Games worth discovering

Arto (First Impressions)

1K View2023-05-02

Released: May 1st, 2023

Price: $20 USD

I'd like to begin by saying that this is a difficult game to stomach, at least from my perspective, because I have been surrounded by so many colorful and creative games like Okami or even Chicory A Colorful Tale when it comes to a game that allows you to color or even sketch out your world.

On the surface, it appears to be an alright game, but it feels like a mash-up of many aesthetics, which is fitting given that it is an art-inspired game. Having distinct visual characteristics every now and then is thus beneficial to playing the part of the game's overall theme. It just feels lacking and irritating at times.

Immediate Issues

Performance Issues

The game appears to suffer from regular frame drops and stuttering issues, despite the fact that there isn't much to load in. It doesn't help that when you first launch the game, it defaults to a resolution supporting 50fps rather of a steady 60, and increasing it to 60 or higher makes no difference in the long term.

Inconsistencies

I'm unsure whether this is because it's their first game on Steam, or if it's that they don't know what a UI should look like, but there are so many difficulties with the numerous various font options during the early intro parts of the game.

It's possible they are trying to imitate an emotion through the font alone.

Body text in different colors set against a high contrast colorful background border, with no accents to assist the words to stand out more, which isn't ideal for someone who is colorblind. The constant spacing between numbers making 5 0 look like this instead of 50. A simple error that quickly gets annoying.

Some of the font is so bold that you can't actually read it properly or when the game pans out to a wider shot, the text becomes a bit too small and bold to read properly. Forcing you to take some extra time to read the dialog more carefully.

The Music & Combat

While the game's visual aspect is its strongest suit. The music and combat leading up to the boss fights are both disappointing. It's not really fulfilling.

It's monotonous and doesn't provide much in the way of item drops or currency to enhance things. Most monsters your defeat die in a hit or two, making it feel like an extremely casual and tedious objective in your way that you want to avoid.

Story

You are the Apostle summoned from the last bit of strength that Goya had in their last ditch effort to preserve the world of it's last bit of color, and thus you go on an quest to recolor the world and recover the 6 deities, that have lost way.

The story consists of moving from objective to objective in different worlds with different art-styles, fitting to the fact that it is an art game. In which you have to bring color back to life with your powers while defeating your enemies.

Conclusion

I'm currently having a rough time due to my critical viewing

As a general rule. When I try to play through or briefly play through the games of most new developers, I try to take a more forgiving approach, but it's hard here.

While again, this game appears to be visually appealing. There are a lot of things that progressively become more and more irritating, such as several layers of different text and fonts in body text being white on a bright background one moment and then clear and black on a white background the next.

It makes it really difficult to enjoy a game that isn't released as an Early Access, because often times these games don't get the needed polish that they desire after the initial release is done and gone. I'll need a few more hours to check out some of the other worlds and to see if things improve over time or get worse.

My initial thoughts on this game come to a close with the caveat that, while others may disagree, that is what makes gamers unique. You don't have to share their interests or agree with them and are welcome to critic me on mine.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

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- Pawkt

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