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The problem with painting games is that it is not much more fun being a bad painter virtually than being a bad painter in real life. Sure, you can undo a lopsided leg here or airbrush an outsized hoof there, but if what you’re left with is a picture of a horse that looks like a cocktail sausage, it doesn’t really matter if it’s only made of pixels — it still sucks.
Which is why Été, a painting game more about creative composition than technical draughtsmanship, takes the form it does. Playing as an artist spending the summer in Montreal, as soon as you step in front of your virtual easel a number of themes will pop up. These contain pre-drawn objects that you can insert on to your canvases like a collage, ranging from conventional (trees, animals etc) to unusual (a touching portrait of a lawnmower, anyone?).
To unlock those objects, however, you will need to explore the city — which is as colourful as a crossword when you arrive. It’s up to you to add some life to it, pointing and clicking on objects until they take on their true tint like a giant urban colouring book. Once they’re looking a little less lifeless, the objects you’ve shaded will be added to the repertoire available for your easel. Colour in a greengrocer’s stall, say, and your next tortured masterpiece can be more convincingly named “Still Life with Pears”.
It’s not all absinthe and existential crises, alas — in Été you have rent to pay and furniture to buy, so the game requires you to sell the odd painting too. My first creation, a four-parter of purple sparrows taking flight, sells for $300 at the local coffee shop. That’s enough to buy 12 toasters at the antique store, or all manner of organic honey and cauliflower tacos from the city’s food trucks.
You don’t quite have the whole of Montreal at your disposal — there are seven small areas to explore, filled with a whimsical selection of Québécois hipsters, creatives and pets. The theme of gentrification gently underpins the narrative: who owns the city? How can artists continue to sustain themselves there? The game isn’t here to preach, though, so much as gently guide your creative journey.
I encountered a few technical hurdles unrelated to my artistic abilities, unfortunately: dialogue bubbles cut off by scenery; characters so keen on my picture of a watermelon wearing a party hat that their heads disappeared into it; loading screens that, at their worst, froze for minutes at a time. Structurally, too, the short main storyline could introduce a little more of the city before letting you loose.
But then the story is really just a tutorial. Été’s trick is having you discover a world at first unfamiliar to both you and your protagonist. The colouring process encourages you to look more closely at different objects, from the prettiest pergola to the most unobtrusive orange. And just when you think you’re done, your easel is there to remind you that there are still an infinite number of blank canvases to be completed.
★★★★☆
Available from July 23 on PC
