a review of chicory: a colorful tale

I had expected my first beat game this year to be Mother 2 (Earthbound). I've been consumed with thinking about the Mother series, about the passing of sins from father to son, about guilt and responsibility, about motherhood and the planet. I haven't been able to stop thinking of Mother 2 as being the Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuild of gaming, because you play Mother 2 right after Mother and the beats are so eerily the same, but there are too many nods to the fact that You've Been Here Before. You, the Player. The question becomes, then, what will You do differently?

But for some reason I stalled in Threed, and eventually I said to myself, "well, go play something else then. you just bought five games on sale, play one of those." And one of those happened to be Chicory: A Colorful Tale, a game which I knew very little about outside of, roughly, the people who were holding it up as a Good Game and knowing that Lena Raine made the music for it. Sure, why not. Let's try Chicory.

I'll admit something to you: I restarted right away. I did this because the game prompted me to enter my favorite food. I, being unaware and hot off the heels of two OTHER games that ask this question, thought "oh. okay. all lowercase, then." Imagine my surprise when I realized I was naming myself. And while I'm usually a lowercase name kind of person, that wasn't what I wanted for this playthrough. So I restarted. I named myself Curry. The main character's "canon" name is Pizza, I guess, but I was Curry, so I'll be referring to the character as Curry.

Curry's ultimate struggle with aimlessness, with feeling unmoored in life, hit the mark for me firmly and resolutely. It has been a persistent struggle of my adult life to understand what it is I actually want to Do, or even who I am. It's not something a depressed teenager really thinks about, or maybe dares to let themselves think about. After all, why worry about a future you won't be part of? But Curry ultimately gives themself the permission to try. To play. To experiment. And the entire world lets you be the canvas upon which that experiment takes place. You can paint...everything. Literally everything. I admittedly didn't spend that much time painting outside of the necessities of puzzle solving or platforming, but I fondly remember spending time painting one specific forest screen until it was precisely how I wanted it. I loved filling places with color, trying out brush strokes...and I really loved painting both Chicory and Curry. (Both the portraits and the characters themselves, haha.)

Some of the story elements in the middle ultimately lost me a bit; I was not really engaged in the trials as puzzles to solve so much as opportunities to hang out with Chicory, to help Curry see that role models are people like any other, and it's interesting to see how a real friendship blooms between them and where they are able to find common ground. The ending, though? Woof. I almost wish Chapter 10 had been longer, or more than one chapter. I think a deeper grappling with failure, with trying something and it not working out quite right, on a story level would have really elevated things further. As it is, there's enough "failure" the player can experience while painting the world.

In the end, I really liked this game. I didn't feel compelled to do all the Gamer Things of collecting all the lost kids/litter/etc. but I did enjoy them when I stumbled across them. Being able to dress up your character how you please was a nice incentive for finding more present boxes with hats and clothing. The names of all the characters and places are A+. Also? One of the best in-game hint systems out there. Much love to my in-game mom and dad for helping me out. Worth checking out.

★★★★☆