Recenzje Chicory: A Colorful Tale

art autism ahh game

Best game ever

Cute game about coloring stuff and collecting garbage.

This is not going to be a glowing review. "Chicory" is a beautiful game, or, at least, as beautiful as the player is willing to make it. It takes place in the land of Picnic, a charming place inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, each of them named after a food, split into regions and cities all with food-related names. The game asks you to name your character after your favorite food - the default name for your dog protagonist is "Pizza", and that's how I will refer to the character, even if I typed "Carbonara" (on a side note, game could warn you that non-vegetarian names will be quite awkward around the block). The land of Picnic experiences a calamity - the world suddenly goes devoid of color, and the land's official Wielder (holder of a magic brush that can fill the land with color again) - a bunny named Chicory - is currently out of action, so it is up to Pizza, a humble janitor in Chicory's service, to grab the magic brush and solve the mystery of vanishing colors and to put Picnic's residents' minds at ease. "Chicory" is a unique game in that it's probably the only game I played where I wished my drawing tablet wasn't broken - playing even with the simplest and smallest of such things instead of a mouse probably would elevate the experience of playing through this story. Let's begin with what this game does well. First and foremost, "Chicory" tells you a beautiful, moving story about realising your potential, dealing with things like self-doubt or living up to someone's expectations. Through the game Pizza slowly develops her relationship with Chicory, who is her personal hero and whom she admires. The further you go through the game, the more information you gather about Chicory's and Pizza's past, motivations, dreams and troubles. It's a touching tale, supplemented by solid, if sometimes simplistic or naive, writing. It is the game's strongest suit. The world of Picnic is a wonderful place, filled with distinct, memorable creatures, almost each of them with a stand-out personality, charming design and a separate species (with a few exceptions). Each of the world's region is accompanied by it's own tune, some of them upbeat and some melancholic (all beautiful). The characters you encounter, because of art style and writing, are also sometimes incredibly funny. Encounters with animals like the Frog Detective or your town buddy, Pickle, are something I'll be remembering years from now. During your travels you will fill the world back with colors - mostly out of your own volition (after all, you are holding a magic brush). Each region (for the most of the game) has a limited palette of 4 colors and it's up to you how to use them. You'll gradually upgrade your brush to change the shape of it and obtain some more advanced drawing options like simple texturing or drawing a straight line. It's a brilliant idea to use MS Paint (gradually upgraded to a limited subset of photoshop) as your "powers". It makes "Chicory" a game like no other. You constantly have access to the world's map - at first black and white - that presents to you your progress in coloring it up. Mechanically, "Chicory" is a very simple puzzle game with a bit of exploration. Pizza follows a very linear path along which her bond with the magic brush strengthens and thus allows reaching more areas. Each new ability makes new areas of the map accessible and/or lets you go back to the areas you already visited to look for new pathways or some hidden secrets, like a new brush shape or a piece of clothing to modify Pizza's look. Exploring new areas usually involves getting through a series of puzzles that utilize the new mobility options, like shrinking yourself to move through a painted vine. And that's where we get to what I feel like are the games weaknesses. "Chicory", simply put, is just too simple. There's no difficulty whatsoever. The puzzles you're presented with are all straightforward and very few of them makes you stop for a while to think how to solve them ("solving" a puzzle usually means finding a way to get to the next screen). The game is so worried that you actually might have a problem proceeding, that it puts a phone booth every few screens, from which you can phone your hilariously drawn raccoon dad who will spell the solution out for you. "Chicory" also involves some "combat", but it's a combat you just can't lose and, although visually attractive, feels tacked on and uninterested in using the games' mechanics in any clever way; you might as well check the option to skip this combat altogether. It's there, but it feels like it was put inside only because there was a notion it has to be here in some capacity. The biggest flaw of the game, unfortunately, comes from how the game doesn't use the central mechanic (filling the world with colors) in any rewarding fashion. Pizza is the holder of the magic brush, and in the first 15 minutes or so of the game you encounter a beaver, who instructs you to paint back his house. It crrects you if you used too little of one color or too much of another, and then once he is satisfied, gives you a reward. If only the game had more things like that! Unfortunately, this is very quicly dropped. You basically are given very little reward and incentive to fill in the colors in any thought-out fashion. Later in the game I caught myself basically instantly filling the screens with bucket drop tool - the world didn't care if I used the available palette, so why should I (that being said I still tried to color the screens in some less simplistic way)? The puzzles didn't care about the colors as well, so you end up painting the world not out of some internal drive to make the world beautiful, but to get around the map and to get to the next screen. The puzzles could've had sunk into the whole drawing aspect a lot more - either through shape/color requirements or through using options like copy/pasting, or maybe using the brush presets (for example the "straight line" tool an alikes seem to be made for that). They don't, and the game becomes less about drawing and more about point 'n clicking. There is a subquest in this game that involves you drawing whatever you feel like drawing, and I think that the game would benefit from adding this part more prominently in the main quest. My playthrough lasted for 20 hours, and I feel like this time is bloated by a lot, but I spent significant amount of time searching for collectibles and trying to interact with every character and read every word. If I wasn't that type of player I'd say this game is probably around 12-14 hours long. Overall Chicory is a charming game, but it's brought down by unnecessary combat, simple puzzles and lack of in-game incentive and reward to care about coloring the world beyond bucket filling everything to make travels faster. This could be achieved in a variety of ways, and I hope if Chicory 2 happens, it will be realized. 7/10

Chicory is a cute game with interesting concept that allows you to paint the world however you like. It's super fun and I HAVE TO paint all the places I've been to - it's a strong urge for me. Story is engaging, game mechanic is interesting and have a metroidvania fell to it (you get new powers that allow you to open new paths in places you've been). Some puzzles can be more challenging but are always fun. It's a game worth playing.

Cons: -The boss fights are very easy, which isn't that much of a problem, since Chicory is a pretty laid-back game overall, but it just takes away from the excitement of an otherwise hype moment in the story a little bit -Two NPCs get a little political with each other -There's one point in the game where you design a logo for an NPC, and then you're forced to redo it, except with some un-erasable black scribbles in the middle of the canvas -The game ends Pros: -Beautiful, heartfelt story and message -The game's themes hit hard, especially if the player is a young adult, currently trying to figure themselves out -Fantastic character designs and animation, the world feels lived in and real -Incredible soundtrack -Great sound design -Competent puzzles, not too hard, not too easy -Have I mentioned the music slaps? A great experience!