Spent some time browsing itch.io the other day. Passing through all the wannabe FNAF and the [current meme] horror games on there, I found a category for art games. Video games as an art form seem to be in a questionable state with the fact that many will hold up any basic shooter game with garbage philosophy as being the peak of its genre or in other situations, just some game with hours worth of cutscenes that gets adapted into an HBO series that is 10x better than the game ever was. I'm sure the two games mentioned are obvious, and while I don't hate playing them considering how fun the gameplay in both games can be, I hate what they stand for. I hate the underutilization of their medium/overreliance on cinematic storytelling, their lack of good thought-provoking themes, and even just the fact that some of these "art" games can be told in pretty much any other medium. Monuments to Guilt on the other hand fascinates me. A game that doesn't even intend to be a game, but still manages to take advantage of its medium to push its idea of what it means to be exclusionary.

The idea of a virtual museum is always interesting. Most of the ones I've played have been ones that break what is possible with reality and a reasonable budget such as the Namco Museum on the PS1 or the Radiohead Kid A exhibit. There are also some examples of virtual museums just serving to be alternative options for those who will never be able to visit a museum. Monuments of Guilt lies somewhere between the two of them. Monuments of Guilt isn't named after its museum. It's not referred to as the Monuments of Guilt exhibit or museum, but instead just "Monuments of Guilt". Everything featured is real, but it's not real in the sense that this museum could ever exist in real life, because getting the money for this and getting all these benches gathered into one place would be impossible for someone like the creator of this game and yet it maintains it's realistic museum design.

From signs advising you to avoid touching to having a video for the benches that they couldn't get in person, to having bars that make it so you can never see the full screen, there's some kind of irony here. The creator Louis comes off as making much more than an exhibit, but instead making his own meta art piece. A commentary on museums, a commentary on exclusion, and a commentary on class culture. Why would anybody want their own museum art exhibit when when it's all just entertainment for the people causing issues towards society? The idea of Monuments to Guilt using video games to mock and rebel against capitalism and instead do its own thing is something that I adore about this game.

Not very often do I feel like we get games focused more on being art than a game, which makes me admire Monuments to Guilt a lot more than I ever expected to. Right next to Monuments to Guilt on the Itch.io tag for art games was a game called Pineapple on Pizza which is currently the most popular art game on the platform. I personally, don't have much of an issue with the game, but there's just something that bugs me about games as art and the way they can't really take the medium seriously. The idea that a game needs to be fun and goofy is what holds this medium back. As much as I do love goofy games and don't want them to go anywhere, I would really appreciate a push for more games like this in the future.