Early last year developer Thomas Waterzooi released an extremely quirky puzzler called Please, Touch the Artwork ($3.99) on mobile, console, and PC. As the title indicates the premise was a play on how typically in museums and galleries you’re forbidden from touching any of the art pieces or exhibits, but what if you could touch them? Mechanically this translated to a puzzler where you were matching colors and patterns of various types of abstract art, all while a narrative was being unfolded as you progressed through each art piece. Now Thomas Waterzooi is readying a spiritual sequel that plays with the same premise but does so in a pretty different way, both mechanically and aesthetically. Check out the announcement trailer for Please, Touch the Artwork 2.

Rather than 3 different styles of puzzles built around abstract art, Please, Touch the Artwork 2 is more of a hidden object game and sees you accompanying a skeleton artist on a journey through the legendary real-life Belgian painter James Ensor’s library of work. As in the first title a narrative is woven into the game based on the often strange characters that inhabit Ensor’s lightly animated and interactive masterpieces. Ensor was controversial during his time, as well as extremely groundbreaking in the world of late 19th century and early 20th century art, and being that Thomas Waterzooi is also Belgian I’m guessing this was something of a passion project for the developer to create. The first game was award-winning but felt like it flew a bit under the radar on mobile, so feel free to check that one out in the meantime while we await the arrival of Please, Touch the Artwork 2 on mobile and PC in early 2024.