Please, Touch The Artwork 2 is the solo-developed sequel of the Mondriaan-inspired Please, Touch The Artwork. No more Mondriaan in this sequel, it’s time to discover the world of James Ensor in honor of the Belgian EU Presidency 2024. The best part? It’s completely free!
Cozy exploration
Where the first Please, Touch The Artwork focused on telling a story through puzzles, Please, Touch The Artwork 2 takes a different route. The emphasis isn’t really on the puzzles, it’s on the exploration. At its core, it’s a simple point-and-click adventure where you embark on a journey through five distinct worlds, each inspired by the mesmerizing art of James Ensor. You assist a wandering skeleton artist who’s navigating through those surreal, hand-painted worlds, searching for different objects to help out the quirky inhabitants of this world. To find those objects, you’ll have to touch the artwork, you’ll have to touch almost every inch of the James Ensor paintings to find the hidden objects. There’s something mesmerizing about it and in no time, you’ll be immersed into this absurd new world thanks to the atmospheric relaxing sound that guides you throughout your entire adventure. It’s one of the most cozy and relaxing games I played recently and I can truly appreciate that. If you want to escape from the grey weather here in Belgium, I’m pretty sure the Ensor paintings will do the trick. The way they come to life and are altered for a videogame experience is a piece of art on its own.
Find the hidden objects
During your adventure, which will take you close to one hour to finish, you’ll wander through an interactive environment based on the hand-painted works of James Ensor. The visual style is rather unique and I love how the interactive elements and animations go hand-in-hand with the masterpieces of Ensor. By wandering around in them, you’ll get a fresh sense of appreciation for the Ensor paintings and the ways he used his brushes and colors. As a pioneer of modern art, the Ensor paintings truly are unique and something we are rightfully proud of in Belgium, it’s good to see that Please, Touch The Artwork 2 emphasizes on the quality and absurdness of the paintings by offering a fun game that fits into the world of Ensor.
The game itself is simple and very accessible thanks to its intuitive touch controls. I played it on my Steam Deck without any issues and loved how easy it was to get into. This is a game that can be played by art lovers and gamers alike. By clicking somewhere in the painting, you’ll make the mysterious skeleton move around. Occasionally, you’ll bump into one of the quirky characters who lost certain objects. Once you know what to look for, you’ll travel through different paintings looking for those objects. Can’t find the object? No need to worry, with the hint system you can’t miss a thing. If you want to find everything yourself, you can switch off those hints of course. Besides finding the objects, you also have to complete small puzzles to fix certain holes in some of the paintings. The puzzles revolve around tracing different shapes without your bandage overlapping. A small and easy type of puzzle but it adds some variation to the gameplay, which is always a big plus.
Conclusion:
Since Please, Touch The Artwork 2 is a completely free game without any DLC or microtransactions, I see no reason why you shouldn’t play it. It’s a magical & cozy hidden-object ARTventure that will result in some relaxing gaming sessions while you learn more about the art of James Ensor, what’s not to like?!
