Chicory: A Colorful Tale, A Colorful Adventure Exploring Mental Health Issues

Indie games tend to rely on a single brilliant concept to propel them forward. Is the story well-written and unique? Is it a style that you’ve never seen before? What about a gaming concept that serves as the foundation for the remainder of the game? Any of these options will do. Small-team games need just one of these to soar beyond the competition, and Chicory: A Colorful Tale excels at that.

To my surprise, I’ve started exploring extra titles since joining GGTalks. As a result, this is my first experience with a painting game. I’ve never had the chance to play Mario Paint, but I’m a big fan of mystery games and 2D side-scrolling platformers. My expectations are low, but I’m excited to try a new style of game I’ve never tried before. And with that, let’s get started.

A Lot More Than a Drawing Book

You take on the role of a pup painter in Chicory. It’s somewhat of a drawn dog. You’ve been thrown into the coveted role of The Wielder of The Brush, and you’ve got to… well, rescue the planet! We’re not going to dive into the story’s details here. Sure, it spoiler warning, however also since it is excellent and explanations would be a disservice to its significance and beauty. In spite of the game’s brevity in terms of text, it manages to be unforgettable when it does occur. When necessary, it’s brutal. There are times when it gets very deep. And then there are the moments when it’s just straight amusing in a manner that games seldom achieve.

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Among the topics covered in Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a few heavy ones. Playing this game can help you better understand your own mental well-being. On having confidence in one’s own abilities. It’s time to move on. All of this is handled with care. You have the option to activate or deactivate content alerts, so you are fully informed before proceeding. In the event that you’re looking for a simple paint-by-numbers activity, this is the one for you. However, if you’re willing to put in the effort, it may be much better. Still, it’s a great way to unwind while painting.

Gameplay Is Flawless

Using an ever-increasingly stronger paintbrush, you travel throughout the globe solving riddles. Certain regions will be unlocked by painting dot patterns. In other instances, you’ll use paint to trigger items by flipping them like a button. Even squid kid-style, you can use your paint to go about the globe in a different method. Chicory begins by experimenting with these concepts one at a time and then expands on the possibilities of a painting mechanism.

I admit that I am not a professional artist. I’m terrible with coloring balance, and painting the universe with a brush isn’t one of my key strengths. You don’t have to do this all the time, but there are a lot of color selections and brush types to choose from, as the planet you’re exploring is completely blank. Many routes across the game world need the use of landscape painting. It’s possible to float in the paint, and also ascend and make branches and other plants shine.

A handful of navigation aspects help you reach where you need to go in this “walking-simulator” setting. Until you advance and develop a strong relationship with the brush, you will be unable to see much of the universe. Bosses are your sole foes in the caves you explore. Invulnerability, final battle elimination, control stick scheme swapping, and even eliminating wet noises (because not many folks enjoy such noises!) are all available in the game’s settings menu. Don’t anticipate much of a challenge in the majority of your playtime if you don’t have those settings activated. There are choices for users who merely want to take in the tale and the setting.

For the most part, you’ll be engaging with the world’s inhabitants, from a sorrowful creature who lost the best buddy to a hoarder who seeks meaning in rescuing orphaned cats–and even resolving a comical puzzle about who took hotel furnishings. With a wide range of humanoid characters to choose from, the game has a lot going for it.

Where Chicory Truly Shines

In this video game, sadness and self-loathing are major undercurrents. Self-doubt and hesitation over power the protagonist, and she is unable to beautify the universe and is seized with terrible ideas. Your subject’s relationship with the protagonist deepens with time, even if they don’t know one other all that well at the start of the adventure. In addition to your protagonist assuming the mantle of The Wielder in an unconventional manner, the game attempts to find the bravery to be an artist throughout these dialogues, which are full of misery and anguish.

I can relate to the overarching topic of artists and makers feeling down on themselves. Artists sometimes leave or dismantle their creation because they can’t bear the way it looks, sound, or feels. you can see her go through a period of extreme melancholy, sorrow, suicide ideation, and anguish as she quits her job. Nevertheless, she is not lonely in her battle against her internal struggle.

Chicory and your character have a mutual link when they interact. The ground Chicory treads on inspires you to express your own sentiments of failure. To me, these talks were the most significant sections of the gameplay, not just because they depict Chicory’s route to becoming more confident, but also by basically conveying a story of companionship and discussing the difficulties that this life usually brings us.

It’s easy to feel like we can’t take on the world or many others, particularly when we put our best work on display for the universe to view. Life is packed with gloom and sadness. but when you have someone who is there for you to listen to your hardships, the gloom becomes more bearable.

The Final Verdict

As the term indicates, Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a beautiful adventure in which you are tasked with restoring color to the universe.  Chicory gamers should have a pleasant experience completing the title, whether they’re playing solo or with a friend in co-op. Taking it all into account, obtaining Chicory’s Platinum Trophy should only take approximately 10 hours. There’s really no time to waste in this game, so gamers are immersed in it from start to finish.

Mental health problems are prevalent in both the tale and gameplay mechanics, even though they are basic in structure. Even while these topics may be upsetting to those who identify with the characters’ experiences, you’ll be glad you went on the journey with your companions when you can bear the weight of your choices together.

So, Chicory: A Colorful Tale Earns a Score of

After a lot of thinking, we’ve come up with a revised ranking scheme for the titles we revisit: Do we keep awake till 11 PM or 1 AM during a workweek to invest two hours with it, realizing well that we have to get up at 8 AM the following day to get back into the rat race? So on that measure, Chicory: A Colorful Tale gets a score of 9.