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What is art? Well... your not going to find out here.

Oh boy, how do you review a game like El Arte? The very notion of reviewing it seems to go against the fabric of its very creation... but here we go!

Narratively you take on the role of what I can only assume is a bright orange penis (with a face so its okay) that wants to understand art. It wants to understand art so that it can grow some arms, of course, and its needs those arms so it can follow it brothers up a ladder thats found in the center of their home. Whats up the ladder? Well thats for the player to discover.

The games visuals are all over the place, which was quite by choice. Im not used to seeing games made in the VX engine in a widescreen aspect ratio so it was entertaining to see such a cinematic presentation used for something so visually all over the place. All of the character sprites are nice and big with incredibly simple animations, but they are also very basic in terms of color which helps them stand out against the sometimes quite scattershot backgrounds. The backgrounds themselves have a collage quality to them which works quite well, though sometimes the color combinations can be a bit of an assault on the senses.

The audio is another eclectic mix, featuring a large amount of heavily compressed and crunchy voice overs which can be as entertaining as they are painful at times. The games soundtrack is as far as I can tell all stolen, well stolens a harsh word, used without permission might be more appropriate. Theres a little something for everyone in here so everybody is a winner!

The gameplay itself consists almost entirely of moving slowly to the right (except for that one time when you walk left AND THEN right... and then up) and selecting dialogue options to see what chaos unfolds. Some of the results of these choices are funnier than others but with comedy being subjective thats always going to be the case. Its not a game you play for its mechanical depth and the moment to moment gameplay isnt really fun at all, thankfully the games environments are so small the actual gameplay part of the game never gets in the way of its core concept, getting a chuckle out of its player.

The writing is super inconsistent due to being handled by 3 different people, in most games that would be an issue but in El Arte it really just adds to the chaotic feeling the game carries throughout most of its elements. What it lacks in consistency, or hell, lets be real, largely because of its inconsistency, it manages to be a very entertaining little romp.

El Arte is a top tier mid 2000s Newgrounds shitpost, it just so happens to be made in RPG Maker instead of in Flash MX. Its not a game for everyone, its not a game for most people really, but for those of you out there that are just looking for something stupid to kill 30 minutes with, well, you could do a hell of a lot worse than El Arte.

Posts

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Mirak
Stand back. Artist at work. I paint with enthusiasm if not with talent.
9300
"El Arte is a top tier mid 2000s Newgrounds shitpost, it just so happens to be made in RPG Maker instead of in Flash MX."

I love this sentence. You couldn't have described this game better.
Thank you very much for this review!!
author=Mirak
"El Arte is a top tier mid 2000s Newgrounds shitpost, it just so happens to be made in RPG Maker instead of in Flash MX."I love this sentence. You couldn't have described this game better.
Thank you very much for this review!!


I was there, those were the good old days (well they were awful in their own way I suppose ha ha).
Pages: 1