Bad at puzzles, I tried touching Olexa's Please, Touch the Artwork

Ninth time's the charm (I finish my mugicha before the ice melts)

Hi, I'm Tsumiki. Today's pick has an unusual entry point: "Please, Touch the Artwork" — true to its title, its whole concept is "you're allowed to touch the painting," the one thing you'd absolutely get scolded for at a real museum. You poke your finger into Mondrian-style abstract paintings and play by coloring squares or drawing paths.

Whenever I go to an actual museum, I'm the type standing there thinking "I don't get why this is amazing, but I'm looking at it anyway." This game says you're allowed to touch it, and just that fact already puts me at ease. Today I came to peek at that "touchable painting" through a let's play.

What I watched today

Episode 9 features Olexa again, back for a third time, playing "Please, Touch the Artwork." The video title, "Minimalistic Brain Breaking Art Puzzles!", is refreshingly blunt as usual. Take a look at the video below first.

"Please, Touch the Artwork" is a solo work by Thomas Waterzooi of Studio Waterzooi. Inside a world of Mondrian-style abstract paintings, it packs in several puzzle types — coloring in squares, connecting paths, working through a maze — with over 160 puzzles total. And every puzzle is procedurally generated on the spot, so each player gets a different board. No time limit, no pressure, just jazz playing while you poke around at your own pace — knowing it was built that way already won me over.

What I think while watching, hopeless at solving

The most fun part is that Olexa can never say "oh, I've seen this one before" — every puzzle is generated fresh, so there's no room to memorize a solution and repeat it. That means every reaction is genuinely worked out on the spot. Lines like "wait, what's going on here" or "oh hold on, maybe I should look at it backwards" tumble out unscripted, and just listening to that is fun on its own.

Let me be serious for one line. I think this game turns abstract art from "something only people who get it can appreciate" into "something you find the rules of by touching it." Placing color, drawing a line, working through a maze — each one only makes sense once you've actually poked at it and gone "oh, so that's the rule." Discovery takes the lead over appreciation.

And watching it, I thought of something — at real museums, I've always just walked past paintings I didn't understand. But in this game, you're allowed to touch it without understanding it first, so even Olexa starts by moving his finger around without really knowing what's going on. Watching the rules gradually come into focus anyway — that felt like exactly what "can't solve them, still hooked" is about.

So it's okay not to solve it

"Please, Touch the Artwork" — if I played it myself, I'm sure I'd get confused early on, wondering "wait, is there even a correct answer here?" But with no time limit and no pressure, you can keep poking around without worrying about mistakes. And since Olexa narrates everything he's thinking, that hands-on, feeling-your-way-through process really comes across. Start with the video above.

Are you the type who freezes in front of a painting, or the type who'd rather just touch it and see? Tell me in the comments — it'll shape which let's play I watch next. You don't need to understand the rules; touching it is usually enough to start figuring them out — and speaking of that, my mugicha does have ice in it today.