Over the 5 or 6 hours it takes to play To a T, I’ve had a sequence of revelations that in flip constructed to at least one large revelation: I’ve had the fallacious thought about just about all the things right here. Consequently, I’ve by no means performed a sport the place I spent a lot of the time merely making an attempt to work out what it’s doing. What’s the intent, To a T? What do you need to be? It seems I wouldn’t really perceive any of this till the ultimate credit had rolled. The truth is, I’m nonetheless fascinated with a variety of it. Both manner, what follows isn’t a assessment a lot as a journey – and I’m afraid it in all probability comprises stuff you may not need spoiled. Be warned.
To a T
Writer: Annapurna Interactive
Developer: Uvula
Platform: Performed on PC
Availability: Out now on PC, PS5 and Xbox Sequence S/X.
To a T is the most recent sport from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. Katamari is an effective place to begin, as a result of it’s in all probability the second I began to go fallacious right here. Katamari’s all about being a wierd little fellow who pushes a giant ball round, and the ball is sticky and picks up all of the stuff it rolls over. You begin off choosing up paperclips, and by the tip you’re rolling up complete continents. When Katamari got here out, individuals discovered it unclassifiable, however one factor everybody might agree on was that it felt extremely good to play. Rolling that ball, choosing stuff up, it was a sensory delight.
So after ten minutes of To a T, I used to be like: oh, that is the inverse Katamari. The sport appeared deeply classifiable, and but nothing felt superb. (Once I say nothing felt superb I imply the sport strikes slowly and with many interruptions and the digicam wants fixed changes.) Unusual alternative, however these are unusual instances! Toot toot! My journey into wrongness had begun.
To a T is a sport a few child named Teen who’s caught in a everlasting T-pose, with their arms held out to every aspect. Over the course of every day we information T via washing and having cereal and cleansing their enamel, all of that are made new once more by the challenges of that T-pose, after which we head off to highschool or to discover just a little city, whereas a wider story unfolds. Advantageous, I made a decision. This can be a narrative sport with open-world parts – the city is laid out for you from the beginning. And it’s additionally deeply involved with the expertise of incapacity. Teen’s T-pose is a manner of exploring what it’s wish to reside in a world that isn’t made for you and your wants. Onwards.
For some time, all of this held up. The story unfolded. I took Teen to highschool and we had classes, which performed out like quite simple mini-games. Resolve the maths downside. Match the inputs in health club class. Tilt numerous beakers and take a look at tubes in science – what do you make? Teen’s bullied for being totally different, and the world is consistently reminding you ways troublesome it’s to navigate issues if you’re totally different in any manner. You must flip to suit Teen via doorways. They want particular faucets and particular toothbrushes and spoons and pencils.
Let’s decelerate right here, just a bit. At its most forensic, To a T handles these things in a very attention-grabbing method. Take Teen’s morning routine, which performs out each in-game day in order for you it to. You’re within the toilet confronted with a toothbrush, otherwise you’re within the kitchen with a cereal bowl and spoon. What do you do? Transfer the arm or the physique with the stick, transfer the fingers with the bumpers: it is a manner of slowing down actions, breaking them into their element elements and giving every half its personal weight and thought and consequence. It makes you consider what you’re doing in every second. It makes you propose issues that you just may suppose are second nature.
In the event you’ve had even essentially the most short-term of impairments from a sprain, say, and even a clumsy papercut on a thumb, you’ll know what it feels wish to workshop seemingly fundamental bodily processes like this – and also you’ll know what it’s like to grasp there’s nothing fundamental in any respect about most of them within the first place. The perverse and troublesome expertise of impairment ends in a deeper, and maybe richer, understanding of the varied elements of day by day life. Not for nothing did Michael J. Fox say of his personal Parkinson’s illness that it was “the present that retains on taking.”
There are some pretty parts of this in To a T. Greater than the rest within the sport, I like the best way Teen closes doorways after they’ve moved via them, catching the door and sending it house with a practised hook of the again of the foot as they realign their higher physique. It’s an ideal little bit of animation, and it’s good as a result of it captures a lot human expertise. Years of figuring out methods to transfer via a difficult panorama. Years and years of adapting and accommodating.
In fact, although, these things is only one a part of a wild mixture of concepts, some good and unhealthy, lots of which tie right into a broader theme about individuality. To a T is serious about incapacity, however it’s actually serious about conformity, and this performs out throughout the sport in methods massive and small. It’s well timed, I assume. In 2025, we in all probability do have to be reexamining the forces performing upon us on that need to push us to adapt. However this recalibrating of message feels prefer it comes at a value, for me at the least. It looks like the sport has traded the prospect to essentially have a look at one thing fairly particular and under-examined, in favour of claiming one thing pretty broad and acquainted.
Regardless of the final message, any single ingredient of this knockabout sport is quickly competing on your consideration with different issues. What sort of issues? These mini-game faculty classes, some surprisingly cataclysmic interruptions to highschool classes, city-wide conspiracies, the editorial workers of a really uncommon newspaper, mysterious espressos, buried household historical past and at the least one try to pit people towards trains. Oh sure, and an entire bit about probably studying to fly. I’m jumbling this up right here as a result of the sport jumbles it up. Plenty of the time, essentially the most compelling factor to do in To a T is unjumble its many parts in your head.
This, I ought to say, is a sub-optimal option to play, and I personal that. This overthinking simply leads you down corkscrew paths of inquiry that aren’t finally that attention-grabbing. Instance. Is the digicam system awkward as a result of the sport’s making an attempt to do one thing troublesome, or as a result of it wasn’t a precedence for the crew, or as a result of it’s a riff on unhealthy cameras in different 3D video games? It’s higher, I believe, to place that apart and give attention to what the digicam system is sweet at.
And this in flip is bizarre anyway. The digicam system is especially good at supplying you with a lateral monitoring view of the world, usually at baby top, of the sort you used to see in Peanuts comedian strips, the place it was all low fences and stubby grass and the perimeters of dog-houses. Is To a T serious about the best way a baby sees the world? Now we is perhaps getting someplace.
However is that this viewpoint good for navigating an open world? No. It’s fairly unhealthy for that. You possibly can’t see what’s coming, the background blows out so you may’t navigate by landmarks, and cross-sections seen from such a set angle both disappear into or away from the display. However possibly that’s excellent news, as a result of the world of To a T isn’t truly an open world in any significant sense anyway. More often than not, there’s no actual motive to select a degree and head for it, and no reward for exploring – within the moments you’re allowed to discover – apart from a number of cash and some new retailers.
It took me ages to make sense of the sport on this wider scale, after which I lastly realised one thing. Extra fallacious considering revealed. That is much less of an open-world sport, and extra of a linear sport that has simply organized all its items in a set 3D area. It has made a city of its primary story.
Written down in that manner, that’s an thought I can get behind, and I can get behind it very often within the sport. To a T’s just a little awkward to get round, however its city is crammed with attention-grabbing individuals to fulfill, and because the sport unfolds it’s the individuals relatively than the mechanics who really carry the entire thing to life. The science instructor who retains selecting the fallacious time to ask individuals out. The giraffe who makes sandwiches. That newspaper I discussed and their distinctive method to staffing. Each couple of minutes somebody says one thing attention-grabbing or expresses a thought in a novel manner, and because the story will get wilder, there’s a way of the design crew moving into their groove. That open world stuff was a distraction. These mini-games had been a distraction. You possibly can virtually really feel the sport dropping elements of its design that it’s turn out to be uninterested in because the story comes into focus – it is a neat trick – by changing into stranger and stranger, and but extra human with it.
Now I’ve skilled all this, labored via every day’s freight of formality and revelation, met all of the individuals, visited the retailers, prodded via these mini-game classes and are available out the opposite aspect, I’m tempted to suppose that To a T is definitely very intelligent and coherent, and virtually a type of prank on the identical time. In making a sport in regards to the forces that encompass us and appear to need to make us conform, in making a sport about how essential it may be to battle these urges and discover your individual place on this planet, To a T has gone by itself journey as a bit of design. It’s tried to be a conventional narrative sport. It’s tried to have open world parts and collectibles and mini-games. However finally, it springs again in its personal singular form. It doesn’t endure from characteristic creep a lot as a type of characteristic drift. And in drifting like this, it’s a reminder that even essentially the most seemingly atypical of video games could have its personal quirks and its personal little glimpses of character that take it away from the Platonic requirements. If To a T is finally making an attempt to say there’s no such factor as regular, I’m right here for it.
To a T accessibility choices
Easy enter for spinning sticks.
That’s nice, positive, however that’s additionally just a little high-level isn’t it? Let’s come again to that awkward digicam to carry issues house. What finally labored for me about To a T, about this irritating, bewildering, clumsy and ingenious sport – and I see this in glimpses, and in little starbursts of my very own triggered recollections – is its abiding sense of simply how luridly bizarre life is if you’re younger, how boundless and loosely-ruled it appears. The construction of morning-til-evening that may appear to halt narrative momentum at first may very well be the sport’s masterstroke.
Why? As a result of on the finish of the day, you collapse into mattress, thoughts a whirl from all that inconceivable stuff that occurred to Teen in only a single twelve hour stretch. And the following day, you stand up and also you realise you don’t have any thought what’s in retailer for you.
Code for To a T was offered by the writer.
