 Platform: Steam Players: 1 Ever wanted to study art with your crazy uncle who just happens to teach from his remote cabin and seems to only have young, beautiful girls as his students? Well, then "Catch Canvas" is the game for you! This new visual novel from Unwonted Studios and published by Sekai Project throws you into the shoes of a protagonist whose name and gender you pick, and gives you the task of motivating your uncle's three students into completing a portrait of the Roman god Mars. Along the way you learn more about the girls and what motivates them, and yourself, to become artists. Note: The game, and by extension this review, contains adult scenes and might be more than a little NSFW. You have been warned.  Our Lovely Cast! L-to-R: Dawn, Estelle, Nacchan This game is available on Steam right now and there are a few points that I should discuss before we plow into the game proper. Some of the game's main features are the fact that you can play as either male or female, that you can "romance any girl", and that your choices "change the result of the game". Now let me take those points separately. First, it is indeed true that you can pick your gender and while I played solely as a male in my playthroughs, I did find it a cool idea that it gave you that option as I have not personally seen it in many games like this. That being said, the change seems to be slight. Most of the dialogue is left relatively gender neutral most likely due this fact and I wish that the game was a little more tailored to this otherwise interesting feature. Let me take a second to point out that I will refer to the main character as a male from here on out as that is what I chose to play. Next, while there are indeed romantic scenes between you and the girls, these follow the typical visual novel-style interactions. A dating sim this is not and it's not really fair to mention this as a draw as it is not entirely true. It is of course not entirely false either... Lastly there are indeed a few choices in the game that change the way certain scenes play out. I played this game to total completion and picked each and every "route" and I can say that the changes each choice gives you are very slight and mostly are simply different paths to the same end. There is indeed one choice at the end that does change the ending, but it's literally a one in three choice and not a series of choices made throughout the game in total. Now that we have that out of the way let's move onto the review proper!  ALREADY ON IT! You might think from that previous part that I didn't enjoy this game and that isn't the case at all. Catch Canvas has several good things going for it. Simply put, the art is amazing. The character designs and backgrounds might be rather limited, but what is there is excellent. The music is also rather sparse, but that isn't exactly atypical in a game such as this and it definitely serves its purpose. I went into the game thinking that the musical cues would eventually get on my nerves and they never did. In fact, they heightened some of the drama at points and that is the most you can really as for in video game music. The writing had a few unfortunate typos, but nothing that really detracted from enjoyment of the game. Speaking of the writing, that's where a visual novel can really shine or fail. The plot here is fairly straightforward. You go to your uncle's cabin to study and you find that he has disappeared and entrusted the care of his three students to you. Get them to complete their assignment (a painting of Mars, not a "sculpture" as mentioned in the game's Steam description) and you study with the great master himself (your uncle), fail and you go home with nothing to show for it. Sounds simple right? This wouldn't be a game if it were!  Did I mention there was a beach scene?
Let's take a look at the characters. Nacchan is the least artistically inclined of the bunch and is an inspiring manga artist (huh?) who likes to work on her manga nearly nude apparently. Estelle is your typical "gyaru" (literally "gal") a fact with the game tells you A LOT. She seems the least willing to put any effort into her work and plays a somewhat stereotypical tough girl, but as you might imagine there is more to her than meets the eye. Dawn is the shy one who barely speaks but is also by far the most talented. She's also the most quirky. Her art is better than the others, but she can only work alone and much of the plot involves you getting the others out of the art classroom in order for her to work in solitude. Her quiet demeanor also hides one of the more perverted characters whose actions in the game mainly involve the other character's underwear and a penchant for peeping. Lastly, there is "you", yes the character you portray is important here too. Your character is at different times very supportive as well as a little perverted himself. One thing I found odd was the fact that he lied about studying manga in college, but is still able to teach Nacchan all he knows (?)... Small gripes like that aside, I liked his characterization and mostly felt that he was a mostly fleshed out character and not just your typical blank slate, silent protagonist type one usually finds in games like these.
Now onto gameplay. There is very little gameplay in the traditional sense. This is a visual novel and as the name implies the game mainly consists of reading text, experiencing the story, and occasionally altering plot points with your decisions. Even though choices were minimal I thought the game's pacing was really well done. Besides a few forced scenes (especially the ones at the very end of the game) I thought the character interaction was relatively realistic and smooth as well. The "romance" here is subtle and never seems to out of control. The graphics and art are a bit on the risqué side with a lot of panties and mild nudity here and there, but it's nothing too gratuitous on the Steam version. I mention the Steam version in particular as there is indeed a patch that includes adult content which can be found here. I tried the patch out after my initial playthroughs and noticed that it removed "censoring" from many of the slides, but other than that didn't add anything substantial in the way of content. Like many other patches of this type, this is truly a matter of preference and while I prefer the mostly all-ages friendly Steam version, I understand that some might want to check out the art in its uncensored glory, even if some of the scenes that go with it are a bit stilted in delivery.
Now, I don't want to give away the ending here, but I will say this: It comes at you relatively quickly. I was starting to really enjoy where the game was taking me and then it suddenly ended. I beat the game in just under three hours my first playthrough and spent about another hour going through the different endings and the optional decision branches. The length of the game might be a problem for some, but I like to think the game's story resolved itself nicely at that point. I did mention earlier that I was surprised when it stopped, but in reality all the game could have really given us by that point was more of the same and it stopping when it did probably was good for pacing purposes. The character development had progressed more or less as far as it was going to go and the different threads of plot had just about wrapped themselves up so there was little else to explore. My one gripe about the last leg of the game is the character of the uncle. He comes onto the scene in a weird, abrupt way and I quickly found that I didn't like him at all. I honestly found myself wishing that the game's last chapter saw that the uncle never showed up or something like that. He was by far the weakest character and clearly had no development besides being irresponsible and, you guessed it, a pervert. I don't know if this character was supposed to be likable or not, but this more than anything else in the game, was the one thing that nearly ruined the experience for me.  You can spend it playing visual novels instead! Uncle gripe aside, I think the game's endings were very well done. There is one scene for each ending before the actual epilogue that I felt was far too forced upon you as it a type of scene you see no where else in the game, but I also understand how a lot of people might come into this game expecting scenes like that, so I guess I should excuse them. The actual ending scenes for each of the routes though are very well done and more than a little touching. These scenes actually made the scenes that came immediately before feel a little more out of place, but they served as a nice coda to the story Catch Canvas draws you into. In short this is a pretty good game considering the price of admission and it's sure to please fans of the visual novel style with its great art and story! You can check out Catch Canvas now on Steam at the link below! http://store.steampowered.com/app/459550/ -Manuel (alavic_222) Graphics: AMAZING Sound: GOOD Gameplay: GOOD Value: GREAT OVERALL: GOOD+ FULL DISCLOSURE: This game was provided to A-To-J Connections free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of review.  Don't we all Nacchan... don't we all... Catch Canvas PV |
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