The Painting

"The Painting" is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This is a badly written e-book that wasn't even written with people in mind, it was written for a ":game jam", except the people running that at least admitted it was for e-book writing and they had the common sense to understand the difference between a book and a game. Well, the author of this train wreck didn't. The godawfully cringey writing here at least isn't about the authors imaginary girlfriend (it's a sad fact that the majority of e-books on Steam are fan-fictions about the author and his imaginary anime girlfriend). Instead it's a bit of tedious goth poetry about mental health and grief processing, fields in which the author here is not a qualified expert, so hamfistedly addressing them this way does much more harm than good. This was slapped together with the godawful Ren'Py visual novel construction kit... enabling terrible authors to publish books as if they were games when otherwise we might have been spared the pollution. So, just like no professional writing took place here, no professional software development took place, either. Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage. Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book. One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the e-book peaked at only 3 concurrent readers... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. The funny thing is, if you wanted to print this book, you'd only need to print 3 copies to satisfy the entire world's demand for it. While this E-book has no up-front cost, you can get better quality, professionally written books and comics for free online (from places like Project Gutenberg) or from public libraries. Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

Shed A Tear Playing This. 10/10 Would Cry Again

As a father myself, this got me...

Приключенческая головоломка с уникальной механикой взаимодействия с живописью: игрок попадает внутрь картин и меняет их, манипулируя элементами полотна, чтобы решать задачи и продвигаться по сюжету. Мир игры построен на диалогах с художественными стилями — от импрессионизма до сюрреализма. Плюсы: оригинальная игровая механика — возможность «входить» в картины и редактировать их элементы напрямую превращает каждую головоломку в творческий эксперимент; визуальное разнообразие стилей — уровни стилизованы под разные эпохи и направления живописи, что создаёт постоянно меняющуюся эстетику; интуитивное взаимодействие — управление мазками, цветами и формами интуитивно понятно, не требует специальных художественных навыков. Минусы: ограниченная глубина механик — после освоения базовых принципов изменения картин новые вызовы появляются редко, снижается ощущение новизны; медленные переходы между сценами — загрузка и анимация перемещения из одной картины в другую иногда затягиваются, нарушая темп игры; слабая проработка сюжета — история служит лишь поводом для перехода между полотнами, не предлагая глубокой нарративной вовлечённости. Итог: подойдёт любителям арт‑игр и головоломок — впечатляет необычной концепцией «жизни внутри картины», яркой сменой художественных стилей и простым, но творческим взаимодействием с окружением. Может разочаровать из‑за поверхностного сюжета, повторяемости игровых задач после освоения механик и задержек при переходах между уровнями.

Who's cutting the onions this fast?!

shortest game ever to make me tear up