Taking Artistic Liberties || Shapeless (PC)

"Art is an experience, not a formulation of a problem." --Lindsay Anderson

Title Screen

Shapeless is short artistic puzzle game about a creature fixing paintings that have somehow been altered in a nefarious way. Created by ISART DIGITAL ,you play as a creature composed of what looked like a painters palette and copious amounts of paint. The creature is rather cute in their own way. This creature has the ability to enter paintings like a magical portal.

During the game you solve short puzzles involving objects that belong in the paintings, then you return the objects to the paintings to restore them to the full beauty. The puzzles are not too difficult. They involve rotating different parts of the object in order to line them up properly. My spatial reasoning isn’t top notch, but I was able to get them together. The light bulb was the hardest for me, but it still only took about a minute or 2.

This light bulb....

There isn’t really a story given about the gallery you are in or what is happening, you’re just sort of thrown in and you see a rather nefarious looking vortex form over the exit. I wasn’t sure what was happening at first, but figured it out pretty quickly. You can make up your own narrative about why this happened. I’m going with evil wizard, that seems like a good bet.

The visuals in the game are just astounding. I love the multitude of paintings around the gallery, even if some of them are a bit unsettling. The colors are vibrant in the paintings and the gallery itself is somewhat dark an ominous—this may be in part due to all the rather off putting paintings of creepy eyes. Stylistically the game does a great job. When our creature enters the paintings, they become is sort of blue haze with eyes. I think that a small touch that would have really make this game shine would have been if our little creature took on the style of whatever painting they jumped into. The body colorful style of Van Gogh? The quiet realism of Edward Hopper? It would have been phenomenal.

Feel like you're being watched?

In terms of game design, everything worked as it was supposed to. The controls were smooth and I didn’t have any issues. I was really just sad that the game was so short. Before I knew it I was at the end and I wanted it to just keep going. I was hoping this was just a demo, but I don’t see any indication on the Itch.io page that this game is being developed any further, so we will just have to enjoy what we have.

Something small that I also appreciated in this game is the gallery, where the developers provided information on the paintings that you help to fix in the game. It seems like such a small thing, but being able to read a little of the history on each painting made the art nerd in me really happy.

Restoring my favorite painting. 

Overall, I felt like this game was really something special and could most certainly be expanded into a full length game. Everything about this game felt enjoyable and I can’t really think of any negative experiences I had while playing. Definitely grab the game for yourself, you can download free from Itch.io HERE.

Do you have a favorite painting, or a painting that you would have liked to see in this game? Let me know in the comments below and I will see you all next time. Until then, happy gaming, friends!