Matsuro Palette

About Matsuro Palette

Matsuro Palette is a game by SleepingMuseum, released on Steam in October 2020 and now published by KEMCO, which brought it to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox in November 2024. It is a remake of the developer's smartphone game Death Palette, laid out for a horizontal screen, with message skipping and new episodes featuring the girl in the painting. It is also sold on GOG.

The protagonist is shut in a gloomy studio for seven days with a painting of a girl. The painting talks, it has opinions, and it wants to be finished. Each day you explore the studio's rooms for things to sketch and for the notes that past victims left behind, which hint at what she likes and what she will not forgive. Then you choose what to paint, where, and in what order, and pick a colour from a wheel that spins through the air, timing your click.

The horror is in the stakes rather than in shocks. Paint an apple she wanted peeled, or use the wrong colour, and she kills you. Siliconera counted over forty different deaths, one for each way of angering her, and each is kept in a Death Gallery. They are shown as chalk outlines at a crime scene with a splash of red rather than as gore. The store says plainly that there are no jump scares or heart-pounding scenes and no code or key puzzles like those of escape games; there is only the mystery of the girl and what happened to the people who stood at the easel before you.

Most of the game is black and white, and for a long time the only colour on screen is what you put on the canvas. A game over does not send you back to the start: you return to the painting with your sketches still in hand. A prequel tells how earlier victims met her, and Siliconera found the story turned sad as the painting's past came out.

It suits players who like short, strange Japanese indie horror in the manner of Ib or The Witch's House, and who want a game that unsettles without making them jump.

How to play Matsuro Palette

1. At the start of each day, explore the studio's rooms and click on objects to sketch them.
2. Read the notes left by past victims for hints about what the girl in the painting wants.
3. Listen to what she asks for, then choose which sketches to paint, where on the canvas and in what order.
4. Pick a colour by clicking the spinning colour wheel at the right moment.
5. Watch how she reacts; a choice she dislikes ends in death, and you try again from the painting.
6. Get through all seven days to finish her portrait.

Tips

• Look closely at every room early on; most things you will need to sketch are already in the background before they matter.
• Read every note and listen to her exact words; a wrong colour or a missing detail, like an unpeeled apple, is enough to anger her.
• Dying costs little, since you return to the painting with your sketches kept, so try things out and fill the Death Gallery.
• Use message skipping when you replay a scene you already know.

Questions