Art Inc. 2: Idle Museum

The art in this game is very charming, especially the recreations of famous pieces, and the story is very intriguing—the problem I run into is forgetting the plot when it takes me three days to upgrade a painting I stopped showing forever ago just for the plot. The most recent instance of this for me was needing to get “Marie Antoinette and the Rose” to level 250 something that took me nearly a week to accomplish because the upgrades were not paying for themselves whatsoever and the money would’ve been better used elsewhere were it not for the plot requiring it. The quests about getting X amount of money, however, are often done in seconds; as such, the plot progression is either incredibly fast or painfully slow depending on the quest you get A few other issues I have is the implementation of books, as it seems like the only way to get them outside of gift boxes is from the ticket booth, and 50 per 4 hours is nothing compared to the costs; the game would be better overall without books being required for upgrades and being used only in the shot to buy more cards, but I guess it’s a money-making scheme by the devs. I also have issue with the auction mini game; while the spot the difference portion can be fun, the bidding could be cut out entirely. Although I’m only on Chapter 6, I have never seen a single auction yet exceed one artifact nor have I seen a single participant exceed 1.1k on bidding, so the optimal strategy is to just spam bid until the minigame ends. It also irks me that the bank is always set to 2k when I very much have more than that with how much my upgrades cost now. Overall, I want to love this game, but progression is so spotty and annoying with the half-baked systems I mention here that I can’t justify it as the game is now.

I so badly want to enjoy this game as much as I did the first one. The graphics and works of art are great and I appreciate the new things that are being tried here, but there is a lack of polish that becomes more frustrating the more I try to play. It has become very annoying with this week’s event. Quest progression completely resets if you leave the event museum, which is not fun when you have 19/20 visitors and then are put back to 0 upon return. The increasing amount of money you need to make does not seem to balance with what you are given and feels like the game just wants you to sit there and tap away for days on end. Not very idle if you ask me. Don’t get me started on the very buggy spot the difference tasks the game gives you where differences don’t exist or are coded in the wrong spots, making you just tap around until you manage to hit the “right” spots. I am really hoping the developers listen to this feedback, make improvements, and fix these bugs because my interest in this game is quickly diminishing.

I’ve probably played the game for a good hour and I think it’s pretty great. The one thing I would like to see added is the ability to choose how much you want to level an art piece/slot. I like to be precise on how I’m leveling up things and so right now I’m not getting that satisfaction.