izigame.me

Chicory: A Colourful Tale is a beautiful game about artistic burnout, the pressure of expectations and finding creativity in a blank canvas. The game, to me, started slow because before it truly began I found my own art based perfectionism coming into play and finding it hard to put brush to world because I felt paralysed by indecision. That being one of the main themes and conflicts in the story made the process of working past that through gameplay interesting. I soon found myself becoming more comfortable and confident and just splashing colour about randomly and I felt truly connected to Chicory and the player character's plight.
There's a lot to love about the game, the characters are all so wholesome and fun, I found the story of Beans and Pepper to be particularly charming. The character design and art style as a whole really added to the living picture book atmosphere, everything in the environment is clear in its design so hunting for collectibles never felt unfair, I never felt like I missed a collectible because it wasn't legible in the environment but rather because I missed a secret path.
And having the art school to break up the exploration to play about with the various brush styles and to imitate the master works was a great way to add to the history of the world in a fun way, I would have loved to be able to see the fellow students interpretations alongside my own.
Gameplay wise there's a good sense of progression through the story, with you unlocking a new skill and each new environment coming up with a new form of environmental puzzle to figure out. It made exploring feel more worthwhile and enjoyable because the game didn't rely solely on the brush mechanic and the brush itself improved each chapter. There were several boss fights as well, something I was surprised by since combat doesn't exist anywhere else in the game, and they were more spectacle than challenge since there were no real repurcussions for being hit, with there being accessibility options to change how many hits you could take also. Which to me was absolutely fine! I don't play games like Chicory to be challenged, and the spectacle of the boss fights were more than enough. There was a real sense of foreboding and danger through the visuals and soundtrack alone.
And speaking of the soundtrack, every single track was fantastic. An eclectic mix of emotional, playful and epic tracks that added to every scene. Her Wretched Utterances being one of my favourites (I might be biased because Queen Drosera had some of my favourite design and dialogue)
I'm wrapping up my review here, I feel like I haven't been able to fully express all that I like about Chicory. There's just so much to love about it! So I highly recommend everyone give it a shot, and if you're like me and struggle at the beginning with a sense of perfectionism try to push through because the story is totally worth it and you might end up coming away from the game with the ability to push through that same struggle in your own art.
Also Chicory and the player character are very cute girlfriends :)