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Published on May 14th, 2025 | by Nay Clark

Please, Touch The Artwork 2 Review (Switch)

Please, Touch The Artwork 2 is developed and published by Thomas Waterzooi of Studio Waterzooi and originally released on February 19th of 2024 on Steam and is now coming to the Nintendo Switch on May 23rd of 2025. This is the more attuned sequel to the first Please, Touch The Artwork from 2022 that was a lot more puzzle oriented. This entry focuses on the artwork of James Ensor, an influencer in expressionism and surrealism within the art world in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. The game was surprisingly created in 6 months and although given its short nature, it can be completed in an hour or two, it impressively represents James Ensor’s work beautifully and wholeheartedly.

Your goal in Don’t Touch The Artwork 2 is to guide a lost skeleton back to his home. To do this, you must navigate through different paintings and help characters find their missing items which will then reveal a path forward. The game can get pretty creative in how it handles transitions to other scenes, like getting in a boat in one painting and rowing to the beach side of another. Navigating across the different art pieces is really fun and helps you appreciate every detail even more. The tale ends in a surprising way that really puts a nice little bow on the entire experience.

Normally, touching pieces of art would be a bad thing, but the title of the game is urging you to do just that. While Please, Touch The Artwork 2 is a look-and-find game at its core, it is actively encouraging its audience to get engaged with art. Through moving characters within the pieces, making funny asides, and making the paintings outright express emotion through the art of this medium of a videogame, it helps you think more thoughtfully when gazing upon works of art in real life. I think this mode of interactivity really helps articulate certain feelings in a way that can’t be communicated otherwise.

You can touch and hold down a point on the Switch screen to make your dapper skeletal character walk over to that point or you can use the analog stick to control a skeleton hand and the A button to press the points if you rather not use the touch screen feature. At times, I wished that I could just control the actual character and move him around, but I realized the purpose of the game is to actually touch the art so it made sense even though it feels like it would be more natural the other way. Sometimes an icon will come up for you to press to continue to another screen and sometimes you can just keep walking off the side of a painting and directly into another one.

You’ll be mainly looking for items for the oiled denizens like planks of wood, brushes, and shells. You’ll have to move back and forth between paintings to find them hidden in the areas, often blending in incredibly well or behind other objects in the painting. A hint system at the top of the screen lets you know if there is anything else left to find in the particular painting you are in which is really generous and helps you move along at a brisk pace. Finding all of the objects also puts a little icon of the quest giver at the top of the screen that you can press that puts you back in the painting with them so you can fulfill the quest promptly and move along. You can also zoom in to help you look for objects which inadvertently helps you appreciate the works even more.

Every now and then, you’ll run into an antagonistic being that rips open the painting in a crude manner. In order to continue or sometimes find a missing object, you’ll have to fix the torn canvas by completing a puzzle where you have to outline a pattern without going over the same line again. These parts broke up the monotonous moments of straining your eyes looking for objects and I appreciated these interactive parts and would honestly enjoy more moments like this within the game itself.

The game is of course visually stunning while you journey across these landscapes within the paintings. You’ll explore the raucous crowds of Christ’s Entry into Brussels, the quiet intimacy of The Oyster-Eater, and the tranquil haze of The Rooftops of Ostend. Surveying the composition, brushstrokes, and focal points of these pieces is really fun to do in this way and the silly and quirky side the game provides, juxtaposed with the paintings is very unique and charming and relays these works of art in a new impressive light. Audibly, the game expresses these elements in a similar fashion, with divine pieces of music you would imagine to hear in a museum mixed with the characters’ odd belligerent grunts and expressions.

Final Thoughts?

Ultimately, Please, Touch The Artwork 2 is more than just a look-and-find game. It’s an interactive celebration of art history, a heartfelt homage to James Ensor, and a clever reimagining of how we engage with artwork. Even with its brevity, it’s rich with intention, charm, and creativity. I walked away not just entertained, but genuinely more curious about Ensor and the world he captured. I really enjoyed my time with this game. It’s a wonderful example of how video games can serve as both art and education, gently guiding players to learn about important artists and their work in an engaging, hands-on way. I’d love to see more developers explore this path of teaching through interactivity, one masterpiece at a time.

About the Author

Nay Clark Gaming holds a special place in my heart and I never stop talking about video games. I really love all types of games and have an interest in games that have complicated stories and lore because I enjoy untangling the mystery of it all. When I'm not gaming, I unsuccessfully try to control three amazing and incredibly bright kids.

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