Recently there has been a rise in games that are more compilations than single works of creation. Things like the Dread X Collection show that there's a lot of value to be found in a taster menu approach to indie games. It's a trend I've been happy to see, as many genres benefit greatly from brevity (particularly horror) but at the same time need to provide players with enough of a value proposition to justify their purchase.

Applying this approach to a puzzle game instead is, on paper, a fantastic idea. There are many concepts and mechanics for puzzlers that are amazing for a little bit but soon become tiresome, so collecting a few of those together and making them an hour each sounds great, but unfortunately, Please, Touch the Artwork fails its premise on a few fronts. Its most grievous sin is making it pretty obvious which puzzle selection (or "gallery", as the game refers to them) was thought of first and making the other two feel like tacked on filler.

It's a real shame, because the gallery in question, the De Stijl movement, is great stuff. The levels gradually introduce new mechanics to a simple idea, eventually combining them to produce some surprisingly tricky problems. Your reward for beating a few levels is another factoid about the movement that the game's aesthetic is born of and the artists behind it. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing revolutionary, but in that first hour of gameplay are the seeds for something interesting, a way to make art education truly immersive and involve the player in the creation process that they're studying.

Unfortunately, the other two galleries are, not just worse than De Stijl, but actively bad. The Boogie Woogie levels are dull and ugly, the type of puzzles you play on your phone on the toilet paired with a nonsense narrative. The New York gallery is the most insulting though, an overlong selection of mazes that barely qualify as puzzles. While it's better looking than Boogie Woogie, it's a real exercise in wasting your time and I found all goodwill built up by The Style completely burned away before even the halfway point of New York.

I'm disappointed, as I think modern art is greatly maligned and something like Please, Touch the Artwork had the potential to recontextualise it in a varied and fun package. While an attempt is made towards this goal, two thirds of the three hour game is dedicated to generic crap. There's definitely something here in this idea, but it's not executed upon half as well as it should be.

To be honest, it's a bit boring. I enjoyed the sequel a lot more: this one has little to do with paintings, it's just a monotonous puzzle game with cute style.

i want to like this game but it was so boring

The idea is nice, but the overall game is repetitive & dull. Far too many levels with hardly any change in game play & no change in color options make every level feel the same. This would be best as a mobile game to kill time on a public commute rather than something to actively sit down & focus on.

Only buy this if it is on sale for $5 or less (50% off or greater). Not worth the full price.

This is three games in one. The first one is kinda okay, the other two feel like trying to add content where there's not and felt like a chore.

This game has 3 different kinds of activities (I struggle to call them puzzles) inspired by Mondrian 's paintings.

First one is color flipping and it is actually pretty good puzzle.

The second one is not much of a puzzle and in the later levels it's more of "guess which one is the right sqare to click".

The third one is not a puzzle and it's barely a game. It's... an activity? Basically Snake but with nothing in it.

I like how it is made, I like the style of it, I like how it gives life to the paintings life and interprets what we can see. The problem I have is not necessarily that the game is short but that it is somewhat failed to execute on its potential. The latter two activities also seem like an afterthought.

one of those times where I wish steam had a "meh" rating, but here's why I leaned towards negative:

honestly felt kinda repetitive. lost its charm quick due to that.

if you *really* like artsy-fartsy stuff, you'll probably like this. otherwise I'd pass or grab it on sale, the puzzle half didn't do enough on its own to carry the game for me.

Nice soothing/quirky aesthetic, but it started to feel tedious after half an hour. It was too repetitive to provide lots of intrigue and ah-hah moments, but a bit too hard to be shut-your-brain-off relaxing. I think part of it was the lack of a level map; there was no indication whether there was a change coming up, or whether I was going to do 30 more variants on the same puzzle. I can definitely see its value; if nothing else it's similar to sudoku or picross but a heck of a lot more beautiful.