There's a free Goya-themed horror game and someone's definitely eating their son

Hell yeah, friends, it's time for some art history with PC Gamer! Impasto is a horror game by student designers out of USC Games, the University of Southern California's game design school, and it's inspired by one of the greatest painters of all time: Francisco Goya. It's named after the technique he used extensively, Impasto, of thickly-laid and textured paint which gives paintings physical depth.

If you already know what that is and what it means then all I need to give you is a link: Impasto is on Steam and completely free.

The action of the game revolves around the particular horrors that live on in Francisco Goya's legacy, and the paintings left behind by his increasingly fragmenting mental state. Using a mixture of exploration, stealth, and your own wits you'll have to navigate the dark walls of his hometown and paintings, all rendered after Goya's own signature style, to find an end to a letter you've received and the mystery it entails.

It's phenomenal for a student work, well-conceived and executed. Goya's story is one of particular resonance. He saw horrors in his lifetime, and the especially bleak period which saw the creation of Goya's Black Paintings is a superb basis for a supernatural horror game. There are things in those paintings nobody would like to see come to life.

For example, Saturn Devouring His Son. For all that it's a modern meme, the painting remains a deeply upsetting and visually confronting image taken out of Greek Myth and rendered in a particularly gruesome style by someone who'd definitely seen a dismembered corpse in the previous decade's conflict visited upon the Iberian peninsula during the Napoleonic wars.

Francisco Goya was a Spanish painter during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and eventually became the court painter to the Spanish crown. He became deaf in 1793, but lived through the Napoleonic wars and died in 1828. His paintings are increasingly dark and troubled over the course of his life, and his prints and sketches depict with unrelenting honesty the horrors of warfare. His paintings are considered national treasures in Spain, and I'm inclined to agree.

You should probably go read about Goya now and then play Impasto on Steam.

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
Doomguy holds a glass of red wine in an art gallery
Finally someone turned Doom into an enriching cultural experience for art snobs
Fighting a masked enemy with an axe
Butcher's Creek is a short, sweet and brutal FPS video nasty from the maker of Dusk
A cartoon nun looks shocked and scared, bathed in green light.
The new game from the Blasphemous devs is like if Commandos was a metroidvania set in a Spanish monastery, and also the Green Beret kept losing his mind
A man turns away from an open window while monsters gather in the dark
Look Outside is a survival horror RPG where you absolutely should not look outside
A goalkeeper in a plague mask wields an axe
Silent Hill gets a soccer league in FEAR FA 98, and you can play the demo now
Close up of Curly post-crash in Mouthwashing, showing his one remaining eye and bandaged body.
Mouthwashing review
Latest in Adventure
Image of illuminated manuscript-style drawings from the game Pentiment.
Random characters kept swearing in Obsidian's font-obsessed murder-mystery when its procedural error system ran amok: 'Naughtiness abounded'
An image of a corpse with the text "You've been re-educated."
I played the lost videogame sequel to 1984, and came away more nostalgic than ever for gaming's awkward adolescence in 1999
Rosella encounters a satyr in a forest in King's Quest 4
Eagle-eyed streamer spots that Roberta Williams' portrait in King's Quest 4 is based on her author photo on the back of the game box: 'I never noticed it before.'
Myst puzzle game
'You’ve been asking, and we’ve been listening': Myst remake adds a whole new world to the classic adventure, one originally introduced in another overhaul from 25 years ago
The character takes a test in a school room.
Expelled! review
Max, protagonist of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Double Exposure, stares with trepidation at something off-screen with her friend.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure reportedly a 'large loss' for Square Enix, says analyst, who adds: 'The company's IP fundamentally varies too much between good and bad'
Latest in News
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
As layoffs and studio closures continue to deathroll the western AAA industry, analyst points out 5 of 8 major Japanese companies hit all-time share prices this year
The NES themed 8BitDo Retro mechanical gaming keyboard on a blue background
I love the 8BitDo Retro C64 keyboard but I'd pick its cheaper NES-themed model near its lowest price ever during Amazon's Big Spring Sale
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
Microsoft's iconic Bliss wallpaper
From pixels to pinot: The Windows XP 'Bliss' wallpaper hill was real and this is what it looks like now
A female Zoi making two hearts with her fingers.
Following 24 hours of Denuvo-based backlash, Inzoi is taking a surprising step and removing it entirely: 'We want to sincerely apologise for not aligning more closely with player expectations'
An image of a Helldiver from Helldivers 2 shooting at a red dragon from Dungeons & Dragons.
'Ok, so dragon builds are a thing now': galaxy-brained Helldivers 2 player incinerates a bile titan with a hover pack and a flamethrower