Imprimatura

This was a short, lovely game. Your deceased father was a prolific painter, and he left you a choice of 7 paintings in his will. You can sift through the paintings and choose the 7 you want the most.

Each painting has a different style and emotion. The game intuits what you’re going for in your collection, and a segment at the end is based on that, with a series of illustrations (but not of the seven paintings you choose).

This game is like an eclair to me: small, simple, but exquisite in taste. The CSS was nice, the background music pleasant, and the writing such that I enjoyed each sentence.

There’s not much to do outside of selecting the paintings, but this is the kind of game that I don’t think would be served well by expansion; it seems complete in itself. I had a good time (maybe because I chose the happier paintings and it reminded me of good times with both my father and son, and because I’ve gotten into art this year and loved getting new ideas). I do think it would be neat to have the drawings of the paintings in-game, but I understand why they’re not there (hard to make, especially since they’re described as high-quality, and our imagination can perhaps produce a stronger effect).

Note: This review was written during IFComp 2024, and originally posted in the authors' section of the intfiction forum on 21 Sep 2024.

This is a curious mix of text and visuals, where a close family member has recently died. They were an artist, and you are choosing the 7 paintings of theirs that you want to keep. Each choice of a painting unlocks memories for you. And in the end you use elements from the chosen paintings to complete a visual art work by your relative, a process depicted using on screen changing visual representations of the final artwork.

It’s quite moving, and I replayed several times to make different choices. Because you only recall detailed memories after selecting a painting I initially found it a little difficult to know what to choose. Should I choose paintings that I like the sound of myself, or ones that appear to reflect specific feelings, or are painted in a particular style or theme? At this point paintings are only described in words, though you get a summary of the core features and emotions represented before you decide whether to keep a painting or leave it.

One thing I did regret is that after you’ve chosen a particular painting you can’t then change your mind and put it back. Sometimes I wished I could do that, but choices were final.

Each time you dig out another painting it can be new, or one you’ve already looked at. I sometimes pulled out the same painting again and again, even up to 4 times in one game, and on 3 successive occasions in another. I’m not sure that was intended. Maybe the randomisation is too unrestricted.

At the end of the game you get to see some visuals and can interact with them. But I also wished I could see the earlier paintings. I even adjusted my screen to see if I was missing them in my too small-scale/zoomed in default display settings. Nope, only get the nice visuals towards the end of the game.

Thinking about how the paintings and their elements are combined later in the game I wonder if the earlier portion might have done something like this too. Perhaps adjusting the memory recalls, depending on what combination of paintings you’ve chosen. I don’t think it was doing anything like that. But it might have been nice. Preferably with the option to backtrack and decide not to keep a painting after all.

Many different emotions and feelings are depicted by the individual paintings and the memories they evoke. The impression built up is of a multi-faceted individual, depicted with honesty, rather than overly eulogised.

At the end there’s a moving credit, which suggests that this may have been a piece very close to the author’s heart. If so, thank you for sharing it with us.

As you mourn the loss of a family member, you are left to collect a number of their art collection, as per their will. Left with this difficult and emotional choice, you will relive the spent with them, sharing their passion for painting, and figuring out what it means to you. What they meant to you.

The game touches on and explores, through the lens of art, very real and personally relevant subjects for me such as grief, specifically through the loss of a loved one, one's personal struggle with choosing a career in art or not, the meaning of memory (and the meaning of art in life), and much more. I also greatly appreciated the unique gameplay which was central in the concluding portion (when you paint the last canvas) when "combining" all seven paintings.

All that being said, I was still left frustrated by the fact that the memories conjured by each painting you selected were NOT tied to a specific painting... I felt that this undermined the significance of the paintings themselves. The memories still somewhat lined up with the paintings' descriptions, for the most part, but I really would have preferred if it had given a specific memory/meaning to each artwork. Regardless, I would recommend it!