Recently there has been a rise in games that are more compilations than single works of creation. Things like the Dread X Collection show that there's a lot of value to be found in a taster menu approach to indie games. It's a trend I've been happy to see, as many genres benefit greatly from brevity (particularly horror) but at the same time need to provide players with enough of a value proposition to justify their purchase.
Applying this approach to a puzzle game instead is, on paper, a fantastic idea. There are many concepts and mechanics for puzzlers that are amazing for a little bit but soon become tiresome, so collecting a few of those together and making them an hour each sounds great, but unfortunately, Please, Touch the Artwork fails its premise on a few fronts. Its most grievous sin is making it pretty obvious which puzzle selection (or "gallery", as the game refers to them) was thought of first and making the other two feel like tacked on filler.
It's a real shame, because the gallery in question, the De Stijl movement, is great stuff. The levels gradually introduce new mechanics to a simple idea, eventually combining them to produce some surprisingly tricky problems. Your reward for beating a few levels is another factoid about the movement that the game's aesthetic is born of and the artists behind it. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing revolutionary, but in that first hour of gameplay are the seeds for something interesting, a way to make art education truly immersive and involve the player in the creation process that they're studying.
Unfortunately, the other two galleries are, not just worse than De Stijl, but actively bad. The Boogie Woogie levels are dull and ugly, the type of puzzles you play on your phone on the toilet paired with a nonsense narrative. The New York gallery is the most insulting though, an overlong selection of mazes that barely qualify as puzzles. While it's better looking than Boogie Woogie, it's a real exercise in wasting your time and I found all goodwill built up by The Style completely burned away before even the halfway point of New York.
I'm disappointed, as I think modern art is greatly maligned and something like Please, Touch the Artwork had the potential to recontextualise it in a varied and fun package. While an attempt is made towards this goal, two thirds of the three hour game is dedicated to generic crap. There's definitely something here in this idea, but it's not executed upon half as well as it should be.
Applying this approach to a puzzle game instead is, on paper, a fantastic idea. There are many concepts and mechanics for puzzlers that are amazing for a little bit but soon become tiresome, so collecting a few of those together and making them an hour each sounds great, but unfortunately, Please, Touch the Artwork fails its premise on a few fronts. Its most grievous sin is making it pretty obvious which puzzle selection (or "gallery", as the game refers to them) was thought of first and making the other two feel like tacked on filler.
It's a real shame, because the gallery in question, the De Stijl movement, is great stuff. The levels gradually introduce new mechanics to a simple idea, eventually combining them to produce some surprisingly tricky problems. Your reward for beating a few levels is another factoid about the movement that the game's aesthetic is born of and the artists behind it. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing revolutionary, but in that first hour of gameplay are the seeds for something interesting, a way to make art education truly immersive and involve the player in the creation process that they're studying.
Unfortunately, the other two galleries are, not just worse than De Stijl, but actively bad. The Boogie Woogie levels are dull and ugly, the type of puzzles you play on your phone on the toilet paired with a nonsense narrative. The New York gallery is the most insulting though, an overlong selection of mazes that barely qualify as puzzles. While it's better looking than Boogie Woogie, it's a real exercise in wasting your time and I found all goodwill built up by The Style completely burned away before even the halfway point of New York.
I'm disappointed, as I think modern art is greatly maligned and something like Please, Touch the Artwork had the potential to recontextualise it in a varied and fun package. While an attempt is made towards this goal, two thirds of the three hour game is dedicated to generic crap. There's definitely something here in this idea, but it's not executed upon half as well as it should be.