves for a few minutes and right after you’re sent off to find the next amusement.
Having more activities have the optional degrees of depth things like the arcade high score challenges have would definitely make The Touryst the kind of game you’d spend more time with… but that also sort of goes against the spirit of the title. You don’t go on a vacation to stay there forever, and tourist destinations often offer a range of activities you are meant to only really brush up against. There are people who will get really into scuba diving or canoeing, but this is not a scuba diving or canoeing game. The Touryst captures that spirit of exploring a bright inviting location while also adding the video game elements of the monument puzzles onto it so that the experience can properly guide you through what it has to offer. Just like a vacation too, The Touryst is an easy game to look back on fondly, and while it doesn’t do any one thing excellent, it does do a good job of constructing a lovely little island tour that is worth the trip.