Fills me with a rare feeling. I've played a lot of games in my time - far too many, if I'll be honest. I often find myself playing something others laud as a groundbreaking new exploration of genre or visuals where it only leaves me thinking I'm experiencing deja vu. Cuccchi is one of the recent cases of me playing a modern game and it feeling genuinely otherworldly. Visually, this is unparalleled, I've never seen anything else like it. Even on replays, I find myself stopping in my tracks, just to pan the camera around and absorb what I'm being presented, both to take in its beauty, and to try to understand its composition.
I am so hungry for the further exploration of games as vehicles for concept albums, digital museums or virtual mausoleums.
Cucchi is Intensely reverent of an artist I'd otherwise never heard of; Enzo Cucchi (pronounced "cookie"). His artwork is wonderfully realised, riding the wave of expressionism and shaking its own visual conventions with surprising regularity. Something about the low-resolution rendering direction somehow lends every scene from every angle a genuinely painterly feel. The music is astounding too, remarkably reactive to the player's position in the world.
So naturally, the catch is that it has a certain lack of confidence in itself. One of the central mechanical pillars of the game is the task of finding collectables and avoiding enemy skulls in Windows 95 maze screensaver-esque sequences. The levels themselves are peppered with unlockable artworks by Enzo for you to later inspect via a submenu, which adds some annoying blemishes to the landscapes. No reason for any of this to be here at all, I'll be frank, just because you're a game doesn't mean you have to carry the baggage of one. The heart and soul of the Cuccchi is the exploration of sight and sound, that's all it needed.
The game has recently received an update that adds a few more levels and songs to what was present at the time of writing, as well as a difficulty setting modifier you can use to outright remove the enemies! Sadly, the maze segments remain - and with a distracting sense of emptiness if you choose to remove the hostile annoyances. An imperfect solution, but it's nice that the experience can be tuned none the less.
I am so hungry for the further exploration of games as vehicles for concept albums, digital museums or virtual mausoleums.
Cucchi is Intensely reverent of an artist I'd otherwise never heard of; Enzo Cucchi (pronounced "cookie"). His artwork is wonderfully realised, riding the wave of expressionism and shaking its own visual conventions with surprising regularity. Something about the low-resolution rendering direction somehow lends every scene from every angle a genuinely painterly feel. The music is astounding too, remarkably reactive to the player's position in the world.
So naturally, the catch is that it has a certain lack of confidence in itself. One of the central mechanical pillars of the game is the task of finding collectables and avoiding enemy skulls in Windows 95 maze screensaver-esque sequences. The levels themselves are peppered with unlockable artworks by Enzo for you to later inspect via a submenu, which adds some annoying blemishes to the landscapes. No reason for any of this to be here at all, I'll be frank, just because you're a game doesn't mean you have to carry the baggage of one. The heart and soul of the Cuccchi is the exploration of sight and sound, that's all it needed.
The game has recently received an update that adds a few more levels and songs to what was present at the time of writing, as well as a difficulty setting modifier you can use to outright remove the enemies! Sadly, the maze segments remain - and with a distracting sense of emptiness if you choose to remove the hostile annoyances. An imperfect solution, but it's nice that the experience can be tuned none the less.