Please, Watch the Artwork preview - "Something creepy is going on..."
- Creepy yet captivating gameplay
- Lots of different paintings that can all change
- Perfect level of creepy-ness
Thomas Waterzooi has been creating games that feature works of art for a while now, moving from more quirky games to something a little... darker. Please, Watch the Artwork is something that feels inspired by creepy pasta, showcasing the artwork from the American painter Edward Hopper with a bit of a twist.
Please, Watch the Artwork challenges you to look after a bunch of collections of paintings, in the evenings, when things seem to come to life and go amiss. They all animate or have their own sound effects, but that's not what you are actually watching. Any sort of real changes and anomalies need to be detected and reported, so that any damaged art can be repainted and fixed.
This means you will be flicking through each of them, looking for any changes. These works of art, on their own, have a bit of a creepy vibe, but along with the sounds and changes that seem to happen, they can become quite unsettling.
In the demo of Please, Watch the Artwork that I played at Devcom, I found myself looking closely as the time ticked towards morning, captivated by the little changes that I had found. It's sometimes hard to see some of them. One time, a painting had flipped, so it was just slightly off. Another painting had missed a blanket that was in the background. Others are more obvious, like a shadowy figure appearing right in the middle of the painting or a person completely disappearing.
If you let too many paintings have anomalies, you will get a warning. Missing another for too long will cause the game to end. Some of the anomalies are actually audio-related, where you will be listening to the sounds and hearing them change. Others might have to do with lighting - there are so many little changes that you can end up hooked up. If you do select the wrong anomaly or try to report one that's not there, nothing bad happens. At the same time, there are so many options to report it doesn't feel like something you can spam.
There is something captivating and creepy about Please, Watch the Artwork. It's got a real draw to it, and the different collections of art, all with their own subtle changes, are fantastic. I cannot wait until the game is out, as it's the perfect amount of creepy captivation.
