Chicory: A Colorful Tale has been a lovely experience for me. I probably used the word “cute” a lot in this review, but that’s because the game just oozes with cuteness! There’s a certain serenity to playing this game, just coloring places at your own pace. It set out to be a coloring book game of sorts, and I think it’s successful in that regard and then some! More people need to play this game, and frankly I think it’s criminal that this game doesn’t seem to be that well known! So go and play it!!!!
(full review https://doorplays.substack.com/p/door-reviews-chicory-a-colorful-tale)
(full review https://doorplays.substack.com/p/door-reviews-chicory-a-colorful-tale)
eu posso confirmar que pintei 👍
Holy shit, video games can be this joyful and fun while still engaging with an emotionally rich and at times genuinely devastating story?! Every new mechanic, every new scene and color and personality and exhilarating boss fight in this....metrovania coloring book (?) just rocked my socks off. Im in love. Im in love!
This game is a delight to play and takes you on an emotional journey. The story follows a puppy who gains the power of a magic paintbrush as all color is drained from the world. As the new wielder, you are tasked with fighting the corruption and bringing back color to the world.
Outside of the boss battles, there is no combat, the gameplay is entirely traversal and puzzle based using your ever growing paintbrush powers.
One of my favorite aspects of this game are the NPCs, who are varied and have their own developing stories as the game progress if you bother talking to them or doing their quests. You will regularly see familiar faces as you travel the map, as they like to move too which makes the world feel more alive as you are not the only one experiencing it.
Outside of the boss battles, there is no combat, the gameplay is entirely traversal and puzzle based using your ever growing paintbrush powers.
One of my favorite aspects of this game are the NPCs, who are varied and have their own developing stories as the game progress if you bother talking to them or doing their quests. You will regularly see familiar faces as you travel the map, as they like to move too which makes the world feel more alive as you are not the only one experiencing it.
A feel-good comfy Zelda-like. I was waiting for something more but I did get every piece of gol-darn trash. There was a nice sense of exploration but not much else. Play this if you are struggling.
Had so much fun playing this with a friend. I like the story and love the art and overall adventure. The highlight is using the painting mechanic throughout, it's just so fun. I recommend this for sure.
Took the art school really seriously and adored the one and only minigame where it’s suddenly OSU
This game is just enough. It's not super wide, or too small, the characters are memorable and lovable, but never overshadow each other. The story is based in such a simple premise that hits so hard for any creative mind-which is every mind.
It was such a fun experience to run around this world, not taking it so seriously. It's easy to lose ourselves in comparing our own works and painting to others, but we have to remember that every person that picks up the brush, or the pen, or the keyboard creates in their own way.
The best way to experience this game is going as slow or as fast as YOU want, not what some guide tells you. Take thirty seconds painting a screen or two hours on a single canvas.
Paint to your hearts content, and do it no matter how 'bad' you think you are
It was such a fun experience to run around this world, not taking it so seriously. It's easy to lose ourselves in comparing our own works and painting to others, but we have to remember that every person that picks up the brush, or the pen, or the keyboard creates in their own way.
The best way to experience this game is going as slow or as fast as YOU want, not what some guide tells you. Take thirty seconds painting a screen or two hours on a single canvas.
Paint to your hearts content, and do it no matter how 'bad' you think you are
I don't have too much to say about Chicory. It's a short and cute game about using your magical paintbrush to color the world back in and to help defeat the corruption plaguing the world. The relationships between the characters are very wholesome, and the game gives off a very positive vibe about overcoming one's impostor syndrome. The puzzles are pretty well constructed, but got a bit repetitive by the end. I played this game on PS5, which heavily utilizes the touchpad in a clever, yet carpal tunnel-inducing way. There are a lot of characters to talk to in the game, but by the second half I never felt inclined to really interact with anyone, nor did I feel the need to continue grabbing the many, many different costume options. It's an average game, and considering I got it for free I think it was worth my time, but it never really blew me away.
Fundamentally uninteresting & repetitive gameplay-wise - a game carried by its aesthetics, cutesy vibe and writing. As someone who doesn’t go in for this uwu self care is important shit, and isn’t a fan of stories where every character feels like the creation of a writer who spends more time in therapy or thinking about the stuff they learned in therapy than actually living their life, I can’t say this really spoke to me. Perplexed by the overwhelmingly positive reviews tbh.
This is a game I’ve owned for quite some time but just never got around to playing. The most recent game from the team who brought us the excellent Wandersong, I snagged it on sale a while back but just never found myself sitting down to play it. However, when my partner recently mentioned she was going to play through it, this was the perfect opportunity to both finally get to playing this as well as play something alongside her~. It took me around 9.5 hours to beat the game, and around 14 hours to 100% it. I played the English version on real hardware (and the hardware in question is important, in this case!).
Chicory is the story of the titular character…’s janitor. You play as Pizza, a little dog person who is the janitor for the brush wielder Chicory. It’s the wielder’s job to fill the world with color! With the power of the brush they wield, they and only they can turn the world from a black & white bore fest into a colorful world full of inspiration. There have been many wielders over the centuries, and Chicory is the current one. She’s the greatest! So talented and inspiring, it’s Pizza’s dream to be able to work so close with her. However, in the middle of your cleaning, suddenly the room you’re in and the WHOLE world lose color! Trying to go to Chicory for an answer, you find the brush lying outside her room. You pick it up, just to try it out, before going to her for help, but she’s almost completely unresponsive about it. It’s up to Pizza to go out into the world of Picnic and see just what’s the matter here, and just what is causing the color to go away!
Given that this was from the folks behind Wandersong, I had some sort of idea of what I was in for here. It wasn’t any surprise that, like the main character of Wandersong, Pizza is never actually given any gendered terms, making them an ideal (and much more gender-neutral presenting than Wandersong’s Bard) main character for anyone of any gender. It was also no surprise how naturally and quietly queer the land of Picnic is, as that’s something else I’ve come to expect that this team is very good at (and they do it excellently here too). Also like Wandersong, this is very much a game about being a grown up in the adult world, but I think they hit the thematic beats they’re going for much better here than they did in that game (as well as just pacing the narrative better as a whole). Chicory is very much a game about how your problems don’t just go away once you’re an adult.
Toxic/bad support systems & cycles of abuse, feelings of self-doubt and imposter syndrome, and even being bothered by the simple existentialism of it all are main thrusts of Chicory’s narrative and it executes on them excellently. The focal point of all of this is in the creation of art, unsurprisingly, but it goes far beyond that to self-expression as a whole. Chicory is a wonderfully written game and easily one of my favorites I’ve played this year for it. While it’s a game that kids could certainly enjoy and gain a good bit from (especially if they’re more teenage than under-10), I think adults are going to be the ones for whom the narrative of Chicory hits hardest and for all the best reasons.
Mechanically, Chicory is an adventure game not totally unlike a Zelda-type game. You go throughout the world talking to people, solving their problems, exploring new areas, and solving puzzles with the aid of your brush. By either using the right analog stick, the touch screen, or even the right joycon’s gyro (which was the best way to play for me at least), you can guide your brush along the screen to paint the world and everything in it in all sorts of colors. The main difference between something like Zelda and Chicory, however, is that Chicory has almost no combat at all. Whether it’s on the overworld of Picnic or one of it’s many (effective) dungeon areas, there are no normal enemies to speak of.
What there ARE are surprisingly difficult boss fights waiting for you at the end of each chapter, and beating a boss gives you and your brush a new power for environmental traversal (such as jumping). I’m a big Binding of Isaac fan, so I really enjoyed the boss fights and all of the attacks you need to dodge. They’re really well put together fights, but I gotta say, they stick out like a sore thumb in a game with otherwise no action element to speak of, and it really does make me question why they’re here at all. All that said, the game seems to actually understand that already. Not only are the death mechanics very forgiving (I seemed to “die” several times but never was actually sent back? I just instantly revived), you can also tweak the difficulty of boss fights quite granularly in the options menu, and you can even just set them to be skipped outright if you so desire. The overly hard boss fights are really the only negative point I can think of for Chicory’s entire design, and even then, given that you can just turn them off completely as soon as you load up the game for the first time, it’s really hard to call it that negative a point in the first place.
The aesthetics of Chicory are also fantastic. It’s a super cute and wonderfully designed world, with many characters even having unique (or close to it) fonts for how they speak, helping differentiate their un-voice acted dialogue just that much more from other NPCs in the world. The music is also fantastic, with each track complementing its related scene excellently, and especially the boss fights having some really fun and pumping tracks.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you didn’t get it from what I’ve written already, Chicory is an absolutely outstanding game. It’s narrative is one of the best and most poignant I’ve seen in a game, and that’s coming from me the same year I played through Disco Elysium, and the gameplay and aesthetics are tons of fun too. Watch a video or a trailer of Chicory, and you’ll probably know immediately if it’s for you or not, but if you even think you’ll like it at all, you’ll probably absolutely love it, just like I did~.
Chicory is the story of the titular character…’s janitor. You play as Pizza, a little dog person who is the janitor for the brush wielder Chicory. It’s the wielder’s job to fill the world with color! With the power of the brush they wield, they and only they can turn the world from a black & white bore fest into a colorful world full of inspiration. There have been many wielders over the centuries, and Chicory is the current one. She’s the greatest! So talented and inspiring, it’s Pizza’s dream to be able to work so close with her. However, in the middle of your cleaning, suddenly the room you’re in and the WHOLE world lose color! Trying to go to Chicory for an answer, you find the brush lying outside her room. You pick it up, just to try it out, before going to her for help, but she’s almost completely unresponsive about it. It’s up to Pizza to go out into the world of Picnic and see just what’s the matter here, and just what is causing the color to go away!
Given that this was from the folks behind Wandersong, I had some sort of idea of what I was in for here. It wasn’t any surprise that, like the main character of Wandersong, Pizza is never actually given any gendered terms, making them an ideal (and much more gender-neutral presenting than Wandersong’s Bard) main character for anyone of any gender. It was also no surprise how naturally and quietly queer the land of Picnic is, as that’s something else I’ve come to expect that this team is very good at (and they do it excellently here too). Also like Wandersong, this is very much a game about being a grown up in the adult world, but I think they hit the thematic beats they’re going for much better here than they did in that game (as well as just pacing the narrative better as a whole). Chicory is very much a game about how your problems don’t just go away once you’re an adult.
Toxic/bad support systems & cycles of abuse, feelings of self-doubt and imposter syndrome, and even being bothered by the simple existentialism of it all are main thrusts of Chicory’s narrative and it executes on them excellently. The focal point of all of this is in the creation of art, unsurprisingly, but it goes far beyond that to self-expression as a whole. Chicory is a wonderfully written game and easily one of my favorites I’ve played this year for it. While it’s a game that kids could certainly enjoy and gain a good bit from (especially if they’re more teenage than under-10), I think adults are going to be the ones for whom the narrative of Chicory hits hardest and for all the best reasons.
Mechanically, Chicory is an adventure game not totally unlike a Zelda-type game. You go throughout the world talking to people, solving their problems, exploring new areas, and solving puzzles with the aid of your brush. By either using the right analog stick, the touch screen, or even the right joycon’s gyro (which was the best way to play for me at least), you can guide your brush along the screen to paint the world and everything in it in all sorts of colors. The main difference between something like Zelda and Chicory, however, is that Chicory has almost no combat at all. Whether it’s on the overworld of Picnic or one of it’s many (effective) dungeon areas, there are no normal enemies to speak of.
What there ARE are surprisingly difficult boss fights waiting for you at the end of each chapter, and beating a boss gives you and your brush a new power for environmental traversal (such as jumping). I’m a big Binding of Isaac fan, so I really enjoyed the boss fights and all of the attacks you need to dodge. They’re really well put together fights, but I gotta say, they stick out like a sore thumb in a game with otherwise no action element to speak of, and it really does make me question why they’re here at all. All that said, the game seems to actually understand that already. Not only are the death mechanics very forgiving (I seemed to “die” several times but never was actually sent back? I just instantly revived), you can also tweak the difficulty of boss fights quite granularly in the options menu, and you can even just set them to be skipped outright if you so desire. The overly hard boss fights are really the only negative point I can think of for Chicory’s entire design, and even then, given that you can just turn them off completely as soon as you load up the game for the first time, it’s really hard to call it that negative a point in the first place.
The aesthetics of Chicory are also fantastic. It’s a super cute and wonderfully designed world, with many characters even having unique (or close to it) fonts for how they speak, helping differentiate their un-voice acted dialogue just that much more from other NPCs in the world. The music is also fantastic, with each track complementing its related scene excellently, and especially the boss fights having some really fun and pumping tracks.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you didn’t get it from what I’ve written already, Chicory is an absolutely outstanding game. It’s narrative is one of the best and most poignant I’ve seen in a game, and that’s coming from me the same year I played through Disco Elysium, and the gameplay and aesthetics are tons of fun too. Watch a video or a trailer of Chicory, and you’ll probably know immediately if it’s for you or not, but if you even think you’ll like it at all, you’ll probably absolutely love it, just like I did~.
The game is super unique in terms of gameplay and very, very fun and interactive. The accessibility is fantastic as well in a way that I recommend all games take note of. And I really do like the narrative aspects of the game; however, the dialogue is so… stilted, perhaps, in a way that is hard to ignore. All too often does it feel as though the characters are treating each other like therapists, and there is no subtlety in the slightest as to how they’re feeling and what the themes of the games are. And I do NOT want to imply that these themes are inherently corny, because they’re not. I quite like them, and the characters are enjoyable and well-written regardless. It’s simply awkward, sometimes, in its portrayal. That all said, the game is fantastic, and I would recommend it to anyone reading this. Oh, and it’s best played with a mouse, in case that weren’t obvious.
Chicory perfectly demonstrates how to effectively fuse narrative devices into gameplay. The game could have very easily made the ability to colour the world a gimmick, but instead makes painting a real focal point to drive puzzle-solving, navigation and combat. A great experience!
I FUCKING LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH, its the love of my life and favourite game of all time!! i love everything about it and its such a great love letter to artists. its very feel good and made me smile a ton when i was in a pretty dark place mentally.
if you are someone who creates and worries about the quality of it, i think you will really appreciate the story of this game.
if you are someone who creates and worries about the quality of it, i think you will really appreciate the story of this game.
Lovely stuff, but man I wish this had been on DS
What a masterpiece of a game underrated
Deep story meaningful uplifting talking about very serious subject
Lovable characters and world
Amazing ideas to play with
outstanding soundtrack with wonderful puzzle
Deep story meaningful uplifting talking about very serious subject
Lovable characters and world
Amazing ideas to play with
outstanding soundtrack with wonderful puzzle
it's great, please play it if you're an artist of any kind it makes you feel seen
also just running around the world making everything look pretty is a very calming pass time
also just running around the world making everything look pretty is a very calming pass time
I don't know how much I can say about Chicory that others haven't already said, so I'll keep it short.
Chicory is a warm, beautiful meditation on art, acceptance, and imposter syndrome all with a backdrop of a stunning OST and an immaculate art direction.
It never shies away from the heavier parts of its message, and it never makes the player feel guilty for taking as much time as they want to explore and color in the world.
I also have to note that it has a great deal of extremely heartwarming. considerate queer representation that brought tears to my eye more than once.
Please play Chicory. It deserves all of its praise.
Chicory is a warm, beautiful meditation on art, acceptance, and imposter syndrome all with a backdrop of a stunning OST and an immaculate art direction.
It never shies away from the heavier parts of its message, and it never makes the player feel guilty for taking as much time as they want to explore and color in the world.
I also have to note that it has a great deal of extremely heartwarming. considerate queer representation that brought tears to my eye more than once.
Please play Chicory. It deserves all of its praise.
This game is so fucking cute dude. It's just pleasant. I like being a cute dog in a cute dress and a cute hat and I get to paint the world and make my rabbit friend happy.
I wasn’t initially sold on its cutesy vibes and clumsy controller painting, but then its insightful and heartwarming charm about the joy of creating started to shine through, while the controller painting “upgrades” let that part of gameplay start to shine as well. It’s still intentionally a bit clumsy after upgrades, but in a way that encourages as much player expression as desired and a consciously expressed absence of judgment or gatekeeping. If that sounds like a grab bag of needlessly clinical buzzwords, it doesn’t feel like that at all in action; it’s like a joyful magic trick that convinced me to color in my restaurant menu with the provided crayons.
The light platformer puzzling and innovative boss fights are great fun, too!
The light platformer puzzling and innovative boss fights are great fun, too!
has the compelling and emotional plot of Wandersong but with more interesting gameplay and fun sidequests. Emotional moments might not hit as hard if you don't at least dabble in visual arts yourself. Also has a Lena Rane OST so you know it's good
funny dog paint the world. literally no misses, the story is perfect, the mechanics are fun, the bosses are challenging but fun with a lot of accessibility options for when they're just too challenging for you. soundtrack is great, visuals are really charming. this game makes me hungry
I played Celeste recently and kinda became a Lena Raine fan, so I checked her other works, and I listened to the Chicory soundtrack and I just had to play this game.
It took me a bit of time to really get into it. While the game never tells you to do so, I felt obligated to fully color every screen, and as an artist it felt more like work than playing a videogame. Tho it quickly became a joy to paint this world. Having a limited palette of colors specific to each area is a very good idea to force you to experiment; same with the art pieces you can makes or reproduce throughout the game.
What really got me is the story and characters. I played this game during a depressive episode I'm still not out of, and the game just put words and images on a lot of stuff and it feels good. I see myself a lot in both Chicory and Fruits (my character) and I kept thinking "woah they made a game about me !" (as must have thought every other artist playing this game haha) It all hits very close to home.
Same for the soundtrack actually. I think I noticed a lot of inspirations from games I know too. Even if these are not actual references, all of this made me feel closer to this game and the people who made it.
Overall I think Chicory helped me a lot, to improve as an artist, and just to feel better, and I have no doubt it will help me a lot in the future too.
Now I just wished I didn't listen to the soundtrack before playing the game. I would have cried like a baby if I got to listen to "The Mountain Top" for the first time during the credits.
It took me a bit of time to really get into it. While the game never tells you to do so, I felt obligated to fully color every screen, and as an artist it felt more like work than playing a videogame. Tho it quickly became a joy to paint this world. Having a limited palette of colors specific to each area is a very good idea to force you to experiment; same with the art pieces you can makes or reproduce throughout the game.
What really got me is the story and characters. I played this game during a depressive episode I'm still not out of, and the game just put words and images on a lot of stuff and it feels good. I see myself a lot in both Chicory and Fruits (my character) and I kept thinking "woah they made a game about me !" (as must have thought every other artist playing this game haha) It all hits very close to home.
Same for the soundtrack actually. I think I noticed a lot of inspirations from games I know too. Even if these are not actual references, all of this made me feel closer to this game and the people who made it.
Overall I think Chicory helped me a lot, to improve as an artist, and just to feel better, and I have no doubt it will help me a lot in the future too.
Now I just wished I didn't listen to the soundtrack before playing the game. I would have cried like a baby if I got to listen to "The Mountain Top" for the first time during the credits.
Not really for me, i'm not really that creative but it's very cute and very well designed, maybe I'll come back to it later.
I played this game for news project that never ended up being picked up by networks. I love this game with all of my heart. I've copy and pasted an excerpt from my original review below.
"Exploring the province of Picnic you will meet characters named after plants or foods, spend lots of time colouring, and go on a journey filled with heart, adventure, and self discovery. The game's story is structured into 10 chapters. Each Chapter reaches it's climax with either a fun and forgiving boss fight or some really cool and unique puzzles. The soundtrack is filled with arrangements from Lena Raine that often had me stop playing to just enjoy the music....This game goes out to all the homies who spent their childhoods playing Pictochat, Kidpix, and MS Paint! I put in about 24 hours of total game time and easily at least 10 of those hours were spent just colouring this adorable world"
"Exploring the province of Picnic you will meet characters named after plants or foods, spend lots of time colouring, and go on a journey filled with heart, adventure, and self discovery. The game's story is structured into 10 chapters. Each Chapter reaches it's climax with either a fun and forgiving boss fight or some really cool and unique puzzles. The soundtrack is filled with arrangements from Lena Raine that often had me stop playing to just enjoy the music....This game goes out to all the homies who spent their childhoods playing Pictochat, Kidpix, and MS Paint! I put in about 24 hours of total game time and easily at least 10 of those hours were spent just colouring this adorable world"
Undeniably sweet, charming and wholesome… even when you spend all of your time drawing dicks, scrawling obscenities, splatter-painting every surface with hideous globs of color, and generally creating a bunch of horrifying MS Paint monstrosities that everyone trips over themselves to praise and fawn over. I vandalized their entire village and they loved me for it.
Deducting one star because of the high number of gamebreaking bugs that continually stymied my progress and made me restart — ESPECIALLY a truly egregious bug that kept freezing up my game during the last boss fight. Totally inexcusable.
Deducting one star because of the high number of gamebreaking bugs that continually stymied my progress and made me restart — ESPECIALLY a truly egregious bug that kept freezing up my game during the last boss fight. Totally inexcusable.
I credit rolled Chicory today. I picked in up on ps+ after reading a click bait headline about the last chance to play it before it is removed from ps+. I had no expectations or knowledge of the game other than it had a neat art style.
I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Good exploration of mental health, without being too heavy. Some neat puzzle mechanics. Some of the boss battles were pretty cool, with the dual control (and some other tricks thrown in).
I feel like the paint the world aspect of the game didn't hit with me. I certainly didn't paint just for fun. And I didn't feel compelled to side quest and collect everything. Although, some of the side quests were cute and funny. Overall, pretty good. Would recommend.
I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Good exploration of mental health, without being too heavy. Some neat puzzle mechanics. Some of the boss battles were pretty cool, with the dual control (and some other tricks thrown in).
I feel like the paint the world aspect of the game didn't hit with me. I certainly didn't paint just for fun. And I didn't feel compelled to side quest and collect everything. Although, some of the side quests were cute and funny. Overall, pretty good. Would recommend.
Cute game, with some nice pieces of music, and an interesting gameplay mechanic, which sadly ended up being extremely boring for me. The game just didn't manage to sink its hooks into me. The contrast of the very bright and popping colors set against the "empty" white background was grating to the eyes.
One last note: The family of the MC is incredibly wholesome, which brought me a lot of joy!
One last note: The family of the MC is incredibly wholesome, which brought me a lot of joy!
esse jogo é muito único pra falar que simplesmente é incrivel ou pessimo, mas eu particularmente amei ele, é um jogo tão belo e a ost da lena raine ajudou DEMAIS a esse jogo ficar uma obra prima
This game is inspiring, full stop. I originally got this game after getting a recommendation from a friend and started playing it on a whim. It ended up being one of my favourite titles from that year, and one that I think about often even after beating it.
This game tasks you with adding colour to the world after an incident occurs and drains it all. You inherit the Master Brush from the previous master, Chicory, and set out to explore the cause and learn more about the ways of painting. There is a surprising depth to this game, and touches upon themes of expectation, depression, and what it means to be artistic. There are some very dark moments touched upon here that I was all for.
The gameplay is quite simple too, paint the world however you like. You have a multitude of colors are styles to choose from and you can create whatever it is your mind can think of. It practically begs the player to do whatever it is they want, which allows players of any level to jump in and experience the game.
The puzzles and boss fights are also a treat, though for the latter it does feel a bit more out of place with this game. Not thematically, as they are beautifully integrated into the story, but more mechanically as these would probably throw inexperienced players for a loop. They look beautiful, however, as does the entire game for that matter.
This is truly a masterclass of storytelling and thematic gaming. While on the shorter side, this is a phenomenal piece of art that deserves the recognition it has gotten. Please play this game, it is worth your time.
This game tasks you with adding colour to the world after an incident occurs and drains it all. You inherit the Master Brush from the previous master, Chicory, and set out to explore the cause and learn more about the ways of painting. There is a surprising depth to this game, and touches upon themes of expectation, depression, and what it means to be artistic. There are some very dark moments touched upon here that I was all for.
The gameplay is quite simple too, paint the world however you like. You have a multitude of colors are styles to choose from and you can create whatever it is your mind can think of. It practically begs the player to do whatever it is they want, which allows players of any level to jump in and experience the game.
The puzzles and boss fights are also a treat, though for the latter it does feel a bit more out of place with this game. Not thematically, as they are beautifully integrated into the story, but more mechanically as these would probably throw inexperienced players for a loop. They look beautiful, however, as does the entire game for that matter.
This is truly a masterclass of storytelling and thematic gaming. While on the shorter side, this is a phenomenal piece of art that deserves the recognition it has gotten. Please play this game, it is worth your time.