Games Are Artners: Make Paintings In 99 seconds
Definitely Art
I'm terrible at art. Give me all the time in the world, an actual canvass, and a set of proper tools and I will utterly fail to create anything of artistic value. Artners [Official Site] gave me 99 seconds and a deliberately awkward set of keyboard controlled brushes: as you can see from above, I've outdone myself.
Artners basically sells itself, so I'll just let it do that here.
ARTNERS is a game for one or two players, racing against the clock to create a work of art. At the start of the game, you're given:
the title of your masterwork!
a palette of colours!
a set of slightly awkward tools!
...and ninety-nine seconds.
Brilliantly, everything apart from the time is randomized, making it impossible for any two paintings to look the same. Even more brilliantly, the only way to work out what a tool does is to just throw it on the canvas and see what happens. I've settled into spending the first 20 seconds of every painting trying everything out, then the rest of the time trying to salvage something out of the mess I've created. Feast your eyes, folks.
I haven't tried it in two-player mode yet, though I definitely mean to this evening. The site claims there are secret tools to unlock, as well as 'a win condition' which may or may not be a joke. Go and art to find out.
Disclaimer: one of the games creators, Holly Gramazio, occasionally does words for us. You can find those words here. WAIT! WE OVER-DISCLAIMED! Holly doesn't write for us but she WAS the subject of one of Hannah Nicklin's great Psychogeography of Games pieces. We'll leave the link to it here still because it's a great series and you should definitely check it out :D.