Toren Review: A young girl climbs toward uncertainty

My experience with South American indie development is pretty much encompassed by the first-person sci-fi/fantasy brawlers from ACE Team (Zeno Clash), as well as the alcoholic father analogy that is Papo & Yo. As a result, my mental picture of South American indie games skews toward the surreal. After completing Toren—an action-adventure title from new Brazilian developer Swordtales—that image hasn't changed.

On its face, the game actually seems to have more in common with the classic Japanese adventure Ico. You play a young girl, armed with a sword and a flailing understanding of how to use it, as she ascends the titular tower, Toren.

You'll very occasionally encounter impish beasts that must be dispatched in one manner or another, but the protagonist's weapon is largely for show. Most of your time scaling the dingy column is spent on light platforming and puzzle solving. Even that much is minimal throughout the game’s brief running time: about 100 minutes on my first play-through.

You'll likely spend more time considering the winding parables of Toren than actually playing it. The plot is conveyed in fits and starts, both by a heavily metaphorical narrator and bits of pseudo-mythological screed unlocked when you complete side-puzzles. By the end I had what I'll call a pretty good sense of what the story wanted to convey—if not a complete understanding of its beginning, middle, and end.

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