Été Review

Été puts you in the role of an artist who has just moved to Montreal with the dream of opening their own gallery. Things don’t get off to a good start for you, though, as the furnished apartment you rented sight unseen turns out not to be furnished, and your landlady promptly takes all of your cash to cover your rent. If you’re going to open your own gallery, you’re going to need to earn some money, and as an artist the best way to do that is by creating art to sell.

It can be said that art adds color to the world, and Été takes that to heart. The game’s version of Montreal first appears as black line drawings on a white canvas. As an artist you have the ability to add color to things, which does more than simply making things look nicer. First of all, things must have color before they can be used, so, for example, you won’t be able to open a door until it’s been painted. Secondly, at first you will only be able to paint objects, but as you complete them you’ll be rewarded with paint globules. These fill paint “petals”, and each petal allows you to paint large swaths of things like walls, pavement, or even the sky. Also, as you paint objects, those objects are added to the collection of objects available to you when you return to your apartment to put paint to canvas and create art works. Lastly, painting your surroundings is a clever way to track where you’ve been in the city. If you happen upon a white area on your travels, you’ll know you’ve discovered someplace new. And as you explore, you’ll discover paint pigments that will add new colors to your palette to use when creating artworks back at your easel.

Painting objects uses a point and spray mechanic. Once you paint enough of an object, it will automatically fill the rest of the color in, so there’s no need to make sure that you touch every single pixel with paint. Painting large swaths of background objects like walls and pavements is similarly done in a point and spray style, but you’ll use a different button to do this and you’ll need to have at least one filled petal available. These things don’t autofill like the smaller objects do, so you will have to paint an entire wall yourself if that’s your intention. On the other hand, there is a certain aesthetic to leaving patches of wall or the sky untouched.

As you make your way through the city, you’ll meet a number of different people. It pays to strike up conversations with them, because you’ll find people who will commission paintings from you or offer to sell your works in their shops. To create that art, you’ll need to return to your apartment where you keep your easel.

Creating artworks is a lot like working with a clipart gallery. As you find objects in the word and paint them, they are added to your portfolio. At your easel you can select these objects and add them to your canvas. They can also be manipulated – rotated, resized, duplicated, etc. – and you can also use any colors that you’ve unlocked in your palette to change the colors within each object. You can create whatever you want if you’re creating art for sale, but each commission will have some requirements as to what objects must be included. Even when you’re working with these requirements, you are free to interpret how those elements should be included and presented. It’s also up to you how much time you want to spend crafting the art – you can just drop the required objects onto the canvas and call it a day if you want.

The game divides the day into sections which advance at regular intervals. This has an effect on gameplay as shops are only open during certain parts of the day and some people can only be found at certain times of the day or change locations with the passing of time. While this means that new discoveries will await you when you return to an area at a different time of day, it also means that if you’re a little late with an art delivery you’ll have to wait a full game day before you’ll get another chance.

Navigating your way around Montreal can be a little tricky. The city is divided into separate sections, but to move between then you must find the various gates in each section that connect it to the others. There is a fast travel system which can be utilized if you find a bike rack and paint it, but you’ll need to discover where they are in each section first. I sometimes found myself a little lost while trying to remember where the gate to the next zone was located, and this occasionally made me miss my window for something and be forced to try again the next day. There’s a map in the game, but it just shows you which zones exist and not how they are connected. Maps of explored areas would help, especially for large areas like the city park with all of its winding pathways, but I suppose that as an artist you’re supposed to find your way around by feel instead.

There were times when I was given a commission that required an object I hadn’t found, yet. The game gives you hints on where to find these things, but it can still take some poking around to find them. While playing you’ll usually have a couple of commissions that will set in your backlog until you happen upon the item you need, paint it, and then have it added to your scrapbook. The game’s not linear in that you don’t need to complete a commission before taking on a new one, although some of these are story-advancing (paint this for me and in exchange I will give you…). If you’re the type of persons that feels compelled to complete one quest before taking on a another, you may find this a little frustrating.

While there are some small narratives to the game within your interactions with some of the NPCs, there’s not much of a narrative to the game overall beyond the “young artist moves to the big city” general theme of the game. This is not so much a game about the story of an artist as it is a game about creating art.

These weren’t really big issues for me when playing the game. There were times when I’d spend my entire play session simply wandering around and painting the world, which I found to be a relaxing and pleasing experience. I also liked playing with the paintings, both in making original creations to sell and in interpreting the requests of clients. I can see gamers who need a bit more structure in their games or who are looking for something with more of a story to it, more of what would be considered an adventure game, feeling a little lost or disappointed with Été. However, if there’s even a little bit of an artist within you, even if the talent isn’t necessarily there, you will probably find Été to be a relaxing and enjoyable experience.