Generally when we hear that a game uses procedural generation we expect this design choice to be made in order to add replayability, however
Strangethink games instead use randomness to create worlds that feel uncanny and alien. Whereas it is perhaps hard for us to imagine something that isn't heavily inspired by life on Earth, an algorithm could potentially create something far beyond what a human designer can conceive of.
In this sense, Joy Exhibition is only a moderate success. The aliens in this game are all distinctly humanoid, the "guns" (essentially paintbrushes) are all vaguely gun-like, the landscapes are based around hills and mountains. While Strangethink still have a ways to go before creating the alien experience they appear to be aiming for, they have, with Joy Exhibition, found another excellent but unconventional application of procedural generation — generated art tools.
This said, Joy Exhibition is far from Strangethink's first foray into procedural art. In 2014 they released Art Machine, a purer painting software with completely optional random elements and much more user-control over parameters, as well as Secret Habitat, a game about visiting completely generated art galleries, featuring both paintings and musical exhbitions. Joy Exhibition is perhaps best described as a synthesis of a number of previous Strangethink titles (
Art Machine,
Secret Habitat,
Perfect Glowing Bodies,
Mystery Tapes). The strongest elements of each game have been combined here into a more engaging and rewarding experience than those found in each individual software.
This engagement stems from the fact that the game offers an unusually low level of control over your tools, which creates an innate challenge. All but the most dour of players will enjoy trying to sculpt a decent painting out against the unconventional and sometimes unpredictable tools, and while the game generates some alien art patrons, the true 'endgame' here is the ability to save your artwork, allowing you to share and compare your creations with people in the real world
(Here is my favourite one).
Joy Exhibition is by far the most masterfully designed of Strangethink's projects, however it does have some non-insignificant design flaws — such as the inability to test the function of a gun without the risk of ruining your painting, as well as the fact that, in the time it took me to fill all nine paintings, I came across a fair few guns that were similar to the point of near-indistinguishability. Despite these problems, Joy Exhibition is a game I would happily recommend to almost anyone. If you haven't yet played it, you are missing out on the greatest work of one of the most fascinating freeware developers of our time.