I decided to take a weekend to gaming, no books just me and games.
Of course, this had actually meant pouring my waking hours into Vindictus and chatting with in-game friends and guildmates, but...after returning from the grocery store yesterday, I wasn't in a mood for anything, not even MMORPGs. I just wanted a nice and chill Saturday of being lazy...on my phone. While scrolling to download an old game (that had been deleted) I saw a different one instead.

I saw the art, the reviews, and the escape room-like gameplay, and clicked download (free to play). After completing it in a mere few hours, I was left speechless. I loved the game.
From the art style to the storyline and gameplay, I loved everything about it!

It was enough for me to sit down and replace my weekly wrap up post with Cozy with Book's first ever GAME REVIEW!

LINKS: APPLE STORE | GOOGLE PLAY
TW/CW: Death, Blood, Violence

PLOT & STORYLINE

An art collector pays an artist a visit, someone who has been in a bit of a block, a slump. The art collector presents a painting to the art collector, explains the history behind it and quickly dips out of there. His warnings? To never ever upset her.

"'Hold on! Be gentle when you take the sheet off. And pay attention to the light and temperature levels. She's delicate, you know. Carefully, now… Carefully…
What do you see when you look at this painting? You see a girl with a blue flower in her hair, right? Well…
Actually, this painting hasn't been completed yet.
Maybe the painter died before they could. Who knows what happened.
So, she's waiting. Waiting for someone to complete her.
But everyone who's tried has been annihilated.
If you upset her even the tiniest bit, it's curtains for you.'"

Excerpt of the prologue; exchange between the collector and the artist

You, the player, or rather, "the artist", is a gloomy and quiet person, chosen to be the painting's next painter. When first uncovered, there is nothing but a dark canvas, a mass of black paint. It's devoid of a subject and after the collector leaves, you suddenly gets claw marks all over your body. In a panic, you go to grab your cellphone, only to have the image on the phone turn red, it's broken. Turning back to the strange canvas and there's suddenly a girl sitting there who states, "Are you the next artist?" Though the canvas now has a subject, she's grey-toned and still seems to be unfinished; she's lacking all color otherwise. Requesting the artist to paint the real her, you gets dragged into another world, a gloomy and just as grey-toned studio, with no escape, not until you can fulfill the little girl's request; to paint the real her.

The story is interesting and the conflict is unique. The ending was honestly heartbreaking, but when you think about cursed objects out there, you either get demon possessions (malicious by nature) or sad/angry/strong memories and emotions attached to them. This painting is no different. You won't immediately understand the story right from there, but by the end, and after piecing through [in-game] days of notes and dreams [from another person; I believe the original artist], you start to understand the girl in the painting more and the ending is kind of bittersweet.

The story's chapters are divided by days and parts. There's obviously the prologue and epilogue, but in between you're stuck in that other world studio. In part one, you survive up to a certain point and something happens so that you wake up back on the first day and it's now part two. You, the artist, realizes that this a repeat (she requests the same thing but something is slightly off) and the game will let you know that, instead of it being "Day 1" again it's "Day 1+." At a certain point, you reach the same amount of days that ended part one and the Days afterwards would go back to the original numbering labels "Day 5, Day 6, etc." The game ends on Day 7.

I know that you are supposed to fear the girl in the painting because she's a cursed painting that has killed every artist that has attempted to finish the original artist's portrait for the model. But, after a while, you realize that it isn't all that terrifying or even slightly scary. There's also a tinge, an undertone, of loneliness and sadness. The end eventually shows you why and everything makes sense.

Speaking of endings, the true ending is the one that I love and ends with a bit of that bittersweet feeling mentioned previously. The other endings (that I know of) are plentiful...and bad. There is literally a whole gallery of ways to die. If you're a perfectionist or trying to complete the game, you could go ahead and try to find every way to die so you have all the death pictures. They're not scary photos either and nothing is overly graphic in a real sense because there is still blood or, for one instance, the player's body was contorted into a spiral... I mean, there's plenty of deaths, but the gallery is full of silhouette styled art.

An example of the death gallery from the app store's preview page

CHARACTERS

There are two main, active, characters and multiple, inactive, memory characters. The active characters are, you, the player/the artist, and the girl in the painting. The inactive characters are the original artist (that you dream as) and the previous artists' in the form of notes left behind.

You are a relatively gloomy and quiet artist. Despite your general frustration, and the desire to get back to the real world, you seem to take up all of the challenges in stride. Even the girl remarks that you are calm and quiet, at least compared to the other artists who, if you can read by the notes, seem to be freaked by the whole ordeal (I'd be too.) The girl also says that you reminds her of the original artist that never got to finish the painting. There's not too much that's known about the artist and you're closer to a silent protagonist, although you do hear the artist's thoughts (which is greatly helpful) when you're thinking about hints and whenever you pick up anything.

The girl in the painting is the main subject of the game and she and the painting are supposed to be cursed. From the memory dreams, she's based on a real little girl, the original model for the painting. Constantly throwing fits, causing trouble and headaches for the staff (maid, kitchen, ALL of the painters), she's a handful. The old man, who had adopted her, had requested her portrait to be painted, but she does everything in her power to prevent any of the artists from succeeding to do so. She keeps the curtains drawn in her room and throw fits if the artists open the curtains or try to request the painting to be done in another, more lit, room. Without the light source, all of the artists only succeed in painting exactly what they see; the painting's depicts a black mass...the dark room where the girl stays. You can imagine the constant flow of painters that the old man hires, hoping that the next one is the artist that finally paints her.

Just like the original model, the girl in the painting does the exact thing, making it hard to paint her, getting upset extremely easily if something isn't done exactly to her liking, and so on. Unlike the model though, the players will die rather than the girl just getting into a mood and kicking you from the room.

Again, by the end of the story, you'll see exactly why she acts like so (both the original model and the painting [who admits to have acted so so that she could be as close to the model as possible in appearance and temper]). I thought the story was actually beautiful and heartbreaking and loved how it ended.

To finish and beat the original storyline, you have to eventually fully paint the girl, meaning paint the correct colors to her grey-toned shell. The finished portrait is actually gorgeous, with all the different colors to her outfit, and the girl looks kind of sweet.

GAMEPLAY

This is a puzzle game and once you're in the other world, the studio, you are allowed to click around and try to find any clues you can. There are arrow keys to the side of each screen so you can view that side of the room and if you can't go any further, the bubble simply doesn't show an arrow letting you know that you've hit the end of the room. In the main room, there is the painting and the arrows will take you around that main room which has doors to other rooms. Depending on what chapter, some doors are unlocked and others are not; there are no keys to track down and it's just dependent on the story's timeline on which doors you can access.

The game is divided into chapters or "days" and with each day is a new piece of the storyline. You don't get to continue on until you have satisfied the girl's requests for that day. To do so, you much give her what she asks; usually the artist will paint an object with a specific a color.

You need to make sure to pay attention to a lot of things. The game has dreams, your cellphone (that still miraculously works despite it being broken) showing you notes from previous victims artists and your/the artist's thoughts (as extra hints). From there, you must pick up motifs, or you will have nothing to draw. Clicking around the rooms will help you locate the motifs, which are objects that you can pick up, sketch into your sketchbook, and you/the artist will eventually paint out. The color of the object matters a lot and you can usually get those from the dreams or previous artists' notes; your phone randomly buzzing to letting you/artist know that there's a new note from old artists.

Every small detail matters. For example...there was an instance where the girl wanted a peeled apple. You, after finding an apple and adding it to your sketchbook, would paint the apple...but you can't paint it red...that's an unpeeled apple, it's got to be yellow...the inside of a peeled apple. Another instance would be painting the apple in the wrong area and the apple drops and rolls away...in both instances, the girl would kill you in a way that relates to how you erred. The slightest thing would upset the girl and ta-dah, a new death gallery picture. With each successful request, color is added to the girl, piece by piece (her shawl, her brooch, etc.)

Ease of game wise, it's not too hard. Unlike a lot of other escape room like games, there isn't too many things to pick up. Usually after exploring around you'll easily have retrieved all motifs/sketches and hints (colors) and you'll be ready to paint! The hard part is making sure you have things down right, the perfect combo of which object with which color, or you're dead. BUT! Even if you die, the game is very forgiving and you start off where you left off, right before you had started painting. No need to go and gather more motifs, it's all in your inventory already.

If you're ever stuck or only there for the story, Youtube has videos for walkthroughs and I think I only got stumped once (a cat painting) so I had to consult a video. Otherwise, it was fairly easy and I had finished the game in maybe 3 or 4 hours.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I really enjoyed the game. It wasn't scary and, again, there are minor jump scares (like the painting killing you or a quick leap at your screen) but it's not scary in the slightest. The graphics are painting like and isn't stellar, but it adds to the charm of the game. It's a quick play and it's free (though I believe there was an option to pay to remove the ads). After the ending, you're free to go back to a specific chapter, erase progress, and play again. The game is very forgiving with deaths and instead of waking up at the beginning of a Day, when you pick up after a fail, it just plops you back in front of the painting to try again. The story is unique, kind of sad, and ends beautifully. The gameplay is simple and very easy to catch on and the challenges are not too hard to figure out. The hints are sometimes right in front of you and, worst comes to worst, you can just keep trying all sorts of combos (and die a bunch) until the girl is satisfied (or consult good old Youtube.) Overall, a fun little game that entertained me for an evening and I won't even lose sleep over it.

 This free site is ad-supported. Learn more
​