The Sculptor

A linear game until the very end choice, about a pitiable old sculptor trying to create his last masterpiece, essentially before he dies. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it suicidal ideation implication.

I was a little thrown off by the sculptor’s prose making it seem like he was in the Renaissance era and then having Ricky walk in to reveal it was clearly the modern era, but my guess is it was an intentional dissonance, so I kinda liked the artistic decision there.

I did encounter some bugs and several typos, like the Texture words that I dragged being exceedingly tiny for some reason and one of the choices saying `sand still`. My biggest issue was the prose was very clunky and often ungrammatical or switching tense. Some parts approached empty-sounding purple prose and other parts were brief, perfunctory half sentences. Like, the opening lines of the game are:

> Numb. Unsure if it is joy that overtakes you or fear. It may be both, it may be neither.

When you complete the sculpture you get the empty-sounding phrase (along with others):

> Its radiance cures the blind.

No one’s personality feels more than sketched out, including the protagonist. I did feel bad for him, at least, considering his situation of being an aging fine artist in the 21st century. I also think it is a strong character choice to have the option to utterly destroy the sculpture (completing the masterpiece doesn’t mean keeping the masterpiece, after all!), but I wish it didn’t appear at the last possible moment. I also wish it was flagged more clearly what exactly I was doing with such a momentous choice before I couldn’t back out.

I don’t know if I have much to say about this one, being as it was so short. It didn’t leave that much of an impression on me…