Games worth discovering

The paint is still wet on this charming little adventure game - Arto Quick Review

2K View2023-05-02

Arto

7.1

Action RPGActionRPGSouls-likeAdventureFantasySingleplayerExploration

Get

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Skip it for now, at least until the more serious bugs have been addressed. Arto is a highly stylish, if simple adventure game with surprisingly vicious combat, but it’s plagued by some jankiness that’s severe enough to prevent progress in some cases. That’s a shame, because there are a lot of things I really like about Arto—I just can’t see any more of it.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played Arto for about two hours, which includes about half an hour of lost progress due to an update that rolled out during the review period that wiped my save. I was able to get back to where I’d left off pretty quickly, so that wasn’t a major problem. However, I wasn’t able to progress beyond the first main area. After defeating the first wayward “Apostle,” the local god Goya instructed me to take a boat to the next region. As I approached the dock, the game slowed down, as though it was loading something. I never found out what that might be, and there was no way for me to interact with the boat itself. So now I’m stuck, without another path to follow to progress the main storyline.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Style. If there’s one thing Arto really knocks out of the park, it’s visual style. A game about restoring color to a world that was drained of it in an apocalyptic event known as the Chromaclasm, Arto is a treat to look at. So far, I’ve seen it shift from a bright, painterly, pastel style to one inspired by the machine-printed look made famous by Roy Lichtenstein (complete with sound effects like “pop” and “bang” appearing in hand-lettered text on screen). As protagonist Liv explores each area, she restores color to everything around her, which is a great effect: The trees came alive and birds alighted in their nests as I traveled around spreading color like a living paintbrush.

• Slick combat. Combat in Arto is simple, but it can be surprisingly demanding. Liv has a paint-infused sword she can use to strike and block, as well as an upgradable dash and a bow and arrow that refills when she gets melee hits to connect. Enemies telegraph their attacks with clear Xs and Os that indicate whether or not they're blockable, but as they group up they can still apply some challenging pressure. The boss fight against the first apostle involved me frantically dashing out of the way of tentacles protruding from the floor as they crashed down to try to slap me. Checkpoints are plentiful, so even when I died I never had to do much backtracking to get back to where I was.

• Original concept. Arto casts Liv as the “chosen disciple” of one of the divinities whose color has been drained from the world. The story is standard video game fare, but I love the execution: It shifts, dreamlike, between styles and approaches, sometimes opting for muted landscapes, sometimes drifting into abstract symbolism. The simple act of exploring is great: I wasn’t simply coloring in what was there, but actually bringing life to the landscape. Grass, birds, trees, and little forest animals would all spring up around me as I wandered the island, which is just one of several canvases I could unlock from a central hub area shaped like an artist’s palette.

WHAT SUCKS

• The view. Arto’s fixed camera can be frustrating when foreground objects obscure Liv. It’s not often, but it can make fights a lot tougher than they’re meant to be, and getting hit because I couldn't see what was happening felt crummy. Either a rotating camera or a transparency effect would solve this, but neither are present here unfortunately.

• Unclear objectives. Quest instructions aren’t always clear or even accurate. Goya, the divinity who has summoned Liv to its realm, told me to visit Harwol’s underwater canvas from the hub area. I picked the canvas with what appeared to be the aquatic scene and was promptly spit back out—turns out, the correct canvas was one depicting blossoming cherry trees on a rocky beach. Arto has maps for each region, but they’re hand-drawn and were thus only useful for determining the general direction I was meant to follow, and interactable objects can be tough to spot. Any immersive benefit these decisions added to the game were outweighed by the increased frustration I felt trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing.

• Progression-blocking bugs. The biggest bummer here is that I can’t get any further into the game. The boat I’m supposed to take to the next area doesn’t do anything, and there’s no one to ask if there’s another bit of the quest I’m supposed to do in order to activate some trigger that opens it up. I’ve run into other bugs too: In Lichtenstone’s undersea lab, I was occasionally unable to walk through doorways connecting hallways to large rooms. In one case I was eventually able to use my dash to get through, but in another I had to use fast-travel to return to a checkpoint.

💬 Are Arto’s stylish looks enough to entice you into its artistic world, or do you prefer your painting to stay combat-free? Let me know in the comments below.