Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2021/05/11/art-sqool-pc-switch-review/
I think it’s best to let Art Sqool explain itself.
“In ART SQOOL, you are Froshmin, and it’s your freshman year. Create art, explore the beautiful mysterious, sprawling campus and complete tasks given to you by the professor. The professor is a neural network an art-trained A.I., as well as your faculty advisor. He uses his high-tech capabilities to objectively grade your work. The campus is spread over a number of floating islands and filled with bizarrely shaped objects and bizarre plants.” – Official Description.
Art Sqool is meant to help inspire someone who wants to get into doing art to actually follow through by giving them both the tools and inspiration to start drawing. Unfortunately, it comes off as more of a mixed bag at best.
Let’s start with the visuals since it’s the thing that stands out the most. Frankly, I find this art style incredibly obnoxious. The entire game is bright pastel tones with the occasional flickering textures that could cause a migraine at the best of times, and I’m pretty sure might cause a seizure for someone. There’s no real variety in the visuals either, as you’re subjected to the same smallish area to explore.
Mixed with the quirky personality and music that I found incredibly grating, this is going to be the biggest hurdle for anyone wanting to try this out.
Once you’re in the game, you’re introduced to your professor, an A.I. who is going to judge your art, and the game does this by giving you random prompts for you to draw.
The prompts for what to draw are randomized, so no two playthroughs are the same. Due to the randomization, some of the prompts don’t end up making complete sense, such as one suggesting that you redraw something that you’ve previously dawn, but it’s ended up being the first prompt that you have. But this is a minor complaint at best.
After being introduced to the Professor and the concept for the game, you’re dropped into a small area to explore, which consists of the previously mentioned small floating islands. You can jump over to each of the islands by simply tapping the space bar (or whatever key is jump for you) repeatedly to get over to another one of the islands.
And this is where the game introduces the controls. At first I found the controls to be pretty clunky. I had trouble getting my character up some stairs because he was so sluggish and awkward to control, and the camera kept hitting objects in the environment. And having to repeatedly tap the key to make your character ‘fly’ can get pretty annoying pretty fast.
Thankfully there are multiple camera angles to choose from, such as third person being close or far to the character, first person, and isometric. A lot of these alternative camera angles work better to a certain extent, but there is still some clumsiness to the controls.
Another problem is that you have to unlock the various colors and tools for painting by walking around the ‘campus’ the find them. Apparently you can spend an extra $2.99USD on the Switch version to just unlock all of them up front, but that feels a tad scummy. I feel like if you’re trying to inspire people to follow their dreams of doing art, maybe you shouldn’t lock away features that might help with that process.
After drawing whatever the game has suggested to you, or drawing whatever your heart desires, you can either jump off into the void or walking into the buildings (I had trouble recognizing the entrance door to a few of these buildings the first couple of times), and get your painting graded by the A.I. professor.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason on how your art gets rated. Scores ranged from A (best) to F (immediate fail), and it feels like they were given out arbitrarily. Even a slight change or not even changing anything at all could change my grade from a failing one to a passing one and vice versa.
I feel like removing the failing grade would help a lot not only with making the game progress more smoothly, but if the game is trying to get me into art, maybe giving me a failing grade on something so subject as art might turn me off from the whole process. Maybe it’s just commentary on people thinking their subjective opinions are objective, who knows.
I guess the manual that came with the game is pretty neat, and is a short comic about the comic asking his friend about he controls which he jotted down in his notebook. But at this point it feels like I’m stretching a bit to find something to compliment about this game.
At $6.99, it feels like a steep ask for anyone who is on the fence, especially when the aesthetic might be a big turn off for a lot of people. If you’re looking for the inspiration to start finally following your dreams of becoming a professional artist, this might not be the place to start. You could probably go watch a few YouTube videos for free and get a much better experience.
I think it’s best to let Art Sqool explain itself.
“In ART SQOOL, you are Froshmin, and it’s your freshman year. Create art, explore the beautiful mysterious, sprawling campus and complete tasks given to you by the professor. The professor is a neural network an art-trained A.I., as well as your faculty advisor. He uses his high-tech capabilities to objectively grade your work. The campus is spread over a number of floating islands and filled with bizarrely shaped objects and bizarre plants.” – Official Description.
Art Sqool is meant to help inspire someone who wants to get into doing art to actually follow through by giving them both the tools and inspiration to start drawing. Unfortunately, it comes off as more of a mixed bag at best.
Let’s start with the visuals since it’s the thing that stands out the most. Frankly, I find this art style incredibly obnoxious. The entire game is bright pastel tones with the occasional flickering textures that could cause a migraine at the best of times, and I’m pretty sure might cause a seizure for someone. There’s no real variety in the visuals either, as you’re subjected to the same smallish area to explore.
Mixed with the quirky personality and music that I found incredibly grating, this is going to be the biggest hurdle for anyone wanting to try this out.
Once you’re in the game, you’re introduced to your professor, an A.I. who is going to judge your art, and the game does this by giving you random prompts for you to draw.
The prompts for what to draw are randomized, so no two playthroughs are the same. Due to the randomization, some of the prompts don’t end up making complete sense, such as one suggesting that you redraw something that you’ve previously dawn, but it’s ended up being the first prompt that you have. But this is a minor complaint at best.
After being introduced to the Professor and the concept for the game, you’re dropped into a small area to explore, which consists of the previously mentioned small floating islands. You can jump over to each of the islands by simply tapping the space bar (or whatever key is jump for you) repeatedly to get over to another one of the islands.
And this is where the game introduces the controls. At first I found the controls to be pretty clunky. I had trouble getting my character up some stairs because he was so sluggish and awkward to control, and the camera kept hitting objects in the environment. And having to repeatedly tap the key to make your character ‘fly’ can get pretty annoying pretty fast.
Thankfully there are multiple camera angles to choose from, such as third person being close or far to the character, first person, and isometric. A lot of these alternative camera angles work better to a certain extent, but there is still some clumsiness to the controls.
Another problem is that you have to unlock the various colors and tools for painting by walking around the ‘campus’ the find them. Apparently you can spend an extra $2.99USD on the Switch version to just unlock all of them up front, but that feels a tad scummy. I feel like if you’re trying to inspire people to follow their dreams of doing art, maybe you shouldn’t lock away features that might help with that process.
After drawing whatever the game has suggested to you, or drawing whatever your heart desires, you can either jump off into the void or walking into the buildings (I had trouble recognizing the entrance door to a few of these buildings the first couple of times), and get your painting graded by the A.I. professor.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason on how your art gets rated. Scores ranged from A (best) to F (immediate fail), and it feels like they were given out arbitrarily. Even a slight change or not even changing anything at all could change my grade from a failing one to a passing one and vice versa.
I feel like removing the failing grade would help a lot not only with making the game progress more smoothly, but if the game is trying to get me into art, maybe giving me a failing grade on something so subject as art might turn me off from the whole process. Maybe it’s just commentary on people thinking their subjective opinions are objective, who knows.
I guess the manual that came with the game is pretty neat, and is a short comic about the comic asking his friend about he controls which he jotted down in his notebook. But at this point it feels like I’m stretching a bit to find something to compliment about this game.
At $6.99, it feels like a steep ask for anyone who is on the fence, especially when the aesthetic might be a big turn off for a lot of people. If you’re looking for the inspiration to start finally following your dreams of becoming a professional artist, this might not be the place to start. You could probably go watch a few YouTube videos for free and get a much better experience.