Bevel's Painting

About Bevel's Painting

Bevel's Painting is a freeware horror exploration game by Maninu, made in RPG Maker VX and released in Japan in 2014. vgperson translated it into English and hosts the download on their site; it runs on Windows and needs the RPG Maker VX runtime package.

Bevel finds a canvas of her own glowing blue and steps inside. At first the world looks magical, with fairy servants and teddy bear chefs, but nearly everyone speaks Bevelese, a made-up language, and very little is explained. You learn what is going on from what you see happen, from a room that has changed when you come back to a character whose meaning you have to guess.

Progress comes through paint. You find colours that change the world around you, but each use dirties your brush and you have to find clean water to wash it. Items are used from the menu to cross gaps, open doors and solve small puzzles, and you save only at the paint boxes you find. Some spots can kill you, such as a floor of spikes you must time your run across.

The later part of the game turns to chases. A reaper hunts Bevel through a house, and you have to be in a locker, behind a curtain or behind a bookcase before he enters the room. Jay is Games found most of the fear in the sense of wrongness in every scene and in sparse sound, like one area whose only soundtrack is slow breathing.

It is short, about two hours by vgperson's estimate, but it has ten endings plus one extra, and reaching the better ones takes replays and experiment. It suits players who liked Ib and Yume Nikki and enjoy working out a story nobody spells out.

How to play Bevel's Painting

1. Download Bevel's Painting from vgperson's page and install the RPG Maker VX runtime package (not VX Ace).
2. Extract the game to its own folder so your saves are kept, then run it.
3. Move with the arrow keys, press Space to examine things and use items from the Esc menu.
4. Collect paints to change the world, and wash your brush in clean water between uses.
5. Save at the paint boxes, and when the reaper comes, get into a hiding place before he enters the room.
6. Replay and act differently to reach other endings.

Tips

• Save often and in different slots, as Jay is Games advises; some endings depend on choices made early.
• Most items will not use themselves; open the menu and pick the item when you want to try it.
• A long message in Bevelese is rarely needed for play; the short notes on walls are the ones that hint at puzzles.
• Start hiding before the reaper reaches the room; hiding too late does not work.
• The first ending you reach may leave you with no answers. Play again for the others.

Questions