While visual art is always going to be a huge factor in dating sims, Texan developers Unwonted Studios is taking this to the next level with Catch Canvas. This adult visual novel about love-struck artists has already met its Kickstarter goal of $3000 USD and is setting its sights on a series of stretch goals. The studio is also looking to get this title on Steam greenlight for future publishing.
In the game you play as the nephew of a world famous artist who has decided to take you to his cabin and teach you how to become a true artiste. However, when you arrive he has disappeared and put you in charge of helping 3 girls to reach their dreams of becoming part of the artistic community through their sculptures. You must find a way to motivate these stubborn students while also trying to prepare your own art for an important exhibition coming up.
The three romanceable girls in Catch Canvas are your usual anime archetypes: Nachan is the keen manga lover, Dawn is the shy savant, and Estelle is the pampered rich girl. Each of them have a talent for a specific visual art style (Dawn is great at sketches for example) and it’s up to the player to both build a relationship and nurture the talents of the three love interests. You can do this as a male or female and as usual various choices made throughout the story will lead you to different lovers and endings.
The backgrounds and characters are both detailed and colorful. And it’s not hard to tell by some of the images on the campaign page that this a dating sim targeted towards adults. Everything is tastefully covered so it’s unclear how far Catch Canvas will go with nudity and sex. One of the stretch goals is ‘Love Scenes’ at $15,000 so it’s possible Unwonted Studios is tackling more intimate encounters.
The other stretch goals include an $11,000 level where you get physical copies of Nacchan’s Manga characters (it’s canon that she’s really bad at drawing these characters) and a $19,000 level where you can pick a date spot for the protagonist and one of his students. While the game and stretch goals aren’t really breaking new ground but the team has created a few visual novels already that you can get on Steam. I’m also hoping that Unwonted Studios takes advantage of the artistic theme prevalent in this game and maybe gives us some examples and history of different artists and art styles.
If you want to back Catch Canvas you can do so here. You have until March 25th, 2:28 EST. Currently the project is sitting at just under $10K and, as mentioned before, has already hit its $3K goal. The game is estimated for a July 2016 release date and will be coming to PC through Steam. Like always, it’s good to be careful with any crowdfunding campaign and do a bit of research beforehand. Unwonted Studios actually has a free visual novel on Steam called Written in the Sky and another game called No One But You that has a playable demo.
