I've spent the last couple of weeks playing To A T, the latest from Keita Takehashi and his team at Uvala. And I could not have picked a better time to play something that is built from the ground up to bring you nothing but joy.
You're in control of a 13-year-old who spends their life locked in a T-pose. Which presents some unique challenges, because you can't fit through a lot of doors properly, need help from your dog to brush your teeth and simple acts like eating a sandwich turn into a whole process. If those sound like awfully mundane things to have been made aware of while playing a video game, there's a reason for that: it's exactly the stuff you do in To A T, a game which puts you in such complete control over your character that you have to do everything, from change your shoes to going to the bathroom.
Imagine if Heavy Rain, with all its door opening and door closing and egg flipping, was a feel-good cartoon instead of a dreary murder slog. To A T's attention to details really helps ground you in both the place and your character, but more importantly, it centres you on their struggles as well. This is, without making a huge deal of it, a beautiful little tale about disability, a light-hearted way of putting the player in the shoes of someone who is doing their absolute best to live their day despite the constant obstacles (and sometimes even bullying!) in their way.
To A T takes place over a number of episodic days, over which you're slowly introduced to a town, its inhabitants, stores and storyline. I cannot stress how nice it is just to be around it all. The people, the jibberish language everyone speaks, how nice everyone is, the colours, the music–for the past week I have jumped into this idyllic little place every chance I've got and just hung out. Sometimes I'll nudge the story along, sometimes I'll just collect coins and buy a new pair of sneakers for no reason.
I want to give special praise to the game's bathroom. So much of To A T is about helping you accomplish very set tasks: you can only eat your cereal a certain way, you can only brush your teeth the way the game wants, you have to go to school, etc. But every morning, rain or shine, you need to pee as soon as you get out of bed, and once you get inside the bathroom the guardrails are off. You are let loose. The game's insistence on making you press specific buttons at specific times to complete specific actions gives way to an orchestra of grunts, plops and wet fart noises, as every button on the controller is eventually unlocked and bound to a toilet sound, allowing you to freestyle your own cistern-based symphony
Oh, and one last cool thing: the game has the most casual way of letting you create your own character, once again without making even the tiniest fuss about the specifics of it. You name them at the start then that's it, as you're then left to choose your own hairstyles and clothing options, change them whenever you want, and the game will never once reference your gender or care what you're wearing.
The game has some game-shaped issues, sure. Traversing the town is a disorienting nightmare thanks to a bizarre decision to employ a semi-fixed camera that constantly swoops to new positions, and while the minutiae of performing every little task is a fantastic introduction to your character and the world initially, by the time you're drawing near the end of the story it gets a little bit tiring. But the episodic structure of To A T, its length and enormous heart makes those annoyances fairly insignificant. They don't ever get in the way of what the game's really trying to do, which is tell you a cheery and weird little story, spread out over episodes like the best kid's TV show you've ever seen.
I have not had a great week, alternating between stress and being extremely sick (it's flu season here!), but the one bright spot has been jumping into To A T each night to say hi, explore the happiest town on Earth, eat some sandwiches made fresh every day for me by a giant giraffe and enjoy every second of some of the catchiest theme songs ever written.
