Le Tohu-Bohu

Le Tohu-Bohu is a homebrew minigame for the Nintendo 64 made by Tfmoe and released on 13 Dec 2024. It is a competitive game where four players try to be the first to find a key and unlock a safe filled with treasure.

You can get the ROM from its download page by using the password minigamemadness and the source can be found here. Note that this is the same ROM that includes all the other minigames released for the 2024 N64brew Game Jam competition.

About Le Tohu-Bohu

First we need to clear the elephant in the room: the name. I never heard of it before so I had to look it up (sorry). Le Tohu Bohu is a phrase that is derived from the from the original Hebrew in Genesis 1:2 where Tohu means chaos or formlessness and Bohu means void or emptiness. Since then it has become a poetic way of describing a noisy mess or utter confusion in several non-Hebrew languages. Now I know. Tfmoe himself has said that the title is a French phrase which translates to “the hurly burly”.

The game itself takes place in two stages. The first of which is where you have to find the key. There are 16 drawers placed throughout the stage in a 4×4 grid and each one is rotated randomly in any of the four cardinal directions. Players need to check through all of them in order to find the hidden key.

Once one of the players finds the key, the game changes to a 1v3 mode where the keyholder needs to check safes until he finds one that matches while the other players needs to try and attack him to steal it.

Once a player with the key manages to find the correct safe, the game ends and they are declared the winner.

Credits

Le Tohu Bohu was made by Tfmoe and his son.

All models, textures, sounds, and music were created by myself during the jam. Thickhead font is public domain, courtesy of Scotty Ulrich.

Tfmoe

Review and conclusion

I really enjoyed Le Tohu Bohu. Again, it’s a 3D game made by one person which is quite impressive on its own but it manages to stand out by being fun as well.

The music does make it feel as though the game is tense yet relaxed, as though a jumpscare could happen at any moment. Which it does, when someone finds the key. I also particularly like how the drawers are set at just the right angle so that you can see which side they open on to avoid confusion.

There is a level of strategy involved in that in the first stage of the game, you not only need to open drawers but remember which ones have been opened by your opponents as well. In the second stage you ideally want to open the locks in order since that’s easier to keep track, but your opponents will harass you into running away and opening only when you feel safe.

If I had to nitpick, there are a few small things that can be improved. Not game-breaking on their own, but they do add up.

• Despite the strategy involved, there is quite a bit of randomness determining the outcome of the game, which does feel unfair at times.
• The AI players seem to get stuck on furniture and clump up together, making them easy to avoid.
• Different music during the 2nd part of the game would be nice to up the tension.
• Some kind of animation on the drawers and safe opening could have added a lot to the ‘feel’ of the game, and to make sure that the sound effect of the drawer opening is yours and not someone else’s.

Overall, while Le Tohu-Bohu does have some problems, but they by no means overshadow the effort put into putting the heist into place.