Canvas. Canvas to paint on. This game appealed to me from the very moment of its launch on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform, on April 21, 2020.
The beauty of the box cover, the original concept of creating paintings by overlapping transparent cards, the materials, the graphic design, everything led me to want to know more about it. The information available on the campaign page was clear and elegantly organized, in line with the game visuals.
Although I have only supported one game through Kickstarter before, and it is yet to arrive, it did not took me long to decide in the joining the project, opting for the base edition of the game, without the extras such as the mini easels to support and display the creations.
And that is how I became one of the more than 16 000 supporters of this game, a support which translates into a raised amount of 713,171 dollars, that is, almost 600 000 €! Expected delivery date for the final product: December 2020.
Despite the strange and difficult twenty-twenty, the whole process unfolded in an exemplary way, with a very well managed campaign, information made available in a timely manner, constant interaction, consideration of suggestions in the final phase of development of the game, for example, as to the variants for solo play, and the final production, in China.
And so, in early 2021, Canvas arrived in Europe, and in Portugal. Congratulations to the game designers, Jeffrey Chin and Andrew Nerger, to the artist Luan Huynh, and to the publisher, Road to Infamy!
In Canvas, we are painters, creating works of art, imagining, combining motifs, playing with backgrounds, patterns, and their distribution over the surface. We must create not one, not two, not many, but exactly three paintings. Then, our work will be over, and we will become spectators of those still working on their canvas, until everyone has three finished paintings in front of them.
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However, creations are not to be made at sole will of each painter. For it will be necessary to consider the motifs available at every moment, which cannot be hoarded and kept for later use in an unlimited way, and also to follow a uniform principle, to be used by all painters and on all canvases: each work of art must be composed by four elements, a base layer and three more superimposed layers. After all, this is a painting contest, and contests have rules!
The bases, presenting colorful patterns, in warm or cold tones, evoking light or welcoming shadows, hinting at shapes or misshapes, will provide the background for our paintings.
Each layer, in turn, will allow you to add one or more motifs, by highlighting or overlapping them. The choice is varied, amongst human and animal figures, landscapes and objects, reproductions of reality, or imagined things.
Each of the layers is a transparent card, and there are sixty in total, all different, without any duplication whatsoever. Sixty cards to combine into sets of three, in an order that also matters, as it will allow you to cover or highlight details.
There are, therefore, many possibilities, and while some may enjoy calculating the exact number of combinations and permutations available, I believe that most painters will not be thinking too hard about such numbers!
The layer bottom of the transparent cards, outside the paint zone itself, contains two additional elements: a word and a set of symbols.
Words, yes, because these works will have titles! As the layers overlap, so do words overlap or juxtapose. And, again, the order in which layers are placed will play its role on the final result.
The painting with the female figure in the rain, next to the lamp post, is entitled Wandering Warning, the shower of incandescent balls over the city, seen through the window, bears the designation of Imminent Complexity, and the figure with a mask and a spider web in the background, Masked Darkness.
As for the symbols, they are the elements that will be translated into points, mattering only those which remain visible once the painting is done. Those that have been covered will be disregarded.
But how do we get the transparent cards to use? Well, this is where the play mat, the deck of cards, the palette tokens, and the competition with the other painters for picking up motifs, come into play!
There will always be five cards available on the play mat on a player’s turn. On each of their turns, a painter must choose between getting one of those layer-cards or finish a painting, provided they already have all the material required.
The leftmost card is always available free of charge, so the painter will never be prevented from getting one more motif for their canvas. To reach any other card, it is necessary to resort to inspiration, symbolized by the palettes of each player: you must place a palette token on each card to be skipped, from left to right, until reaching the desired card. Thus, to get the third card, you need to spend two palettes on the leftmost and the second leftmost ones. Once the intended card is withdrawn, the remaining ones are displaced to the left to fill-in the now empty space, and a new card from the deck is revealed and placed on the rightmost spot.
In case there are palettes on the chosen card, you pick them, therefore increasing your stock of inspiration, to give wings to your imagination in future turns. We must, therefore, manage this small market of inspiration and motifs, within reach of all painters. Palettes for choices.
When having three cards in hand, you must choose between getting additional cards, always one per turn, or completing a painting. That's right, at once, in quick brush strokes! Meaning we do not start creating paintings as we collect layers. Instead, when the painting time has come, we chose one of the backgrounds at our disposal, three layers, and the order in which they go over the background, leaving the whole set organized and protected inside a transparent sleeve. When we commit to painting, we do not stop until it is done!
The painting contest must follow its course and the works must be revealed on the go. Therefore, we cannot have more than five layer-cards in our hand. When having five, the following turn will be a mandatory painting turn, as described above. There is no way to postpone the work, in search for the perfect match! The exhibition awaits your paintings.
But what is the purpose of all this? I believe that, for many painters, the main goal will be the sheer pleasure derived from composing, in search for specific aesthetics, implicit or explicit concepts, and the wordplay for the title.
However, in Canvas, the role of critics, or jury members, is represented by a set of objective cards, four of which are in use in each session. They define the appreciation criteria in place, that is, which combinations of symbols will be award-winning.
Take the example of Symmetry, which requires the presence of two equal symbols in symmetrical positions in the lower band of the painting.
In the case of Proximity, the adjacency of circles and frames, respectively representing tone and pattern, is the goal to strive for. The Heavy Purpose canvas, with its corals reminding background, an anchor on the left side, sea creatures at the top, and the human figure on the ladder trying to reach them, has an adjacent pair of tone and pattern symbols.
Therefore, the Proximity condition is fulfilled, earning the painting a purple award. At the end of the game, and as another canvas also earned a purple award, there are two of them. As such, you score five points in the Proximity criteria.
The final score is determined by adding the awards received by each one of the three finished canvas of each player, and determining the points related to all four objective cards in play. The painter with a higher score is the contest winner.
I bet that, most likely, you all will immediately sign up for another painting contest!
This is Canvas, an experience to taste layer after layer, literally, by overlapping transparent cards, and metaphorically, as you play with images, with the words that give title to the works, and with the combination of symbols.
It is a game where you may choose between different approaches, go for the ones you enjoy the most, be it in a more, or in a less, competitive spirit. The game is very simple to learn, it is played in no more than thirty minutes, may gather up to five painters around the table, or even be played in solitary. No doubt it will please people with different preferences.
In plus, Canvas has delightful design details, such as the possibility of hanging the game box in the wall, as if an ordinary framed painting, or the simultaneous use of colours, shapes and patterns, I suppose with the aim of making it accessible for those with colour vision deficiency.
If you want to try it, you may take advantage of the print-and-play version available on the campaign page, provided you use transparent sheets for printing.
Happy paintings!
