When is a game not a game? Some would argue that a game needs to be challenging, but personally, that definition doesn’t sit right with me. By that sort of logic, a game can stop being a game as soon as you start being good enough at it to no longer find it challenging. For me, a game relatively simply needs to be a piece of interactive media with a defined set of rules. This Please, Touch the Artwork 2 review will make it clear that while the game is pretty devoid of challenge, it’s certainly still a game and certainly still worth your time.
What Is Please, Touch the Artwork 2?
If the big number ‘2’ doesn’t clue you in, Please, Touch the Artwork 2 is a second artistic adventure game from Belgian solo developer Thomas Waterzooi. Much like the first game, it’s a free-to-play adventure game that explores art by getting you to physically interact with it. The key change this time is that the art is based around famed Belgian expressionist James Ensor, and you’ll find yourself wandering around the artist’s work as a resurrected avatar of Ensor himself, albeit without any of his skin or muscles intact.
You spend most of your time directing the artist around his own paintings. A heavily stylised skeletal hand gives you control over the different areas, and you have to click on the various figures of the paintings, which will give you different fetch quests. Then, you wander around the landscape constructed from famous Ensor paintings, trying to find the items hidden in the nooks and crannies of the painted landscapes and buildings. You also occasionally have to complete a continuous line puzzle to fix a damaged painting, usually revealing one of the objects that you were searching for.
Short, Sweet and Slightly Silly
It should be relatively obvious to most people that Please, Touch the Artwork 2 is a relatively short experience. The game is free on PC, and even on Switch will only run you a few quid to pick up, so it’s not shocking that you’ll be able to complete the game in around an hour, assuming that you don’t struggle to find anything you’re looking for. Even then, if you are struggling, the game does provide a pretty-much unlimited hint system that will show you whether there’s a hidden item on your current screen, and can even circle it for you if you still can’t find it.
Going into the game looking for a challenge would be the wrong way to look at things. You’re here to closely examine the works of a real-world painter and enjoy the combination of stunning artwork and classic music. Sure, you can just keep hitting the hint button if you feel like it, but you’d be missing the point of a game that is literally set inside the art. It gives you a chance to appreciate the pieces in much closer detail than you could by just seeing them at a distance in a gallery, and it’s a wonderful way to find a new level of appreciation for a fantastic painter and his work.
A Piece of Digital Art unto Itself
Please, Touch the Artwork 2 looks stunning, and a lot of care has been taken to use different elements of Ensor’s paintings in interesting ways. Elements such as the depiction of Jesus, the various skulls and high-end rooms are scattered around and placed side-by-side to create a cohesive world. It very much feels like James Ensor is actually wandering around his own work, fixing it from the damage caused by…well, caused by Ensor’s work, actually. Clearly, there are layers of metaphor at play here, but you very much have to meet the game on its terms.
If you’re looking for a game that looks, sounds, and straight-up feels like a work of motion art, then you’ll find nothing better than Please, Touch the Artwork 2. That said, if you’re not a fan of surrealism, expressionism, or just art in general, then you’ll probably go away from the experience wondering why you even bothered. All the very-well-chosen classic music in the world won’t entice you unless you’re in the sort of place to spend an hour or so ‘appreciating’ some art. Personally, I’d say give the game a chance either way. Please, Touch the Art 2 feels like a game that could even help people who don’t enjoy art get more into it by providing a way of enjoying this art that is also vibrant and full of energy and life.
The Verdict
Please, Touch the Artwork 2 is a fantastic, artistic experience that has given me a new appreciation for an artist who was very much not on my radar previously. Not only does it provide an excellent way of becoming intimately familiar with some genuinely wonderful art, but it does it in a way that manages to be full of humour and energy in a way that may even work to entice the less art-focused players of the world. If you’re an Ensor fan, you will certainly enjoy this; if you’re not, the game could very well turn you into one. Short, sweet, silly, and absolutely sublime.
Developer: Thomas Waterzooi
Publisher: itch.io
Platform: PC
Release Date: 17th January 2024
