Chicory: A Colorful Tale (2021)

I had high hopes because I loved Wondersong so much. I thought this was fine.

I enjoy the story but I never quite gelled with the controls and the friction; if intentional; never felt "right".

I also felt like the boss fights were neat but took too long. Especially the last fight. I feel like the narrative is delicate enough that the timing needs to be just right. Too short would not have been as emotionally engaging but the length and repetition did deflate my bonds to the story.

I feel like this is coming off too negative but on the whole I was into this, it is just every step of the way, every piece of the game just feels a little bad. It is such a weirdly videogame-specific thing.

For a game so indebted to 2-D Zelda for its structure, Chicory is astoundingly unique.

Take, for example, the only "weapon" in your character's arsenal: The brush. It does not cut, maim or harm: It paints. And yet, its impact on the game's setting is so much greater than a sword. In most games of this genre, it does not matter how many enemies you kill: They will always respawn. In Chicory, you are using creativity rather than combat to quite literally make your mark on the world... not just physically (solving puzzles, unlocking paths for traversal), but figuratively. Your work gains fans, attracts onlookers, sparks conversation with the game's NPCs.

And those conversations can be quite meaningful. Chicory's themes of acceptance (both of others and ourselves), generational baggage, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, the dangers of gatekeeping, and the joy of creativity for its own sake resonated deeply with me. These ideas go so well with the game's painting mechanics that they never feel heavy-handed or dissonant.

I did occasionally find it challenging to manage both traversal and painting with a controller, so I eventually switched to painting with the touchscreen on my Steam Deck. But that's my only real quibble, and the game's lack of lives or a health system makes it very forgiving, so it never blocked my progression.

Chicory is a brilliantly designed game, and a delight from start to finish. You should play it.

I played the demo just before this game released and enjoyed that. So simply decided to try out the full version when it went on sale.

Narrative

You, a cute little dog that will be named after your favourite food (in my case Ramen) are a cleaner in the famous wielder tower. The wielder is an artist that colours the world. The current wielder is chicory and you are her greatest fan. One day, suddenly all colour dissapears from the world. When you find Chicory to ask what's happening, you see her brush on the floor. You kinda steal it and start to colour in the world. You figure out that the reason the world is now colourless is because some sort of corruption and you need to save the world as the new (temporary?) wielder.

Gameplay

In this game you walk around, talk to people, do fetch quests, puzzles, and of course colour everything you see. You have a mostly linear progress as you try to figure out the corruption problem, you unlock new areas with new puzzles, that can be solved by using your brush. Throughout you unlock new skills, with which new areas can be unlocked. The fetch quests are not needed to progress in the game, and neither is talking to most people. But a lot of the characters are cute and some have pretty funny or interesting things to say.

Setting

It's set in a black&white world where every area is named after a meal (luncheon, dinners etc) and all the people have food names. There is several towns, a city, forests, mountains etc, for you to colour in, and where you can find "colourful' personalities. It's all pretty adorable, but I'm going to be honest, I was mostly too lazy to colour everything in.

Other

Only encountered one very minor bug, which was easily fixed by restarting the particular event I was doing.

Conclusion

I thought this game was original and adorable. The gameplay was really fun. I do like games with good writing and interesting characters to talk to, and the puzzles were also fun and interesting. There were also a few boss fights which were pretty fun as well. So I did really enjoy the gameplay. Except, the colouring, which wasn't stupid just I was too lazy to do it everywhere so I half ignored that part. But theoretically you could go wild and make a masterpiece.

Without going into spoilers, the story in general was pretty basic, nothing new. But the underlying symbolism, at least how I understand it, was pretty good. A lot of the writing really hit home for me and it did make me think a little bit

All in all, if you like narrative games or puzzle games this might be something you like.

Chicory was a great experience, I liked the coloring mechanic and how it prompted me to draw like a three year old again. I don't have much against this title, nice music and a heavy story with charming and cute characters. It's short game I played on and off, I explored most of the game and colored a lot, and took me about 12 hours to beat.

The only downside would be that the draw mechanics and boss fights could be more engaging. The boss fights are too simple, you just move around and click on the boss till it's defeated, I was hoping for something more. During fights you don't use any of the abilities you gain or even fight with colors, so the fights are a bit scripted and boring, I would find myself just standing and waiting for what felt like forever for the boss to be hittable. Tho the boss fights aren't the main point of the game, they could have gotten more creative with them.

As for the color mechanics, Your locked to four colors different in each area and three brush sizes. while cute and fun to draw like a kid, there were times where I wish I could get more detailed. (It does work with the story, since the main character is untrained but still). It's more of a me problem I guess since After a while I would just quickly fill in the area since I was more focused on the story than the coloring gimmick.

Overall a great game that I would recommend if your into undertale-esque games, plenty of areas to explore and some side quests and collectables to do. The best part for me was talking to the characters and the story.

Like all indie games, Chicory is a game about depression. Unlike many, it gets it right. take it from me, a depressed person. this might be confusing because, just look at it and you see a children's coloring book. and yes. the game world is a coloring book and painting it is pretty much what you'll be doing, as much as you want to do it.

it's slow, leisurely, calm, very low pressure. The tone is light in a way but it also gets very very deep into a dissection of imposter syndrome, motivation, legacy, intimacy, mentorship, and sadness. You'll mostly be exploring, interacting with your paintbrush to make the environment traversable and also to color it in. as you progress in the story you will gain movement abilities to allow you access to new places, and to move easier. there is a bunch of side tracking to do and items to collect. mostly it's just clothes and collectables and decorations which will play a part in the side questing as well as just being fun to find. One annoying thing is almost essential things, that you can get along without but you'll have an easier time with them, are off the path and entirely able to be missed (i played through all of the game without the fast travel system because i didn't know it existed and i didn't find it)

this game is slow. it's not long at all, but it's meant to be played slowly. you are supposed to stop and look at everything, go everywhere, color things in, talk to everyone. you'll be missing out on a lot if you hurry. to that end, there is no real challenge. There are puzzles but they're pretty simple, while not being childishly easy they aren't very difficult and the game has a built in hint system if you're stuck. there are boss fights but they are more about providing a resistance for narrative reasons than actually making it hard for you. if you lose you just go back to the phase you lost in and seamlessly keep trying. you can adjust the accessibility to your liking if this isn't enough.

the characters are a delight. every single one is just dripping with charm. you'll delve quite a bit into the pc and the namesake of the game but you'll also meet a large cast of npcs that are all a joy to interact with.

overall it's the most relaxing experience i've had with a game in a while. you can tell it's a labor of love and was crafted with a joy of game making and story telling. my only complaint is the game crashes easily, especially as you approach the end. i found it breaking down every hour or so as i finished it off. fortunately it auto saves everywhere you go so it's only a minor annoyance at worst