A frustrating and buggy, lackluster experience. I was excited by the prospect of gyro controls, and since it was on sale, figured it was worthA frustrating and buggy, lackluster experience. I was excited by the prospect of gyro controls, and since it was on sale, figured it was worth a try. The game has locked up multiple times now, refusing to register gyro or button input from my controller. Finishing the step with touch controls returns it back to normal.
The game also regularly interrupts you to auto-complete stencils, even if large chunks of the painting haven’t been covered yet. It ruins the gameplay, turning an already stale, directionless and shallow exploration of a good concept into an unrewarding mess.
When the gyro works properly (it’s hit and miss when it comes to tabletop mode and impossible in TV mode), it’s enjoyable. Being able to wave the controller around feels like you're actually spraying the paint over the various parts of the canvas. You can adjust the sensitivity, and can toggle between stick and gyro controls in the menu.
The stick controls are precise but underwhelming. Touch controls are a bit more satisfying but very mobile game-esque.
The designs are cute and the colours are vibrant, but the simplified gameplay and lack of progression system is disappointing. You can’t change colours and there’s a paltry selection of patterns to work with.
You can’t use multiple patterns on one stencil, as swapping affects the rest of the paint already there. Half the designs feel mostly useless with three fruit patterns, some ghosts, tiny clouds, flies, hearts and a thick panel of stars feeling like awkward choices for things like cars and fish. It’s like I’m left choosing between the same seven patterns over and over again - one of which is just solid colour.
It’s nice having everything unlocked from the start, but the fact that you’re not working towards unlocking more of them (or any kind of colour choices, backgrounds or music) kills any chances at establishing a solid gameplay loop.
It's nice to be able to jump around, but you quickly realize that for every “scene” on offer, there are four one-object paintings with flat backgrounds. As well, a lack of titles makes it difficult to know what you're actually painting until you're finished.
A pattern creation tool wouldn’t go amiss here, especially if coupled with an online gallery of user-created designs, stencils and colour palettes. I could see this adding untold hours of fresh and rewarding gameplay.
It’s really disappointing because parts of it really are very satisfying. There’s something rewarding about watching the progress bar fill up as you paint, counting down the stencils left for each object. The choice to let you paint outside the lines was a wise one, and having all the excess peeled away to reveal the crisp shape underneath feels a lot like peeling plastic off of new electronics.
The rumble at the end of each stencil is nice, but it’s way too loud and triggered in such quick succession that the inability to adjust its level more than simply turning it on or off is disappointing. After you’ve finished all the layers, there’s a nice little moment with gyro where you shake the controller to rip off the last stencil and reveal the finished design.
Everything scales cleanly. You can either scroll through the selection screen using the arrow buttons, touch screen or the analog stick. Using the buttons is slightly jarring in TV mode as the paintings swing and snap back and forth. Using the control stick feels sluggish, and sometimes the game will panic because you haven’t pushed the stick hard enough, and will swing slightly then cancel back to the one you were just on.
The constant rocking of paintings and scrolling menu background can make those susceptible to motion sickness a bit queasy after a while. Buyer beware.
The music is obnoxious, synthetic and far too bright to establish a zen vibe. It's like there's a ten-second riff that gets looped over and over again while random instruments and clapping jump in and out of accompaniment. I appreciate being able to turn music and sound effects on and off independently, but the lack of sliders is frustrating. All of the sound effects are also lumped together, with the UI noises far louder than the sound of the spray and the little bubble noise at the end of each stencil feeling entirely out of place.
In conclusion:
I love the concept, but the game itself needs a lot of tweaking. It might be a bit too much to hope for that coming updates will flesh out the game into a fully-functioning and properly-realized experience. I’d wait until the problems are addressed before buying.
TLDR;
The good: sometimes decent gyro, great concept, nice artwork and quick but somewhat satisfying tasks.
The bad: no choice of colours, very few patterns to work with, game auto-completes stencils, no progression system, bad music, overzealous rumble and overall buggy gameplay.… Expand
