PLEASE, TOUCH THE ARTWORK
DEVELOPER Thomas Waterzooi PRICE $1-4.50 + DLC WEBSITE store.steampowered.com/app/1097100/Please_Touch_The_Artwork
Art galleries are the only place my husband and I argue. We nearly broke up at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, over our divergent interpretations of modernist sculpture. One thing I think we can all agree on, however, is that Piet Mondrian’s abstract geometric paintings were begging to be made into a puzzle game. Please, Touch the Artwork consists of three galleries, which are inspired by the artworks Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Grey and Blue (1921), Victory Boogie Woogie (1944), and New York City (1942).
Things get surprisingly difficult across more than 150 levels, the first of which require dragging lines and filling colours, by solving the order in which each puzzle piece is presented. Lines have a defined direction, from a point, and colours are filled adjacently to your cursor. It’s abstract, but makes sense, after some experimentation. Boogie Woogie requires squares to navigate to square shaped holes, via the rotating of other squares. New York is a bit like playing Snake in a maze, with poetry. I enjoyed this gallery, but my eyes got tired really quickly. So many lines.
Designer, Thomas Waterzooi, tells me that most of the game is procedurally generated. I didn’t pick it, although I did notice stems in the soundtrack that dropped in and out contextually. Another interesting thing about is that or crossword habit. I’m very sure this intersection of art and puzzle is good for one’s mental acuity, if not marital harmony.
