Canvas (2021) was designed by Jeff Chin and Andrew Nerger, and all art was created by Luan Huynh. You play as a painter participating in a competition, where each “painting” must meet certain criteria, and you get points based on that. Over the game, players typically make several “paintings”, and your total score is calculated by adding up each of them. The player with the most points wins.
The mechanics are fairly simple. Players take turns laying out clear “cards” onto backgrounds. Each card has three elements: a foreground art element, part of a title, and a bottom series of what I’m going to call the “paint strokes”. There are five colors of paint strokes (red, yellow, green, blue, and purple), and most cards will have two or three of these strokes. Each stroke will have either one or two artistic elements (such as a shaded circle, a color wheel, or a triangle) or will have a victory condition (such as two points for each color wheel). You are only scored on the strokes on top. Order does matter to this: if you plan to get points based on collecting color wheels based on a victory condition on the red stroke, but you put a card that has a triangle on a red stroke on top of the victory condition red stroke, then the victory condition is null. Typically, you would lay three such cards down, though this can easily be house-ruled to some other number without really changing much. It sounds a bit weird when put to words, but it is intuitive when you play it. When I first tried it, none of us had played it before, but we all understood by the end of the first round.
In terms of mechanics, I actually kind of like this a lot. If I’m being totally honest here, I like this a lot more than I expected to. I think it nicely balances being accessible and user-friendly, while still offering some legitimate strategic complexity. The three-dimensional layering aspect requires you to think outside the box. The designers put a lot of effort into the paint stroke system. I do think there could be a bit more regulation across the goals that all players are working towards, but not to any extent that makes the game bad. I definitely would not consider that to be a general statement against this; I just like certain things. We all have our preferences in any aspect of life.
Before I go any further, I will acknowledge: the art for this game is quite beautiful. I love the colors and the style choices. It looks like it’s right out of a children’s storybook in the best way possible. Huynh clearly put thought into making sure that, say, human characters on the cards would be at the right height to be standing on the “ground” in the background, or that elevated elements like a tight rope or hot air balloon are positioned well above the tops of many objects that touch the ground. The art on the box is also stylistically consistent and can even be used as a wall painting. The name isn’t even on the front of the box, so that if you were to hang it up like that, it would look real. In terms of the game art itself, Canvas is probably up there with Steampunk Rally for best art across all games I’ve reviewed here. I really like it, and my compliments to Huynh on this. Nothing I am about to say is meant to be a criticism of their original art.
To me, at least (as someone in an artistic field who has published poetry and recorded music, both of which are types and artistic expression), one of the crucial elements of art is that there must be some type of creative thought incorporated into it to give the product meaning. To me, that, more than anything else, is the definition of art. It’s not about style, subject, or medium. It’s about effort and intent. And that’s a pretty consistent definition of what I hear from other artists or academics who study art, and it is pretty consistent with even just dictionary definitions of the word. My issue with this game is that you’re supposed to be making art, but I don’t think you’re actually doing this.
When I was discussing the mechanics, you might’ve noticed that I skimmed right past the artistic parts of the cards (the foreground elements and partial titles). That is because that is actually how much the artistic framing matters to this game. The final “painting” you produce is not evaluated based on the meaning of the foreground elements. You don’t worry about which words are or aren’t showing in the title – in fact, most people I was playing with didn’t even look at them until they were presenting the final piece. The only thing that actually matters is the paint stroke scoring system at the bottom.
This is why I wanted to make it clear that none of my criticisms were about Huynh’s work. I do think it is art. But there isn’t any artistic or creative intention or expression in what you, as the players, are adding to it. You could remove all artistic elements of this game, and it still would play the same. It’s really disappointing to me that a game that is supposed to be about art and features beautiful art would lack any art from the players.
Who would I recommend Canvas for? I think this is safely an all-ages game. It is a visually pretty game, so if you’re not thinking too hard about its relationship to artistic expression, I could see it being fun. I don’t have super strong feelings about it mechanically, but it’s fine. It would work well for a game night at your friend’s house. But it advertises itself as primarily an artistic game. If you come to it looking for that, looking for a game that encourages the creation of art, I’m not sure this gives it to you. The base mechanics and stuff aren’t bad; the issue is that it’s just advertised misleadingly.