Imprimatura

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

“Oscar Bait” is a pejorative term sometimes lobbed at movies. There is every likelihood I have used it as such in the past. It is used to describe artworks perceived as cynically and soullessly leveraging dramatic tropes to check perceived ‘high art’ boxes that will be applauded by award panels. High concept, high emotionality works that are perceived to be manipulative are tarred with this unkind epithet as a way to diminish them. Seemingly even before people consume the work in question.

I have come around to the idea that while satisfying some unpleasant aspect of human nature (our need to feel better by tearing earnest things down) this is almost always a hollow, uncharitable and unfair criticism. Yes, cynicism is justified around the studio system of movie making. Yes, creators that crawl up their own butts during the echo chambers of gruelling promotional junkets feed that impression. But, these are at their base still artistic endeavors that marry many talented artists into an emerging vision that someone, somewhere, felt was important. When they fall short of their artistic goals it is worth analyzing. When they achieve their artistic goals, they are worth celebrating. It is an ungenerous impulse to attribute cynical motives to works because they appear to aim too high, then dismiss them completely on the grounds of that assumption. Lord knows I would never do that.

I lead with this because Imprimatura is the most compelling case against this impulse I have yet encountered. On paper, the conceit of exploring a dead mentor/family member’s artwork to get a better understanding of them and yourself rings high concept, high emotionality. It seems on some level like an ur-Oscar Bait concept. You do yourself an injustice letting that inform your engagement.

I found this to be just about the best possible realization of this premise. No surprise, the MVP of this effort is the prose. The writing here accomplishes two things crucial to selling the proceedings: terrifically insightful and specific observations about the character under scrutiny; rendered in compellingly sharp prose. The player choice in this game is to select 7 paintings among a wealth of them as a bequeathment. The choices you make among the distinctively described works of art inform a collage picture of the lost relative. Subject matter, style and colors all allude to an emotionality behind the works that by selecting, you concretize. Like Schrodinger’s Art Studio - the personality of your mentor is made real only when observed. It is a real accomplishment that the selections seem widely varied and nuanced, yet not contradictory. The effect is to build a full, complex person in your head as the sum of different dynamics. It is ‘I am Large, I Contain Multitudes: The Game’

A quick by-the-way shout out to the sound design of this work. The melancholy music, overlaid with tightly focused folio work, really set the scene and enhanced the proceedings in a subtle but affecting way. A moment that stood out to me was a human sigh, perfectly tuned to the gameplay conveying the mismatched physical and emotional effort of the protagonist. Really effective.

As I was playing, I was swept up by the confident, effective writing and sound design. There was something nagging in the back of my head though. “Why am I reading descriptions of paintings, when you could just show them to me?” I mean, the obvious answer is “because it would take months to compose compelling art that I can describe in minutes.” No sooner had I reconciled myself to that answer than the endgame kicked in. Where you (Spoiler - click to show)compose an artwork that acts a final collaboration with the deceased, summarizing your collected memories of them. Again, a potentially precious conceit that resoundingly delivers in execution. The game decodes your prior selections into a subject/style/palette (Spoiler - click to show)that is superimposed over an incomplete early sketch in a deeply satisfying way, then crucially lets you tune it. It gives you the language of interpretation, but allows you final word in how you express it, based on YOUR responses to the artworks selected. Without this crucial last step, the work would be telling you how to feel, and if it misguesses, would neuter its impact immeasurably.

From its insightful and powerful prose, to its clever use of graphical synthesis, to its deeply mature employment of interactivity I really responded to this piece. It may have been assisted by indirectly resonating with a personal loss of my own. The cleverness of the piece is that loss is a universal experience, as is the complexity of people lost. This piece captures both those dynamics expertly. I found this a Transcendent use of the medium.

In the interest of completeness, there was one distracting technical issue. As you go through and ‘unwrap’ new paintings, I encountered the same painting multiple times, presented as newly discovered. While I could see revisiting them AFTER the stock had been exhausted, this seemed random to me, and sometimes the same painting appeared three or four times. Yes, a speedbump, but an inconsequential one in the face of its other accomplishments.

This is a very understated, finely observed dynamic character study overlaid with an interactive representation of grief processing. Its prose is unadorned enough to let the player build the emotional responses, not dictate them. The interactivity is sensitive enough to honor that emotional response. The unspoken cool thing about ‘Oscar Bait’ is that, sometimes, it deservedly catches ‘Oscar Fish.’ Yum! I LOVE Oscar Fish!

Played: 9/19/24
Playtime: 25m, two playthroughs
Artistic/Technical ratings: Transcendent/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again?: I just might

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless