My god was this quite the doozy. I was so stuck on finding Ending 1 until I read through what was happening, especially with the building rage I was seeing. I then decided to experiment and whoo boy I finally did it! I finally collected all endings!
Man! That was so interesting! I loved how unique the faces were each time we returned to the title screen and replayed the visual novel. I love how hilarious it is that Graey can never be satisfied with his portrait and that karma truly bit his ass. The one thing I'm curious about is how many parts of him is still human and how many are robots. Yet I'm also curious about the fact that it seemed as though the canvas and him are linked, as if whatever is painted on it directly reflects or contradicts what is on Graey's face.
Not only that, but the story behind MC's creation and so many others was through a blood use of murder against artists is just, that's such a mysterious horror filled plot that honestly I'd love to see it more, especially when MC was created to somewhat mirror Graey's face so MC would be wrongfully accused of all the crimes Graey committed.
Regardless to that, truly it was a lowkey terrifying and tense moment with the MC just trying to do as they're told but can never go up to the unrealistic demands of the client. So cool!
Ending 1: Continuously spam the first two options, don't click "Paint your portrait", instead, collect Graey's annoyance by ignoring the third option and spamming "Serve you" and "Become your vessel".
Ending 2: Answer Graey's questions properly then choose "Do as I request" and "Do what you're programmed to do".
Ending 3: Answer Graey's questions properly then choose "Do as I request" both times.
Ending 4: Answer Graey's questions properly then choose "Do what you're programmed to do" both times.
Omg, I am so sorry for the late reply. But thank you for playing my game and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Also, thank you so much for your thoughts and feedback, it's really helped in me figuring out what to improve on and what to look out for. I appreciate it! :D
Wow wow WOW. This was amazing. All of the endings, each single one, just leading Graey to the fate he deserves. Perfect. ps. The ending titles pfft. When I realized how fun the ending titles were I went back to find them all just to fully appreciate their beauty. I hope to be as good of a coder as you one day.
I'm sorry for swearing so early in a review but holy shit, when I tell you that I'm amazed by what you did here, I mean it. That Dorian Gray vibe, all warped and remade in the horrifyingly uncanny AI hellscape image, the perfect representation of how twisted the whole thing is, I need a moment to breathe after that. It was an experience and it's certainly an experience I'll come back to.
Big fan of this. You did a great job finding the balance between comedic and creepy, and it worked amazingly. You also worked around the "one sprite, one background, one piece of music, one sound effect" limitation so well that when playing I completely forgot you had that limitation at all! The faces were amazing and the art style fits really well. Overall, great VN!
Thank you so much for playing and thank you for the kind words! :D I often wonder if my mix of comedy and creepy doesn't mesh well and I'm glad it mixed well here. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
At first it was the art style and satirical premise that had me hooked (fuck AI art!), then it was the sheer amount of expressions and creativity within the limits. Using the sprite as the painting, the effectiveness of that single sound effect... I have no idea how you got the ending backgrounds to be different. Hell, I only just remembered there's a 1k word limit, because The Perfect Portrait feels like it's the perfect length. It didn't feel like you were constrained by the limits of the jam at all.
And the endings, of course. Searching for the first ending was a time in itself, and wow this game only got more unnerving the more times I played through it. The UI was gorgeous and perfectly fitting. The shakes on the words for emphasis! And of course, Graey. The juxtaposition of his Victorian design (or at least old-timey, you know what I mean) and the premise of AI technology, with a healthy dose of the surrealism that folds in so well with the art style.
Overall—so creative and polished! And I'm so glad I found the first ending in the end. It was soooo satisfying to get his ass.
Aww shucks thank you! :D As for the background, the image itself is actually partially transparent and underneath it I've been using colors generated in engine to get different tints, so that way the canvas and bits of the room will have some color. Also, Ren'Py has a neat feature called ColorizeMatrix where it colors an image by making the lights of an image and the darks of an image two different colors you specify, so that's how I was able to get a lot done with the background alone! You can check it out here: https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/matrixcolor.html#ColorizeMatrix
Omg that's a big compliment about the words, thank you! I'm glad you think so with the 1k words because I actually wrote more than 1k and had to cut down a lot haha
Thank you so much for playing and for the kind words on everything! I really appreciate it and I'm glad you enjoyed it a lot. Gj on murdering him lol
As always, I adore your art!! The presentation was exquisite and the UI was so garish, but it fit so well! Also loved the theme and the Dorian Gray vibes a lot.
LMAO I was wondering when somone would note the Dorian Gray vibes I spilled all over the place. :D Thank you so much for the kind words Ronove, it means a lot to me!
This was extremely fun! From the unsettling surreal vibe of the visuals to the pounding notes of the piano, it really squirmed itself into my gut as I was playing, and I was torn between laughing at parts and being unnerved at others. Something about the combo took me back to playing this random CD-ROM game called Artrageous when I was a kid lol -- it too had this kind of... I don't know... unsettling aesthetic mixed with surreal art and classical-style music.
I absolutely loved the faces -- and the sheer number of varieties! They were so creative and feel like they must have taken a while to both come up with and do! Plus I enjoyed the fact that you could get different ones every time, so I made sure to replay from the title to try and see all the different ones. Some of them were truly grotesque, I will say LOLOL And the art of the BG and sprite were both so well done?? It truly looks like we've stepped into the world of a painting. A horrorific one perhaps! But a painting nonetheless. And the incredibly unique (and mildly chaotic) UI also helped to emphasize this.
I got a good kick out of the text and Graey's building rage. ALSO THE ENDING NAMES. THE SHREDDED ONE I WAS LITERALLY WHEEZING. Between the abstract faces, the chaotic colors and UI, and the amusing text, it really felt like descending into madness by the end. It took me a while to figure out how to finally get the last ending! Or I guess "ending 1" hahaha. I tried a ton of different combos in the choices before I was like wait... and then finally figured it out. That was really clever hahaha. Particulaly in getting to see Graey get even more and more irate the more you keep clicking the same options lol.
At any rate, tons of fun. I enjoyed this a lot!! Definitely one of the most unique VNs I've ever played and I feel like I'm going to keep thinking about this throughout the day. I can still hear those droning echoey notes of the piano in my head GODDD lolol.
I looked up Artrageous and honestly that game seems up my alley, at least for high school and college me. It would definitely unnerve me out as a kid though lol, but it looks really cool! I'd like to play it sometime.
Thank you! The variety of faces took me the longest to create out of everything in the game. It actually isn't too hard to come up with a list of styles and I had a lot more planned (like Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, Danganronpa's eye style, etc) but my stamina on drawing them all fizzled out lol. As for the sprite and bg, thank you! I based both on impressionistic style painting, where the thick brushstrokes and color abstract the figures in a way I adore. Plus, I needed to make the portrait itself look like a painting, so in turn Graey looks like he stepped out of a painting. Might as well make everything look like it's from a painting, right down to the GUI lol.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm blending humor and serious well in my writing, so I'm glad it came off well! Especially the ending names lmao, I couldn't have come up with anything better so they stayed. I'm glad you enjoyed playing my game! Thank you for the thoughtful and kind words, I really appreciate it! :D
Omg I love this so much. I got all four endings and I laughed SO HARD when I found ending 1. It was so clever! Also the ending names are *chef's kiss*. The amount of faces is really impressive and uncanny. I kept replaying over and over to see them all. There's a great variety with them!
***~~Fuck AI art~~*** and thank you so much for making this game! :D
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the game! :D And the ending names too lol. As for the faces, it took a while to get them all done and make sure they dont crash the game, and I was lowkey worried people wouldnt care to see them all but yay I'm happy you were able to see them all!
Thank you for playing and for the kind words :D I really appreciate it!
Hey! So, this was a particular game, but a very nice one nonetheless!
I think I'll lack words to describe the experience I had with the game but... it was very pleasant! Ultimately, this raises some questions about AI art (more than it answers anything, although the opinion of the creator on the matter is clear), but I really appreciated it as a horror experience! It wasn't obnoxiously gory, but it created discomfort (which, to me, is the real way to do horror).
I also have to applaude the visual exploration: from the different faces Beauregard has at each new iteration, to all those he can get through the game... Not only it makes the game fun to replay, but it also adds to this subtle unsetlling vibe, which, in the end, really leads to quite a horrifying experience (Beauregard's "regard" shifting from "beau" to "perturbant")! The background, Beauregard's body and the GUI were nothing short of gorgeous, on their hand: I really loved the art in this game!
The music was also very good, it really was meant for the game!
Overall, a very unique experience, which I really enjoyed! Congrats on having made this in less than two weeks, that's impressive!
Thank you so much for the in depth comment, and I'm glad you enjoyed the game! I enjoy making things with unsettling themes and I'm honored you enjoyed it as a horror experience.
And yay I'm glad you love the art and expressions! I had a blast drawing everything because I love me some painterly coloring, and the expressions alone were why the game took a while to finish. Sticking to heavily stylized artstyles is easier on me since I find they're more forgiving in terms of being consistent, plus I was making some up in the fly lol.
Thank you for your kind words! I really appreciate it! :D
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A Painter Death
Walkthrough can be found below!
My god was this quite the doozy. I was so stuck on finding Ending 1 until I read through what was happening, especially with the building rage I was seeing. I then decided to experiment and whoo boy I finally did it! I finally collected all endings!
Man! That was so interesting! I loved how unique the faces were each time we returned to the title screen and replayed the visual novel. I love how hilarious it is that Graey can never be satisfied with his portrait and that karma truly bit his ass. The one thing I'm curious about is how many parts of him is still human and how many are robots. Yet I'm also curious about the fact that it seemed as though the canvas and him are linked, as if whatever is painted on it directly reflects or contradicts what is on Graey's face.
Not only that, but the story behind MC's creation and so many others was through a blood use of murder against artists is just, that's such a mysterious horror filled plot that honestly I'd love to see it more, especially when MC was created to somewhat mirror Graey's face so MC would be wrongfully accused of all the crimes Graey committed.
Regardless to that, truly it was a lowkey terrifying and tense moment with the MC just trying to do as they're told but can never go up to the unrealistic demands of the client. So cool!
Ending 1: Continuously spam the first two options, don't click "Paint your portrait", instead, collect Graey's annoyance by ignoring the third option and spamming "Serve you" and "Become your vessel".
Ending 2: Answer Graey's questions properly then choose "Do as I request" and "Do what you're programmed to do".
Ending 3: Answer Graey's questions properly then choose "Do as I request" both times.
Ending 4: Answer Graey's questions properly then choose "Do what you're programmed to do" both times.
Omg, I am so sorry for the late reply. But thank you for playing my game and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Also, thank you so much for your thoughts and feedback, it's really helped in me figuring out what to improve on and what to look out for. I appreciate it! :D
Wow wow WOW. This was amazing. All of the endings, each single one, just leading Graey to the fate he deserves. Perfect. ps. The ending titles pfft. When I realized how fun the ending titles were I went back to find them all just to fully appreciate their beauty. I hope to be as good of a coder as you one day.
Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the game and the ending titles haha. :D And omg that's an honor to hear, thank you!
I'm sorry for swearing so early in a review but holy shit, when I tell you that I'm amazed by what you did here, I mean it. That Dorian Gray vibe, all warped and remade in the horrifyingly uncanny AI hellscape image, the perfect representation of how twisted the whole thing is, I need a moment to breathe after that. It was an experience and it's certainly an experience I'll come back to.
Don't worry I curse a lot so I don't mind lol. But yay thank you for the review and I'm glad you enjoyed the experience! :D
Big fan of this. You did a great job finding the balance between comedic and creepy, and it worked amazingly. You also worked around the "one sprite, one background, one piece of music, one sound effect" limitation so well that when playing I completely forgot you had that limitation at all! The faces were amazing and the art style fits really well. Overall, great VN!
Thank you so much for playing and thank you for the kind words! :D I often wonder if my mix of comedy and creepy doesn't mesh well and I'm glad it mixed well here. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
W H O A.
At first it was the art style and satirical premise that had me hooked (fuck AI art!), then it was the sheer amount of expressions and creativity within the limits. Using the sprite as the painting, the effectiveness of that single sound effect... I have no idea how you got the ending backgrounds to be different. Hell, I only just remembered there's a 1k word limit, because The Perfect Portrait feels like it's the perfect length. It didn't feel like you were constrained by the limits of the jam at all.
And the endings, of course. Searching for the first ending was a time in itself, and wow this game only got more unnerving the more times I played through it. The UI was gorgeous and perfectly fitting. The shakes on the words for emphasis! And of course, Graey. The juxtaposition of his Victorian design (or at least old-timey, you know what I mean) and the premise of AI technology, with a healthy dose of the surrealism that folds in so well with the art style.
Overall—so creative and polished! And I'm so glad I found the first ending in the end. It was soooo satisfying to get his ass.
Aww shucks thank you! :D As for the background, the image itself is actually partially transparent and underneath it I've been using colors generated in engine to get different tints, so that way the canvas and bits of the room will have some color. Also, Ren'Py has a neat feature called ColorizeMatrix where it colors an image by making the lights of an image and the darks of an image two different colors you specify, so that's how I was able to get a lot done with the background alone! You can check it out here: https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/matrixcolor.html#ColorizeMatrix
Omg that's a big compliment about the words, thank you! I'm glad you think so with the 1k words because I actually wrote more than 1k and had to cut down a lot haha
Thank you so much for playing and for the kind words on everything! I really appreciate it and I'm glad you enjoyed it a lot. Gj on murdering him lol
As always, I adore your art!! The presentation was exquisite and the UI was so garish, but it fit so well! Also loved the theme and the Dorian Gray vibes a lot.
LMAO I was wondering when somone would note the Dorian Gray vibes I spilled all over the place. :D Thank you so much for the kind words Ronove, it means a lot to me!
Haha! If I didn't notice them I might have had to give back my English degree!
This was extremely fun! From the unsettling surreal vibe of the visuals to the pounding notes of the piano, it really squirmed itself into my gut as I was playing, and I was torn between laughing at parts and being unnerved at others. Something about the combo took me back to playing this random CD-ROM game called Artrageous when I was a kid lol -- it too had this kind of... I don't know... unsettling aesthetic mixed with surreal art and classical-style music.
I absolutely loved the faces -- and the sheer number of varieties! They were so creative and feel like they must have taken a while to both come up with and do! Plus I enjoyed the fact that you could get different ones every time, so I made sure to replay from the title to try and see all the different ones. Some of them were truly grotesque, I will say LOLOL And the art of the BG and sprite were both so well done?? It truly looks like we've stepped into the world of a painting. A horrorific one perhaps! But a painting nonetheless. And the incredibly unique (and mildly chaotic) UI also helped to emphasize this.
I got a good kick out of the text and Graey's building rage. ALSO THE ENDING NAMES. THE SHREDDED ONE I WAS LITERALLY WHEEZING. Between the abstract faces, the chaotic colors and UI, and the amusing text, it really felt like descending into madness by the end. It took me a while to figure out how to finally get the last ending! Or I guess "ending 1" hahaha. I tried a ton of different combos in the choices before I was like wait... and then finally figured it out. That was really clever hahaha. Particulaly in getting to see Graey get even more and more irate the more you keep clicking the same options lol.
At any rate, tons of fun. I enjoyed this a lot!! Definitely one of the most unique VNs I've ever played and I feel like I'm going to keep thinking about this throughout the day. I can still hear those droning echoey notes of the piano in my head GODDD lolol.
I looked up Artrageous and honestly that game seems up my alley, at least for high school and college me. It would definitely unnerve me out as a kid though lol, but it looks really cool! I'd like to play it sometime.
Thank you! The variety of faces took me the longest to create out of everything in the game. It actually isn't too hard to come up with a list of styles and I had a lot more planned (like Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, Danganronpa's eye style, etc) but my stamina on drawing them all fizzled out lol. As for the sprite and bg, thank you! I based both on impressionistic style painting, where the thick brushstrokes and color abstract the figures in a way I adore. Plus, I needed to make the portrait itself look like a painting, so in turn Graey looks like he stepped out of a painting. Might as well make everything look like it's from a painting, right down to the GUI lol.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm blending humor and serious well in my writing, so I'm glad it came off well! Especially the ending names lmao, I couldn't have come up with anything better so they stayed. I'm glad you enjoyed playing my game! Thank you for the thoughtful and kind words, I really appreciate it! :D
Omg I love this so much. I got all four endings and I laughed SO HARD when I found ending 1. It was so clever! Also the ending names are *chef's kiss*. The amount of faces is really impressive and uncanny. I kept replaying over and over to see them all. There's a great variety with them!
***~~Fuck AI art~~*** and thank you so much for making this game! :D
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the game! :D And the ending names too lol. As for the faces, it took a while to get them all done and make sure they dont crash the game, and I was lowkey worried people wouldnt care to see them all but yay I'm happy you were able to see them all!
Thank you for playing and for the kind words :D I really appreciate it!
Hey! So, this was a particular game, but a very nice one nonetheless!
I think I'll lack words to describe the experience I had with the game but... it was very pleasant! Ultimately, this raises some questions about AI art (more than it answers anything, although the opinion of the creator on the matter is clear), but I really appreciated it as a horror experience! It wasn't obnoxiously gory, but it created discomfort (which, to me, is the real way to do horror).
I also have to applaude the visual exploration: from the different faces Beauregard has at each new iteration, to all those he can get through the game... Not only it makes the game fun to replay, but it also adds to this subtle unsetlling vibe, which, in the end, really leads to quite a horrifying experience (Beauregard's "regard" shifting from "beau" to "perturbant")! The background, Beauregard's body and the GUI were nothing short of gorgeous, on their hand: I really loved the art in this game!
The music was also very good, it really was meant for the game!
Overall, a very unique experience, which I really enjoyed! Congrats on having made this in less than two weeks, that's impressive!
Thank you so much for the in depth comment, and I'm glad you enjoyed the game! I enjoy making things with unsettling themes and I'm honored you enjoyed it as a horror experience.
And yay I'm glad you love the art and expressions! I had a blast drawing everything because I love me some painterly coloring, and the expressions alone were why the game took a while to finish. Sticking to heavily stylized artstyles is easier on me since I find they're more forgiving in terms of being consistent, plus I was making some up in the fly lol.
Thank you for your kind words! I really appreciate it! :D