There is no way to describe the experience I had with this game except touching. Not just because a sad and emotional story, but because how it talks about art and artists. It is so relatable, so many things you can point and say "yes, I went through that" or "I understand so much how you feel" that it feels so special.

Gameplay is fun, characters feel really human and relatable and the map is so well designed and pushes you to keep exploring and finding the last collectable in a friendly way and not as a slog. The nice words when starting the game are welcomed as well, as you need these little pushes to keep dropping your heart and creativity in the game maps and drawings.

Is a beautiful and fun game that any person that had involved inselve with art needs to play and discover.

I really do regret not playing this game when it came out - between my final semester before graduating from university and the pressures of finding a job that used my bachelor's, I simply didn't have much time to contribute to playing Chicory. but now that I'm out of there, at my new job, and have enough time to myself in the afternoons and evenings... I started playing

this game is so goddamn good dude. gameplay is fun and relaxing. I always trusted that the guys behind Wandersong would make an excellent story, but man did they blow Wandersong out of the water with this game and its themes

my ONLY complaint with this game has to be with figuring out exactly how to hit the final boss. phase 2 in particular was incredibly annoying. but that's an incredibly small complaint compared to just how well crafted the rest of this game is. it's a very special game. play it now.

I was smiling for like a good 3/4ths of this game, and it was really fun to play coop. I have never been a great artist, but this game makes it fun to just try whatever comes to mind, especially in the art classes. The world and characters are great to interact with, and the quests you do with them are extremely soulful. The soundtrack for this game is pretty great. The song for Dinners goes off. I'd say my main two issues with the game are the boss fights and lulls in the story. The boss fights feel like they have a lot of missed potential. I like the concept of them but like you don't even die to them and the whole experience feels a bit clunky and too low stakes. The story gets a bit redundant at times especially when you have these long conversations with chicory that just kinda feel like repetitions of things that were already stated in a different way. However, overall, this is a great experience to try out and is unlike most games I have played before.

cute game that you can tell is a labor of love from all the little quirks and touches that exude in charm. it can get repetitive and draggy filling everything in, but overall for someone who doesn't really like metroidvanias it was still pretty fun going back to explore all the areas with every new ability unlocked. lena raine's soundtrack does a Lot to cover up the game's flaws (mainly boring boss fights and weak plot points), but the story is still heartfelt and warm, managing to give me pleasant surprises throughout my 100% playthrough.

I think this game is really cute and I really adore the narrative and themes it is trying to convey but I think the concept of the game, being all colorless and bland, actually kinda works against it because every area looks the same until I decide to manually color in everything. I get that it's kinda the intention of the game to leave things empty and colorless so the player colors in everything and tosses their own creativity onto things, but it becomes a bit overwhelming to try and do that in every area + i played this on switch and the paintbrush controls are not intuitive on controller at all. i'll pick this back up on PC eventually, but for now I adored everything except for the actual gameplay of the game itself. Soundtrack good af tho.

Chicory's melancholic unraveling was nothing but an emotional walk for me. It has such a real captivating idea of stress, anxiety, and unease. Despite being a very clearly inviting cozier work to get yourself into, it's all about bringing those anxious dizzy and frictional creative thoughts to life. In a world full of conversations and pieces on the "artist's experience", this is most certainly one that paints a very personal and graceful stroke of the brush on it.

And I just... love it. All of it. I love that every screen is an encouraging attempt for you to color the place however you like, but you are never judged for leaving it how it is. Every earnest effort is given praise and a warm hug, and home and support are always a call away. Even if you choose not to, you'll find support yourself as you journey. I love how the 'trials' are just little things, small but poignant lessons that help you find your center. I felt teary-eyed at all times during the last four chapters, just building up to capturing that feeling inside, that urge and real sense of want.

I also adore its setting, this lightly fanciful but towny vibe, people of all colors of life simply living and looking up to you as you go. A lot of them are soft and charming, but I enjoy the rare but notable pointed characters you come across too. I especially like how they all seem to be dealing with their own baggage and your color helps them work through the day too. Even when Chicory is at its most twee and hilariously cute, it never ever feels like you left that light permeating sadness that you'll have to deal with by journey's end.

Come join us in making a painting about life.

Well it seems like the past few crowd favorite games I have reviewed, I have gone against the norm. Well here is another one....

🎮 Platform: PC KB+M (Due to the amount of coloring you do a mouse is fastest. Controller swill get tedious for me)
⌚ Time played - 10h
🏆Trophy completion - Most were just story based. Though nothing is locked post game, there is no real collectible tracker, and collectibles just blend into the background and very easy to miss. You can call parents for hints on some collectibles or more than likely follow a guide. There are tons of things to collect and looks very tedious but doable.
🤬Difficulty - Not very difficult. Your standard puzzles and map traversal. If you love the sort of map traversals in old school Zelda, Oneshot, etc etc, you will be at home. If you get lost in those games, get ready to get lost here. The game does provide you an overwold map, but dungeons do not have a map.

🌄Graphics – what can i say bland. The game has a promise of something interesting happening because you will color the game yourself. Well, you are very limited on colors, brush styles, and basically 95% of the game you just color the whole scene one color and quickly as possible, as the point is to solve puzzles and move to the next area. Just want to make it clear, I am not expecting an MS Paint here. I am looking for a creative take on colorlessness in games.

Sure there are some interesting interactions here and there with mobs, plants, vines, etc. but nothing that doesn't get old after the first 2 hours. For a game that features a world your suppose to color, its very limited in creativity on that.

🌦 Atmosphere/Music – Music is nice. Everyone is super nice to each other, siblings tell each other they love them, that's cool. All for world peace and love. Coupled with this, you have a bit of self-doubt and imposter syndrome in our protagonists. Whatever, did not appeal to me. Its not that I haven't dealt with it, I do, but when character X asks you to leave them alone, you keep coming back to them and pestering them... not realistic. Most stories have some emotional intelligence and support elements, this has more but It did not touch me the way it touched others.

📚 Main Story / Characters – A very typical story. Go to different worlds, solve bunch of puzzles, meet different talking races of people and insects, upgrade your brush to get new skills, with a bit of emo thrown in, blah blah blah

🤺 Combat – Horrible. The main combat in this game is the boss fights. I did 6 boss fights or so and I cannot tell you exactly what happened in them. I just took my brush and swiped on their eye ball or face 1000x times and then something happened and something else happened and eventually it ended. There is no strategy, creativity, you cannot do clever things like erase things, But its inexcusable for 50% of the game every boss fight is exactly this. Its absolutely dumb. the music in the boss fight was great though! I just focused on that.

🧭 Side Activities / Exploration – Holy moly there are a ton of things to collect and VERY easy to miss things. Because nothing has color collectibles just mix into the background. Good luck if you are trying to collect things. Luckily post game you can collect stuff so nothing is locked out.

🚗 Movement/Physics – Annoying. This game only has PUSH, so sometimes you need to push a bomb to a certain area. because of its impreciseness, it gets trapped into a corner ,and you have to reset the puzzle. Because without a pull you can't get it out. How hard is it to implement a pull? There are other annoyances related to manipulating mob movement which I won't get into to not spoil the game. You will see what I mean when you get there. One thing I do like is you can move fast in your own paint when you unlock it very early on in game.

📣 Voice acting – None

🥇 Best thing about the game - None

👎 Worst thing about the game - The core game play is boring.

💡Final Thoughts:
Well I expected a lot from this game. I was expecting some creativity around coloring, an innovative way of exploration, creative uses of color and textures to solve puzzles. Something artistic. However this game is just simply a colorless zelda like 2d exploration game. Coloring and a brush is just a side effect. Right here you are going to argue with me and say well your wrong vin because the abilities your char unlocks are thematic. So far all thr abilities I unlocked are movement related. Go up a painted wall, walk faster on a painted floor, go through a painted vine, you get the idea. If you love your 2d zelda games play this. If you were expecting something artistic, creative, unique look at colorlessness in games, move on. This game overstays its welcome and initially i decided to stop at the 50%. the core game play loop it provides is not why I came here. However, with some prompting from other gamers i finished it and my experience did not change for the 2nd half of 50%. I felt other games do whatever this is trying to do a lot better. For example I think Okami is a great game and innovates on this painting concept! Simply put there is nothing I haven't seen before, except a black and white game. I don't think I have played any black and white games in my life....except this and Toem.

This game really spoke to me. Like, it doesn’t do or say anything that hasn’t already been done before, but the way it does it worked for me. The story is anything but subtle, but it’s still fun and heartwarming. The characters are great and memorable. The gameplay is interesting, altho I feel like it could have been expanded in more interesting ways. The puzzles and combat also aren’t very challenging. Also, I’m not sure if the game would work as well on people who don’t enjoy drawing. But I do, and I loved it. Definitely my favorite game that came out in 2021.

Started it just to have some funny game to play sometimes, expecting it to be just "good" and my world being 90% 1 color because i couldn't bother making it pretty in every screen.

Ended backtracking to old areas to do 100% and get my world as pretty as i could. Overall it's just a very fun game, with lots of cool ideas that work together, and i can't imagina what a optimized Speedrun of it looks like.

Loved the characters, the world and even the story, even if it is kinda clichê.

Great game, with fun characters, great art, intense bosses (even if easy sometimes), outstanding music.

I have a lot of intersecting feelings about this one which ultimately cancel out to "it's fine." The limitations of the painting mechanic and the aggressively supportive dialogue overshadow what is otherwise an enjoyable DS-era Zelda-like.

My negative reaction to sections of the game might be partially in response the the euphoric praise surrounding it. Just factually untrue interpretations of its politics that aren't exactly the game's fault (though I wish it spent time actually interrogating it's monarchic world instead of just dropping misread Marxism).

For a game about creativity, Chicory is remarkably paint-by-numbers.

I'm happy to report that the moment-to-moment act of painting feels nice. It's easy to do, as you can just tap discrete objects to instantly fill them with color, and you can hold a button down to automatically fill in large spaces. You don't have to worry too much about coloring inside the lines if you want to maintain a clean look with your work. If you make a mistake, you can do the exact same things with the erase button.

Each area gives you a different four-color palette, so you're likely to end up with something visually coherent and pleasing even if you don't have any formal knowledge of complementary color schemes.I'm not really a visual arts person, so I didn't get too much use out of the myriad brush customization options I got from doing sidequests. However, I still found it relaxing and satisfying to fully color in screens with the base painting mechanics.

There's cleverness to how these painting mechanics translate to actual progression. You have to consider things like what objects to paint, which specific spots to paint, and what to erase. Some light platforming sections also require a bit of timing with using your paintbrush. The puzzles have just the right amount of complexity that I only had to take a beat or two to parse environments and their interactable elements then suss out solutions for most of them. What platforming there is isn't mechanically demanding, and when I made mistakes, I found the level design to be pretty simple and forgiving that I could get back to where I was quickly.

I do wish the boss fights were as interesting as the puzzles. While they look cool, with some neat visual and mechanical wrinkles that vary things up, they don't make any use of your abilities. It's all just moving yourself to the right spot to not get hit and clicking on the boss. It can get hectic dodging the escalating attack patterns because you don't have much mobility, but that's the extent of these battles being engaging. There are only two that I remember posing any sort of challenge, one about halfway through and the other being the last boss. There's no hard failure state as well. The default difficulty setting lets you only take two hits, but you just have to restart a phase (i think?) and not the entire battle, so it all felt low-stakes to me.

I played on mouse and keyboard, so I can imagine the boss fights would be way harder with a controller and thus feel more involved.

The music does so much to elevate these battles. It's unsurprising because the amazing Lena Raine did the soundtrack. Her work on Celeste is maybe my favorite part of that game, and it might be the same for this game.

A good mix of electronic and acoustic sounds make up the score, fitting the different vibes of each area and story moment. There's the relaxing gentle strings in the Town of Luncheon, the dark head-bopping synthwave dance beats of Probably Ancient Evil, the beautiful melancholy piano of Simmer Springs, and the bouncy easy listening sax of Dinners, the Big City to highlight a handful. Together with a ton more memorable tracks, this OST helps bring to life a whimsical adventure that delves into some ~real ♥♥♥♥~.

Most of the whimsy comes from the optional activities and NPC conversations. The tone can be a tad twee, but there's enough personality and variety in the surprisingly big cast that I ultimately found doing sidequests and talking to npcs to be a warm respite to the more serious subject matter of the A plot.

The overarching narrative tackles themes of self-doubt, creative burnout, and the burdens of tradition. It does so with the right balance of authenticity and empathy, not being afraid of expressing the thoughts and emotions we all have when our self-esteem is at its lowest, while offering sincere affirmations of support. So even within the heroic fantasy wrappings, the two main characters have believable arcs. Granted, that heroic fantasy layer along with where I'm at in terms of personal growth and acceptance kept the story from deeply resonating with me.

The more intriguing point the game tries to make is selling the idea that everyone has a creative spark. I don't quite buy it from the in-fiction storytelling. It rejects the Chosen One trope through the explicit writing aspects, but you're still the only person in the world that gets anything done, and everybody praises you constantly, even if you half-ass tasks. It gestures at this concept at the very end, but by then the game is already over, so it's not actually developed.

Where it does succeed in this goal is, more importantly, through player interaction. There's no extrinsic reward to coloring everything on a screen, but I did so for about 80% of the map. There's no grading system for achieving an aesthetic, but I still took the time and effort to color spaces in a way that made sense to my untrained eyes. Sure, the looks I went for were basic as hell, but the fact that I ended up caring at all while having no aspirations to paint without the game straining to make that happen made me believe in its core argument: you don't have to be an ~artist~ to express creativity.

While I won't be proudly sharing screenshots or gifs of my "artistic" attempts at coloring in the world, I found calming contentment in bringing back color to the charming world of Chicory over the 13 and a half hours I spent with it.

A modern game with retro stylings, an eye-popping adventure with a magical brush that turns the world into your endless canvas. Playing it feels like a lost 2D Zelda, or if Okami had been a Game Boy Colour title, even down to the locations being static screens instead of automatically scrolling.

The game is divided into a loose overworld of fields, rivers, valleys, towns, and dark caverns waiting to be explored. You'll need your brush and growing colour abilities to overcome puzzles and unlock new areas. The only real downside is the boss battles, as they tend to drag on and can't be failed.

The story, about depression and expectations and all our very human insecurities and flaws, hit really hard. I'm glad the main characters are on the path to getting better, and that was only possible by talking to each other and being open.

Chicory is special. It accepts you just the way you are, because you are special. It’s in the DNA of this game, to make you feel understood and welcome. In that sense it’s one of the most coherent experiences I had in a video game or in any medium period.
It deals with so many REAL topics, that have followed me around for as long as I think and dictate my thoughts and the way I see myself in this world. I’ve recently started a new career as a developer and went through some dark patches to get where I am now, but still, imposter syndrome and the feeling not being good enough or skilled enough is a constant companion. So I was able to feel the journey of Falafel (yeah that was me) from the get-go. But the game doesn’t just provide a story and characters to relate to, that already would’ve been great. But it follows that idea, that ‘you are good enough’ so thoroughly, it’s ingrained in every aspect of the game. Just take a look at the accessibility options. It’s not following some outdated artificial and gatekeepey gamer codex, but it allows (and encourages you) to play the game just as you want and need it. You can turn off complete game sequences like boss fights (which are actually super creative and fun, if you chose to do them), but also just turn off something seemingly trivial as wet noises, that might trigger you. They give you a multitude of tools, to create a safe and enjoyable gaming environment for almost anyone.
The premise of the game continues with that: the world has lost all its color and it’s up to you to return it. Or is it? You can color everything as much and as little as you want, you can paint it colorful or wander through a black and white environment. It doesn’t change anything about the ability to enjoy the game. You can collect stuff, but you absolutely don’t have to, because it doesn’t change anything about the game you will experience. The game doesn’t force you to be quick about anything, to be resourceful, or to work hard to get something. Getting new abilities is not a reward, it happens naturally, because you spend time with the game. It switches up so many of decades old gaming tropes, that It felt really refreshing just to be there.
It’s also so beautiful and important how mental health is a topic the inhabitants of the world speak about, without sensationalizing it. It’s normal, because we all endure these things in one way or another and it’s important to acknowledge that. It’s ok to say no to things and say that you can’t do other things now, or maybe ever. It brought tears to my eyes, when I read NPCs speak out some of the things, I constantly think.
It’s also beautiful how everyone around you encourages you to go on, even if you paint horrendous portraits (as I did), everyone cheers for you. And that’s what’s most important irl. If I didn’t have the cheering and the believing in me, from people close and distant, I wouldn’t be where I am now. It’s okay to ask and look for that, maybe even depend on that.
All of these emotions are intensified by another masterpiece of a soundtrack by Lena Raine.
Chicory shows yet again how impactful video games can be, because they are interactive and give you the chance to digest in your own way and tempo. What a time to be a gamer, when I can fill my time between entertainment blockbusters with gems like this

What an amazing game. Great story to tell, with amazing characters, and amazing writing. Wonderful music too. It's mechanically very similar to a 2D Zelda game, and it's just as fun as they are, if not more so. The one gripe I have unfortunately comes with the point of the game, but the game has no color, until you decide to color it in. Thematically it's really good, but it takes a lot of effort to make the game nice to look at, which wasn't ideal. But it's fine because I appreciate this work of art for all it's parts. Very good game.

Beaten: Apr 11 2022
Time: 6.5 Hours
Platform: Mac

Chicory is a cool game, but it’s a cool game that didn’t quite hit me like I’d hoped it would. It’s got exactly the kind of thoughtful puzzles and even more thoughtful dialogue that I wish more games had, a confidence in its themes that isn’t often seen, but all the same it didn’t quite connect for me, and I’m not even really at a loss for why. 

In Chicory, you are painting a food-inspired world, pushing your way through puzzles on your way to fight a corruption encroaching upon the edges of this world. It feels like a mix of 2D zelda-inspired puzzles with a tone and vibe closer to Earthbound or Mother 3, but less outwardly absurdist. The puzzles are never real progress blockers, more just the path you need to take. Never too hard, but also not always incredibly easy. They keep you engaged enough on the way from one spot to another.

The real draw (hah!) is your ability to express yourself as you go along, painting literally everything in the world. The game’s themes all grow out of this mechanic naturally, providing commentary on a range of self-confidence and art-related topics, particularly focusing on learning to love yourself, and not self-critique yourself into a spiral.

I should really resonate with all of this, it’s all emotions I’ve been through, but for some reason it just didn’t hit quite right. If I had to blame it on one thing, it might just be that I’m not a huge twee-indie-puzzler guy? I enjoyed the puzzles well enough, particularly how well the different mechanics get mixed so often, but just as often I’d want to just cruise through them and get to the next story beat, or the next boss. There’s a variety of small other things throughout the game that bugged me, but if the game had connected better with me I don’t think I would have even noticed them.

I don’t think there’s much, if anything, “wrong” with the game, it just wasn’t quite my speed. I’d take a million games with themes like this, and art like this, over most big budget games I’ve ever played, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the game. But it won’t be one of my favorites.