Infinite monkey butts: Scriptorium's comedic take on Pentiment's inky art style is a medieval riot
The naked guy happily reaching out towards what I promise is a giraffe adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the scene, don't you think? A quirky touch of class, maybe? A dramatic representation of humanity's desire to strive for the unknown?
Perhaps I'm getting a little too deep in my inkwell after being asked to recreate the long-necked animal, as described by a guy who knows a guy who definitely thinks he saw one once, using whatever familiar illustrative parts I happen to have lying around. Still, at least the client's happy with the apparent accuracy of my cheese-slice yellow creation—monster jaw for horns, monkey butt under the tail because… because it's my picture and I can do whatever I like—and it's a good thing too, because in Scriptorium another equally bonkers request or three is never more than a bird-delivered scroll away.
Take the person who wants me to draw them a magnificent bed, just like the one they saw in a dream. Something with bells and wheels and a pigeon on it. Or the dog who excitedly licked a page clean and urgently needs it fixed before anyone finds out.
The ongoing saga of Vexed Latrine Guy vs Royalty resurfaces from time to time, the task required escalating from basic health and safety tips to distracting window-sized posters. The world of medieval illustration has never felt more lively, or full of laughs.
I honestly have no idea what I'll have to make next. Sometimes a man just really wants to be reunited with his beloved snail, and needs me to create the fanciest border I can imagine to try and draw people's attention to his missing pet poster. A knight insists there was a time the king rode him like a horse, and it's on me to bring that image to life in whatever degree of safe-for-work-ness I choose. After a string of requests like these my grip on normality starts to falter, and so when a client asks for a basic combat manual full of animals, I find myself smiling as I assemble a dual-wielding sword frog to go with the battle hedgehog and axe-brandishing squirrel I already put together.
The success of Scriptorium's unusual style of creative comedy stems from its two-pronged approach to my inky work. First of all: it's relentlessly, joyously absurd. One moment I'm building an elephant out of trees, the next I'm turning a royal decree into an illustrated masterpiece, or visualising a viciously petty divorce settlement.
Nothing could prepare me for the twists and turns found in the main plot threads and smaller side stories brought to my ink-stained table—or even in the UI. Fresh colours are made by grinding petals into a paste, using a weary live turtle as a pestle. The shells that hold my ink are cleaned in a water dish "sailed" by a boat full of jolly rats. The game never wastes a single opportunity to raise a smile.
But the second part of it is, if anything, even more important: The game truly does not care what I create, so long as it meets a few extremely broad pieces of criteria. The client may ask for a verdant natural scene, but in truth the game makes clear that all it's actually checking is that I've put 30+ things from the nature category on the page, and maybe eight bits from the animal tab for good measure. Whoever I'm working for will love a forest of golden mushrooms just as much as a beautiful selection of carefully selected foliage.
Heck, there's nothing stopping me from recolouring, resizing, and generally twisting about a bunch of overlapping pink flower petals until they resemble a giant floating brain—the freedom I'm offered ensures it counts just the same.
For all the dubious would-be saints hoping I'll recreate their "divine" struggles and elderly mice hoping I'll draw peace with cat-kind, ultimately I'm the only person I need to creatively satisfy here. I always have the space to make something I like, something that makes me laugh, and if that involves painting monkey heads blue so I can use them as the scales of a giant sea monster, then so be it.
If that's somehow still not enough freedom, Scriptorium's sandbox mode is ready to help me conjure up absolutely anything I like. It even offers a bit of optional inspiration to help spark my imagination, beginning with a simple how-to on dressing up a person in various ways before descending into waving skeletons, royal canines, and a beautiful flower made mostly out of bunny bottoms.
Spending an hour on this makes the entire artistic world feel like my inky oyster—and I bet I Scriptorium would let me build that shellfish out of something's bum if I really wanted to.