Passpartout: The Starving Artist Review

A copy of another painting? Nah nah, totally legit and original

Ever dreamed of being an inspiring artist selling your work in a public place? Sell physical paintings to customers as they walk through your wares? Look no further than Passpartout: The Starving Artist! Don’t worry about the starving part.

Set in France, you have a few levels to sell your paintings. But…you don’t start at the top. You start around the bottom, not so much where you are sitting on the sidewalk but at your storage space. Unknown by the public, work your way up so you can make an impact in the art world. Or just go bankrupt.

And man, will it not be easy at all. You can, technically, draw whatever you want and still progress but it has no guarantee of selling. You will have three different brushes, the regular paint brush, the spray can, and a guided pen (the last 2 being earned after a certain amount of sold paintings) to make what you desire or what the customers desire. Everyone has different tastes to what they like, and you are not marketing to yourself. Even more frustrating, they will be cryptic to what they want. When they are not insulting your work, you can get something like “I hate these colors” or “I want something fresh”. And even when it’s as simple as wanting more detail, the question remains on how much detail and at what point do they deem it as not having any meaning. This can help you go through the end of each level, where an art critic will show up to comment on one of your current paintings (as I never had an empty showcase, I’m sure they wait till you have at least one up for sale). When a customer actually likes a painting and buys it, nothing is more satisfying than seeing their little dance they do.

As you work through the level, notifications will show up on the top left of the screen. It can be a notification of your bills, a bidding on a painting you have for sale, a critique/harsh comment on a painting, or newspaper headings. The newspaper headings are missable, but they do hold humor in them. Once you gain enough publicity, special notifications will show up, such as Passpartout gaining popularity in the first level, someone “special” coming to visit, or a group of customers deciding not to come anymore. Though, I did get the same customers that said would not buy my paintings buy them. Knowing your customers will help you in the long run.

You can specifically save a painting you worked on and loved as a screenshot, which opens up the screenshot area of the community forums to a nice area to share your in-game artwork. Though I do wish the paintings you already had out for sale followed you to your new place. I know that it may not exactly work out as you lose display spots as you rank up in popularity, but nothing is worse than working hard on a painting just for you to lose it as you continue to the next level. Especially when you just made it.

I love the style they decided to take. It is very much like you are on a stage controlling a puppet. The music starts up, curtains opens, pleasant music greet you as customers enter and exit stage left or right. Than when you gain the ability to go to the next level, you hear disembodied clapping and muttering. You and the customers look like puppets as joints are ball joints and have a wood like texture for skin. Every different type of customer is dressed differently depending on what they like to buy. Fancy dressed women love detailed art while someone with a spiked mohawk love art with spirit and action. The sets you are given are also great to look at. You can always see the backdrop as the stage is decorated accordingly to where you are.

There are multiple endings for you to explore, which I believe is decided to which style you leaned towards. If you favored drawing something simplistic, you will progress to a level where they mostly come in. This may be the easiest route considering they are easier to decipher, and is one of the routes I first received. With bills constantly incoming, I can’t imagine how hard it may be to keep detail up for the fancy dressed ladies.

Overall

+ Soundtrack
+ Friendly to all levels of art skill
+ Can save artwork
+ The little dance customers do when they buy a painting

+/- I do wish the paintings for sale transfered with you, but I get why they don’t

– Can be cryptic to what the different types of people want
– Ouch, that was harsh mister (Can go a long time getting insulted before someone buys)

Passpartout: The Starving Artist is a one of a kind game. Encouraging drawings to be made by those who have no talent in art and those who do. This could’ve easily been a game where the more simplistic, the less it will sell. But instead added customers with a wide variety of tastes to ensure that anyone can complete the game. While it may be hard to decipher what the customer wants, it sure gives us a taste on how cryptic people can be in real life.