A New Video Game, ‘The Master’s Pupil’is inspired by a ailment that knocked on Claude Monet’s door towards the end of his life. Around 1913 he appeared waterfall and this increasingly affected his ability to paint. In his letter, he noted that the colors “they no longer held the same intensity for me”while his paintings “became darker and darker”.

Refusing to intervene for as long as possible, he dealt with the problem by arranging the colors on his palette and labeling the tubes. He also wore a huge straw hat when he went out to protect himself from the sun. But what if – as ‘The Master’s Pupil’ suggests – the artist had some help.

Created by Australian designer and video game creator Pat Naoum, “The Master’s Pupil” puts users inside Monet’s eyeball, sending them on an adventure full of puzzles based on color, space and the laws of physics.

By completing these quests, users contribute to the completion of the French painter’s works. To progress through the video game’s 12 stages, players run or jump vines—an echo of Monet’s love of nature—carrying colored orbs or overlaying their avatars with specific hues to clear obstacles from their path. At some moments they have to cross the landscapes of Monet’s works such as “Still Life with Bottle, Carafe, Bread and Wine”, a work of 1863. Or, by moving an object they help to order elements in the artist’s works, as in “Woman with an Umbrella “, work of 1875.

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True to his background in art and cinema, Naoum chose to hand-paint the game’s environments and visuals. “For me, it was important not only to successfully replicate Monet’s style, but also to have the texture of the actual paint match the actual paintings in the game” he said, speaking to Artnet News. Pat Naoum spent a total of seven years creating the video game.