Wow... what a game. A very simplistic and old-fashioned kind of game, that is exceptionally well executed. Really makes you live the struggle of being an artist. The old TV screen with blurry image that you play on... the small house that you live in, the dialogues of the main character, the fact that he sleeps on the floor... all those inspire the feeling of neglect and poverty. The way you have to mash the spacebar reinforces the lack of satisfaction with a regular day to day job that you have to grind out just for an extra buck to live and paint for another day. The achivements were also well made and the ending pretty powerful. There was one thing I didn't like, and that is the balance problems. I understand that this game is made to reinforce the struggles of trying to "make it as an artist", but still if you have an achievement for success, you should have a way to do it. The arrow indicators are not honest either... there are a few changes that you could do, like random events that have positive or negative impact. Or increased money as you become more famous. Right now the game seems to be intentionally made to be against you... and I just can't accept that... it's just too depressing. I have made a small let's play of this game right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSbdfEtvsJA , where I mention the same points and where you can see that despite my hardest struggles... I still fail. Either way this game struck pretty close to home and I can only commend that. Good work and keep it up... don't do whatever this character of yours does.
Reviews for "MAKE IT as an Artist"
pretty accurate representation of my life right now. if only making money and getting reputation was as easy as mashing space on the keyboard
Fucks sake, i was on 70% fame and that yellow prick still shot his brains out.
lovely game by the way; the only thing that bothers me is the dialog. Everytime the character spoker i was about to interact with one of the items making me skip it without being able to read it.
Other than that this is a pretty neat little thing.
Oh, on a side note, Deathink, please don't blow your brains out. I like your art mate.
This was...a journey.
got every medal except winning the game, which i would say is pretty much impossible; not sure how that one guy managed it.
basically the only meter that matters is the happiness meter. once that depletes it's game over.
you can be completely poor and tired at any time and it would be fine, as long as happiness is over 1.
right off the bat, you can gain happiness by sleeping, watching out of the window, painting or drinking. painting and drinking both require money.
you can only make money via working, and even then most of it is lost between the time you need to recover stamina between days. (ignoring the requirement for mashing, which makes it worse).
eventually, sleeping stops making you happy. if your happiness goes below 50%-ish at any point, you start being depressed, at which point looking out of the window also stops making you happy.
basically after you get far enough into the game, you can only gain happiness with money, and the rate at which you make money is always slower than the rate at which you recover happiness, which means a guaranteed game over.
all of this is only to survive. the actual objective is to completely fill your fame, which can only be done via painting or working (at max efficiency).
basically the only way to win would be to speedrun the game in a way where you prioritise your fame meter at all time, making sure your happiness doesn't reach zero before you eventually lose all your money and can't recover happiness anymore. honestly i have no clue how that's possible.