Don’t you hate it when you go on vacation in the Bahamas, and all of a sudden you’re thrown into a quest to find alien artifacts? What? You never experienced this problem? You haven’t lived then! Fortunately, The Touryst by Shin’en Multimedia allows you to live out this…uh…”fantasy”.

Developer: Shin’en Multimedia

Publisher: Shin’en Multimedia

6 Hours Played // Review Copy Not Provided // $19.99

A Quick Foray Into Your Touryst’s Day

The Touryst doesn’t spend much time explaining who or where you are. But does it need to? You’re a Touryst, a carefree individual who wants to spend time relaxing on a Caribbean island. Unfortunately, our protagonist doesn’t get to sit down and take a break. Almost immediately, he finds himself in what I presume is an alien monument. After fighting a tentacle (yes, you read that right), you’re given instruction by an old man to find the other monuments around the islands and collect their “cores”.

…and that’s it. Not much regarding plot, but The Touryst makes it clear that the story is only a vehicle for the gameplay. By now, you may have realized I mentioned both the Caribbean and Bahamas. That’s because The Touryst uses parodies of real-life islands as it’s setting. Hawaii is Hawayy, Ibiza is Ybiza, Fiji is…you get the point. Each island offers a unique experience, and I found myself eager to explore each island. Not only are the islands unique from each other, but the game’s graphics are astounding, and help give the game it’s unique charm. What can I say? I’m a sucker for voxel-based games. The Touryst pulls the art style off right, and the spectacular lighting makes, in my opinion, one of the best-looking games on the Switch.

And before I forget, let’s talk about the sound design. Nothing about the sound design wowed me, but it didn’t have to. The sounds in this game blended into the environments well and each musical track felt fitting for the situation at hand. While not as unique as the rest of the game, Shin’en did a fantastic job creating an immersive game.

Hidden In Plain Sight

Buried beneath the shine of the voxels and the sound of waves crashing are puzzles waiting to be solved. The Touryst prides itself on its puzzles. However, out of all the puzzle games I’ve played throughout the years, I found The Touryst one of the easiest. That’s not to say there weren’t moments I found myself confused or stumped, but most of the puzzles in the game are easy. But The Touryst isn’t attempting to win the “Most Difficult Game” award. Its easy difficulty helps create a relaxing atmosphere, and the relaxing atmosphere is why I love The Touryst so much.

Why not take a break and dance?

The easy difficulty of the puzzles and “quests” in the game make sure the player doesn’t need to spend hours in one area if they don’t want to. I feel like many puzzle games try too hard(?) to stump the player, resulting in more frustration, rather than enjoyment. The Touryst avoids this altogether. As the game goes on, the puzzles become more and more complex, and I admit, there’s a nice variety of puzzles in the game.

There is one issue I have with this game, though, and that’s it’s platforming. See, the game uses a semi-free camera, meaning you can move it around to wherever you want. Want a third-person perspective? Move the camera down? Want a bird’s eye view, move it up. Think of the camera from Diablo. However, some sections of the game, such as indoor sections, limit the freedom of the camera, due to walls and other obstacles getting in the way. This wouldn’t be too bad, of course, if not for certain sections requiring precise jumping/platforming with this limited camera freedom. I only encountered a couple sections like this, though, and I’m not going to hold these moments against the game since the rest of the game left a smile on my face.

One jarring moment in the game, however, came at the start of the game, when I realized there wasn’t a sprint button. Fortunately, as the puzzles become more and more complex, so does your arsenal. Soon enough, your Touryst rivals the best parkour athletes.

How did this vacation go so wrong?

When Does The Vacation End?My vacation in The Touryst lasted 6 hours, but I didn’t complete everything. The ending of the game requires you to complete a certain number of side quests, and fortunately, I completed the exact amount I needed. However, there were still quests I left unfinished (and plan to complete later). The Touryst demands only as much attention you can afford to give it. In fact, you could probably speed-run this game in less than an hour! If you want to complete everything the game has to offer, though, then you can expect to spend hours getting lost in the game.

Really, it all comes down to your puzzle-solving skills. But like I said, there’s not much in the way of difficulty, so if you follow the story and story alone, don’t expect to get more than a couple/few hours out of this game. In my opinion, this game offers the perfect amount of time for what it is: a relaxing puzzle game.

I spent too much time in the arcade…

An End To The Vacation

My time in The Touryst can be summed up with one word: joy. I felt like a kid who’s visiting Disney World for the first time! The beautiful graphics, relaxing atmosphere, and simple mechanics made The Touryst one of my favorite indies of this year. Just in time for the year’s end!

Thank you for reading through this review, and hey, if you enjoyed this review, then you’ll love our other reviews. Interested in rogue-lites? Check out our Black Future ’88 review. Horde shooters more up your alley? Earthfall: Alien Horde may be for you. And if you like those, then follow us on Twitter to keep up-to-date with our reviews. We have a lot of them coming!