Painters Guild Review

Painters Guild is another minimalist indie game for aesthetes on Steam. Completely pixelated graphics, an intuitive interface, stripped down to the most basic mechanics of gameplay, and no tutorials – everything that our audience loves.

Surprisingly, the developers of PG managed to fit not just any arcade game, but a whole economic strategy into the aforementioned formula. It’s also very arcade-like, but quite lively and real.

So, in the era of the Renaissance, we have a master artist, a small studio, a stream of clients, and big ambitions. We need to create at least one gallery of masterpieces, raise several generations of talented successors, transform our starting shack into a true palace of art, and leave a mark on world cultural history.

Of course, all of these things require money, which is earned through timely completion of various orders. Additionally, it would be good for the artists to develop their own techniques.

Well, where are the separate menus for orders, screens with training options, and isolated construction tiles? They don’t exist. Well, there is construction, but everything else depends on what is happening on the main screen. Here is our house, here is the paint cabinet, here is the bed, and look, clients are approaching from the left. Does the approaching priest want his own portrait? Order accepted? Great, a canvas sticks to the cursor, which needs to be placed somewhere on the ground, and then the same mouse is used to drag our master to it. Ran out of paint? Drag the artist – or better yet, a novice apprentice – to the cabinet to get some more. Is the worker tired? Drag them to the bed.

In agile relocations and competent distribution of wards to the machines lies the main challenge and pleasure of the Painters Guild. Immersed in the rhythm, you forget about everything in the world for at least an hour and lead your art workshop to prosperity. And at the same time, you are amazed at how so many details and nuances could fit into such a small game.

First of all, local artists have two, pardon, “traits”. In other words, two character traits. For example, the marine painter Vasily da Pupkin will paint his first half-paintings at double speed all his life, but at the same time, he will get tired of any painting one and a half times faster. And the expatriate Maria von Ivanova will turn out to be a genius and will improve her skills at triple speed, but she will never be able to find her distinctive drawing style.

Secondly, yes, styles. There are five of them, ranging from, roughly speaking, the most cheerful to the local gothic. Over time, the public will prefer different works, and artists will earn more money and prestige for fashionably painted canvases.

The higher the prestige, the more orders will come and the more masters will be needed to meet the demand. This will not be so simple when one apprentice goes on a journey to enrich his horizons, the second paints the main canvas of his life, and the third is sick and almost dying. At the same time, allowing artists to go on business trips and creative vacations is vital for their professional development. Until the apprentice thoroughly looks at life abroad and the “ordinary artist” does not create his masterpiece, both will hit their creative ceilings and will not be able to earn extra money and prestige.

Dancing with frames and jerking the bohemian from place to place seriously captivate, but once the guild grows to six people and you start to get tired rather than enjoy the frantic clicking of pixel people, fortunately, by the time the game reaches that stage, not just one hour will have passed, and maybe not even one game. As mentioned at the beginning of the text, Painters Guild is an intimate pleasure, and it would be foolish to expect many tens of hours of gameplay from it. However, the project’s concise concept is brilliantly implemented. I recommend trying PG to every first lover of the “micro-indie” genre.