A Room Where Art Conceals has finally made its way over the EU and US PlayStation Stores. Another game trying to bring an educational purpose into VR, of course tackling the medium of art. So, what does A Room Where Art Conceals offer?
Gameplay
In A Room Where Art Conceals you are going to get the chance to travel through famous paintings from Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Edvard Munch – well 3D re-imagined versions of these paintings.
However, where there is nothing to do when inside of the paintings, the team have made some very simple puzzle elements to unlock the paintings. These come in the form of finding pieces to complete the paintings, collecting and placing items into where they need to go, and sliding box puzzles. As mentioned these are really simple to work out, but it offers something extra when jumping from painting to painting.
The Educational Element
You might be asking where is the educational element if you just travel through the paintings? Well once you have completed the puzzles and took your first journey through each of the three paintings per artist, these are added to a collection room. You can access this from the main menu, from this room you can select the paintings and take the trip through them again. The difference is this time you are given some curation around the history around the painting.
Presentation
Visually A Room Where Art Conceals really didn’t do much for me, despite taking these journeys though the paintings. The team have made the rooms with the puzzles in suit the style of the artists work you will be taking the trip into. Where you can see the styles are different, they aren’t overly detailed or have much inside them outside of what is needed for the puzzles and placing for the paintings you can go into. Making it not all that compelling.
Then when going inside of the paintings, you are a getting a 360 video on the rails experience, meaning you are still going to see artefacts and see it dropping in frame rates at times. However, one area that came as a surprise to me and might to others with the 360 video is you do not see any warping edges in your peripheral vision – which is usually present in 360 videos.
When it comes to the sound there is not much to it, but a lot of sound was not needed for what this experience does. You are going the music to match the mood of the painting you are going through, there is a robot that speaks to you in the rooms. Then when going through the paintings in the collections mode you will get a voice over, that is clear and the sort of voice you would get in the tapes that curate art galleries as you walk around them.
Comfort/Controls
The game can be played seated or standing given what the game is doing, it’s all going to be down to personal preference on the how you play it. This is the same for the controllers, you can use either the DualShock or one PlayStation Move controller, with the only button being needed is the right-trigger. This is because in the rooms with the puzzles you will use the trigger to teleport to the set points in the room, to pick and place the items or move the blocks in the puzzles. However, we found the tracking was a lot better when playing standing – but, this could be down to our camera placement more than anything.
Longevity
Given the ease of the puzzles and the length of the 360 videos, you will be through the rooms and paintings in around thirty to forty-minutes. Then you can get a bit more out of the game going through all of the paintings in the collections room, which will add an additional fifteen to twenty-minutes to the game. Outside of this unless you are interested in the art and the artists that are included you will be unlikely to go back into A Room Where Art Conceals.
reviewed using playstation 4 pro & PSVR (2.0)
For the purposes of transparency, this review was created using a code provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a review code does not affect my judgement of the game.
Review Overview
A Room Where Art Conceals is another part game part experience using the power of VR for an educational purpose, and where this is great it is also it’s biggest downfall. Where the artists included are popular and even if you didn’t have an interest in art you would know their paintings, you really need to have an interest in art and these artists to get the most of what it is offering – making this a very tailored experience.
