‘The Search’ Uses Paint & Creativity to Change Reality

An artist, questioning much of her life, uses her painting talents to reshape the world and solve its puzzles in The Search. 

You start off in a place without much light, commenting on what is going on and how you can’t see very much. From there, you’ll start your curious, mysterious journey led by The Invisible. Dotted around each of these point and click scenes are various notes from this person – clues, hints, and just curious messages that make you think. Every note is beautifully voice acted, as are your own thoughts, so you can listen to the words and tone of what you are thinking.

Unlike the normal world that you’ve been in before, this world is directly driven by creativity, allowing reality to change based on your painting. It will also change as you discover answers to questions you have previously pushed out of your mind. Looking at the world from a different angle, re-painting doors to be open, finding bits of thoughts and turning them into color to paint something more pleasant – these all reveal the way forward in your adventure. 

Every thought brings up memories of different theories that you have studied and different philosophies you might have heard at one point. Ultimately, though, you don’t know what has brought you to this world or why you are there. There is something curious and captivating about unfolding the life of someone so smart, who knows so many different theories and who is having a bit of a hard time guiding themselves through a world that’s nearly like our own, but just a bit different. 

Much like most modern point and click adventure games, there is a hint system which gives you some help after a small amount of time has passed, but is optional to use. You can also just savor the music when you get stuck, as much of the game benefits from the brilliant audio within it. The audio, from the voice acting to the background music, makes this game a lovely experience.

The Search is a beautiful point and click adventure game that does the job of immersing the player into a story that’s intelligent, mysterious, and full of art.

The Search is available now on itch.io.

About The Author

Jupiter Hadley

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events.

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