Please, Touch the Artwork, a Mondrian-inspired painting poking puzzle game from Studio Waterzooi, looks like an abstract treat.
Have you ever wanted to touch the artwork in a gallery?
“Of course not,” you recoil. “I’m not a philistine!”
But maybe there’s a glass case around the painting. A velvet rope in front of the tapestry. An ironic security guard in the British Museum, making sure nobody steals the Parthenon Marbles. Again.
Something about it being forbidden makes you want to do it, doesn’t it? Just a little bit? You never normally would, but nobody’s around. They wouldn’t see. Nobody would know you did it… would they?
If the urge to touch artwork strikes you, it might be safer to step out of the art gallery and, instead, enjoy this puzzle game from Thomas Waterzooi, formerly of IO Interactive and Larian.
Rather than fencing off his Mondrian-inspired art – derived from a procedural Mondrian-style painting generator – Thomas wants you to Please, Touch the Artwork. He implores you to twiddle. He begs you to tweak it.
In so doing, you’ll work your way through a couple of hours of light, painting-based puzzling, through three different collections of puzzles based on three different Mondrian paintings: Compositions with Red Blue Yellow, Broadway Boogie Woogie, and New York City.
There’s also a hint of a story and some other narrative and educational aspects to uncover. The game also features a number of accessibility features, including a colourblind mode, which is brilliant for a game whose primary mechanic is based on Mondrian paintings.
Please, Touch the Artwork is out now on PC (via Steam and itch.io) and is also available on Android and iOS.
Though it’s probably best you don’t play it on your way to an art gallery, lest you get any ideas and find yourself in trouble. Maybe save it for the ride home, just to be on the safe side?
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