RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition Review

Game: RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition
Genre: Hidden Object, Puzzle, Indie
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer|Publisher: MixoGames Ltd.
Controller Support: None
Price: UK £8.50 | US $9.99 | EU € 9,75
Release Date: March 22nd, 2024

A review code was provided, with many thanks to MixoGames Ltd.

RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition is a puzzle game with a relaxing vibe that’s all about putting artwork back together. You are an art restorer, and you have moved to a new place to help a whole host of people reclaim damaged artworks.

The Gameplay of RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition

RestorArt plays a lot like many of the hidden object-style puzzle games out there. You have a map, and you get to choose which client you want to serve from the map. You need to buy supplies in order to do harder art restoration, which in turn gets you more money to allow you to upgrade your supplies even more and furnish your new studio.

The first puzzle you get to is a hidden object puzzle, but there are a variety of different kinds of puzzles from coloring games to picture matching to variations on the hidden object version. But most puzzles tend to be games where you take tiles of ripped artwork and try to piece them together. In order to get enough money to buy new supplies and furniture, you’ll need to do some missions more than once, but there seems to be a different artwork each time you redo it.

AI-Generated Artworks

If you have glanced at a news source, watched TV news, or watched any long-form video essays on YouTube, you have probably come across an AI story or two. They range from blown out of proportion (AI will steal our jobs!) to more cool-headed interpretations of the direction AI is going as a medium for the creation of text and artwork. AI-created artwork has a tendency to be a mashed-up version of other, already existing artwork that the AI model has been trained on; you see, AI cannot create anything new. It can only mash together what is has seen elsewhere, which has brought up some very real concerns about copyright issues.

When I was in school, I remember in a creative writing class, one of the other kids had “written” a poem that was just the first lines of all of his favorite poems, juxtaposed to create a new story with a new meaning. This set off a long debate in the middle of this class about what this would mean if he ever tried to publish it anywhere, and while we never really came to a consensus, it was determined later that such a thing would put a lot of hurdles in the way if he’d decided to publish it, especially without attributions.

RestorArt and AI

Why do I bring all this up? RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition is made basically entirely out of AI-generated images. While this sort of thing has been debated quite a bit recently, no one has reached a real consensus about what AI-made artworks should be allowed to be used for. Much like the poem above, all this artwork is mashed up versions of other art and presented entirely with attributions.

As someone who makes her living off of the written word, I can say that I know there are AI models out there that have an intimate working knowledge of copywritten material I’ve spent hours of my life writing, and they reuse them without attribution of any kind to me. And I find that incredibly disappointing and unfair. I have a low opinion of AI-generated anything, including artwork. That being said, Steam announced somewhat recently that it was banning AI-generated content. Here is what its rules say about generative AI games:

Any kind of content (art/code/sound/etc) created with the help of AI tools during development. Under the Steam Distribution Agreement, you promise Valve that your game will not include illegal or infringing content, and that your game will be consistent with your marketing materials. In our pre-release review, we will evaluate the output of AI generated content in your game the same way we evaluate all non-AI content – including a check that your game meets those promises.

Any kind of content created with the help of AI tools while the game is running. In addition to following the same rules as Pre-Generated AI content, this comes with an additional requirement: in the Content Survey, you’ll need to tell us what kind of guardrails you’re putting on your AI to ensure it’s not generating illegal content.

So it looks like RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition is following these rules if you were wondering if the developers were sneaking in any illicit content. It doesn’t look like any of the art is stolen, which should put any artist or anyone who doesn’t like AI a little more at ease.

RestorArt is Beautiful and Fun

While RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition does have that soft-edged, over-smoothed look of AI-generated art, the artwork is actually really beautiful. I haven’t come across anything that is overworked, and there are no weird fingers or eyeballs. And the AI chatbot that talks to you during the prologue has that sort of uncanny valley look to her, but it’s overall not a bad effect. A little like the Clutch Cargo effect in most of these types of games, the look of the model isn’t realistic or to my tastes. But the overall look of the game is rather pretty, in spite of that.

The gameplay action in RestorArt is really good, too. The movements, clicking, interaction, and music all make the game feel wonderful to play and really relaxing. You get to pick your music tracks to vibe to, choose an artwork to restore, and collect all sorts of fun things for your efforts. Overall, RestorArt is just really nice to play.

Conclusion

RestorArt: Fairwood Hills Collector’s Edition is a great game. While some of the people are a little uncanny valley, the artwork you’re “restoring” is nice to look at overall. The music and sound effects are great. You can turn the tutorial off at any time. There is a lot to like about these sorts of games. If you enjoy puzzle mash-up games like Maze Of Realities and Twistingo, you’ll really like this game as well.

Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot. 

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