Do you love to paint? Do you like strategy games? This may just be the game for you. Painters Guild takes you back to the Italian Renaissance where you are put in this house to paint paintings for your customers in this strategy game. Developed and published by Lucas Molina, released September 1st, 2015, and is only available on PC. You might paint with the greats, greatness may await, but one thing is for sure, you must paint, paint, and paint!
At the beginning of your great painting adventures you are thrown into this house by yourself with your created painter. You are greeted with plenty of clickable interfaces on your screen that you are not familiar with yet. The clouds move in the background, giving it a sense of real time. Music ever so classical to set the mood of the Italian Renaissance. Customers come in out as you accept money for the paintings you do. This game seems like a breeze and easy, right? Well, it kind of is, but it can get very hard.
There is kind of a lot going on here for such a small game. You must rest your character from time to time so that he is not sleepy while he paints. If he is sleepy, he will not paint as fast as he normally would and could possibly die due to over working him. If you want to increase your income you must prestige your guild, and by doing that, you must either mix paint (which I found the easiest) or you must buy it from the catalog located at the very top. There you can buy items to prestige your guild, but that’s not all you can buy.
In the catalog you can buy beds to increase how fast your rest meter goes. A station that changes your style of painting which is really important in the sense that some of your customers may ask for a certain style of a painting, and if your painter is able to paint the correct style, your painter gets more money. A masterpiece canvas, which makes it so that you can upgrade your painter, so that he can continue to improve and upgrade the guild. Money in this game is very important. Your characters can leave the guild if there is no money going to them and an even worse scenario your painters can actually die. If you can’t pay for a doctor or if you can’t pay to get your painters from an execution, yeah they die. Luckily, you can always hire new painters.
You can either hire the best painters for a high price or low tier painters for a small price. Either way painters are the life blood of your guild (duh). As you progress more customers will demand more difficult paintings, which will take more time and more painters. Make sure you mixed your paints so that you don’t run out of it for your next paintings and have your painters on deck because you never know what might happen. As you progress through the years actual historical events happen in the form of a messenger boy, who spreads the news. These don’t do anything, but let you know what’s going on around.
Painters Guild really made me feel happy. I think a big part of it was the music. It really puts you in this good mood and makes you feel relaxed even when the tough gets going. The gameplay was okay. It wasn’t spectacular, but it definitely wasn’t bad by any means. Compared to other strategy games, this game really makes you think fast than actually being fast as you have to account for your money, your painters, what style your painters paint, and unforeseen bills. The graphics were charming and simple. The only problem I had with the game was the fact that it throws you in without really explaining anything. Here and there it did, but not really the information I needed at the time. There was no story, but the actual events in the game as the days and years passed were really cool. It didn’t do anything as far as I could tell that impacted the game, but knowledge of the past is always cool in my book.
Pros
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Delightful music
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Events that keep you on your toes
Cons
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Lack of explaining features
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Liveliness
