Toren falls under a very unique umbrella, a sort of “art house game” which – like its cinematic counterpart – will forego things like traditional story structure and plot for a more unique rhythm – its own personal flow. It’s a strange, dreamlike journey that manages to establish an amazing sense of atmosphere and mood, but a series of missteps on the way make it a minor misadventure.
You play as Moonchild, who is raised from birth to ascend the tower, called the Toren (ah ha!), and battle a monstrous dragon. I’ll be frank, the story is of the sort that’s not really easy to summarize, layering together the main story with dreamy interludes, philosophical vignettes, and hints of deeper mythology. It’s almost impossible to explain in short form and really do it justice, or even manage to get the basic ideas across.
I will say that it manages to consistently draw an emotional response from the player. The tutorial, which features an infant Moonchild taking her first toddling steps inside of the titular Toren, is equally awe-inspiring and profoundly disturbing. The thought of a child whose only real purpose is to do battle with a monstrous foe hit a few strange nerves inside of me.
Really, the only thing I can really do justice to is how Moonchild progresses throughout the tale. From infant taking her first steps to frost-crusted warrior, her journey is nothing if not emotionally overwhelming. It’s the sort of thing that sticks in your craw, even if some of the deeper philosophies get lost on the player. There are a lot of heady ideas at play in here, and some of the moments really hit home. That’s impressive, given that she’s virtually mute throughout the game.
Unfortunately, the game itself has some difficulty keeping up with its profound story. From a basic gameplay standpoint, Toren is about as straightforward as action-adventure titles get: Moonchild navigates a series of surreal environments with only a couple of buttons to worry about for interaction or swinging your sword. It should be simple and accessible, but an unbearable sense of floatiness makes jumping feel frustrating and loose. There’s no real sense of physics or momentum, leading to a lack of control when your character makes her leaps.
While it technically doesn’t have an adverse effect on the game itself (landing within a certain distance of the edge of a platform will make Moonchild grab on), it never really feels as crisp as it should. This is exacerbated by a decent number of bugs (at least on the Playstation 4 version that I played), including a few where I floated in space outside the boundaries of a platform, clipped strangely through the environment, and in a few cases just dropped through the ground entirely.
A lot of this can be attributed to the lower budget of the game, which was provided in part by the Lei de Incentivo a Cultura (an art endowment in developer Swordtales’ native Brazil). Toren looks absolutely gorgeous at times, with bold colors and art direction viewed through a gauzy haze that lends itself to its dreamlike nature.
And the music…oh, the music! The music’s positively breathtaking, alternating between somber tones and triumphant swells and adding an undeniable level of texture and beauty to the presentation. Yes, this is a “low budget indie game” by design, but Swordtales does the best that they can, even if the polish to truly make it shine’s lacking.
Which makes my final score a tough call: how does one really rate a game like this? As a narrative experience, Toren is beautiful, emotional, and powerful. It explores its story in such an atypical, dreamlike fashion that it genuinely has to be experienced to be understood (the closest comparison I can come up with is Ico, and even that’s a stretch), and it’s really a unique treat.
On the other hand, it’s not exactly the polished game that one wants to play. The controls feel wrong and there are a number of tiny glitches and bugs that make the game less enjoyable than it has the potential of being. If you’re looking for a fresh piece of “interactive entertainment” and can handle some rough edges, Toren’s a journey worth taking.
This review was written with the use of a press copy provided by Versus Evil