Quick Review: Painters Guild

Who thought painting required so much management?

Create your artist to your heart's content.

A game made by Lucas Molina and released on September 1st, 2015, Painters Guild is about an up-and-coming new artist opening a guild during the Renaissance. You have the basic commodities: A bed to sleep and a color station to mix colors. Your character can be male or female and has a fully customizable look. There is also a homosexuality option for your artist, but keep in mind that, for historical accuracy, homosexuality in the 16th Century was a crime punishable by death, so it may add another layer of difficulty due to random events that can occur.

Yes, yes, your painting is almost done, just...
I need to sleep too, good sir!

You gain experience by mixing colors at first, and later in a variety of ways that give experience even faster. The higher their level (represented by Skill Points), the faster they’ll work on a picture. The artwork requested by customers has a difficulty level anywhere from half a star to five stars, and can be anywhere from small to huge, with larger pictures taking longer. Take them up on their offer, make the art, earn prestige, and receive tougher requests as a result. Eventually you can hire new painters and train them, and have the rookies learn from the experienced ones. Every painter has two unique traits that are set at random; these can be perks or hindrances. Less talented painters will have hindrances rather than perks, but you can learn to work around them. At some point, it will be necessary to upgrade the Guild itself by adding rooms and furniture, which in turn allows the original artist to hire more painters, and so on. Every painter excels in one particular artistic current and will work more easily on requests of that current.

Dammit I am a painter, I shouldn't
play interior decorator!

First one artist, then two, then three!

At Skill Level 50, a painter must successfully create their masterpiece, the piece that will define them; a successful one will turn them into a Master, a status allowing them to proceed beyond, and up to Level 100. Make sure your artist is well-rested and stocked up on paint, and everything should be fine. Young artists may also choose to go see the world for two years early in their career.

Some customers will show up with an offer to decorate the interior of an important building. I don’t think we’re gonna achieve something as grand as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but we can try! You can delegate more than one artist at this job, and depending on where you place your artists in the building, the odds of success will be higher. From my own experience? Don’t go for anything below 100%. If you fail, you don’t get paid; even the slightest risk of failure isn’t worth it.

Oh hey. I did it. My Mona Lisa, my Sistine
Chapel. My Starry Night, my Super Mario Odyssey.

My four favorite details about the game:

Of course I picked Leonardo. Who wouldn't?

-First, while you can hire any artist from the neighborhood, city or country, as time goes on you can also hire actual artistic geniuses of the Renaissance, such as Sandro Boticelli or Leonardo da Vinci. They are far more expensive, but will become invaluable assets to the Guild. Da Vinci, in particular, has the Genius trait that makes him gain skill experience three times faster.

-Second, the game tries to root itself in some degree of historical accuracy. Mailmen may show up with information as to what’s going on with the monarchies, what papers the great thinkers are producing (and whether they’re any good), and any significant historical deaths. Your characters can face the struggles of that era. A gay artist in your guild can be caught and put on trial for homosexuality. And if that happens, you'd better rescue them.

-Every picture will resemble real chef d'oeuvres when finished. Art buffs will have fun recognising the paintings.

-Lastly, it’s a tiny detail that I love, but a rookie artist standing right next to a more experienced artist will learn faster and gain more experience!

Are we going to do good work decorating
this building with our art? Yes. We will.

I loved playing this one. The management sim is easy for the most part, only getting complex as you add rooms and artists, and more requests come in. I love the historical references and some of the smaller details, and I like many of the gameplay elements that are random and keep every next run fresh. I didn’t run into glitches aside from a character in late-game who had a letter to be read, but it couldn’t be read at all. While I like that there are random events, I will admit there isn’t a very large number of them. Many people also complain that there isn’t an ending to the game, and it just goes on. If you look at it as a sandbox type of game, that’s acceptable, though I guess it does mean there’s no closure to the story of your Guild, no matter how much you’d like there to be one. And building the story of this Guild was probably the best part for me.

Painters Guild is available for 9.99$.