The Day of the Devs showcase at Summer Game Fest this year was one of the strongest I can remember. At Gamescom, I had the chance to go hands on with several of the games that were revealed a few months earlier, and the one I was most intrigued by was Été. You play as a painter who moves to Canada to experience life in the big city, and also to thrive in an artists commune. The core loop of the game is that everything is black and white, and as you click things, they burst with colour. There's no choice here, you can't have purple trees or pink grass - you just click and it colours itself in. It looked neat and relaxing, but I didn't quite get the point. After playing it at Gamescom, I get it now.
It's not just a matter of colouring things in - you have a limited amount of paint at any one time, so need to be strategic. You can recharge your paint faster by completely colouring items, but while large items like trees or walls reward more, you can fill up your surroundings faster by hunting out smaller objects and topping them off quickly. There's a menu that tells you which objects you still need to find, showing silhouettes of unfinished objects and colourful versions of ones you've cleared, and that compulsion to paint 'em all quickly set in. The dev, eager for me to see the rest of the level, had to shepherd me into the house, out of the garden, leaving my quest to paint the watering can incomplete.
It scratched at the same itch as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PowerWash Simulator, though as you're adding colour rather than scrubbing dirt, it's more like the opposite. But because of this, I felt far fewer frustrations. When an object is 99 percent clean in PowerWash Simulator, it's annoying to have to crawl beneath it to find the last speck of grime lurking where no one would even notice. Été is less mathematical. When you paint it, the object is hit with a splatter of paint that gradually fades the more you leave it alone, until it's filled in. There's no precise angle you need to aim for - if you paint it enough, you'll paint it fully, which makes it far more rewarding.
You can also collect petals in the game, which allow you to hit the world with a burst of colour. After passing through the house, which was roughly the same size as the garden, I made it to the city, easily three times as large. In these settings, the petals will be very helpful in sweeping through decent-sized chunks of the map. And if I'm aiming to get 100 percent completion on every map, I'll be using them a lot.
However, Été is not just about painting everything as fast as you can. It has more narrative built iꦅnto it that supports a far more methodical approach. When I ventured out into my garden, I met one of my artistic neighbours who asked for my opinion on still life, resulting in a request that I paint him a bowl of fruit. Doing this was not a case of slapping some lines together a la Microsoft Paint, though. Instead I had to paint (coloꦜur in) three pieces of fruit in the real world, a table, and a basket. With that, back in my apartment, I could use the easel to make this picture for him.
But I wasn't confined only to the request. As long as I had painted it in the game, I could add it to my easel and hang it on display in my home. Objects can be rotated, turned, resized, and clipped backwards and forwards to line them up perfectly. You can also add a little extra flourish too - a little cat purring next to my still life table provided a dash of je ne sais quoi to my art.
For all the obvious links to/inversion of PowerWash Simulator, this has a much more relaxed presentation. PowerWash can be a brash game at times, with its bright colours and constant DING sounds. Été is gentle and reserved, with paler, more meaningful use of colours. It was likely in🌸-part due to the French connection, but the presentation and construction of pictures in a scrapbook format made me think of Dordogne.
Été's paint brushes will be dipped in our pots next year, and I think it's going to be the perfect game to relax to. Though it felt directionless at first glance, having played it I know it's going to keep me wrapped up in searching for just one more thing, just one more thing, just one more thing forever. It has just the right level of goal setting while also celebrating creativity, and amongst all the games aimed at killing and conquering, Été is one deep inhale of peace.