By using the paintbrush by holding down L2 and moving the reticule around the screen, you can colour anything in the world – NPC’s, the floor, walls, environmental items and even the protagonist – to let your creativity go wild. Using the trigger buttons you can change the colour the brush will paint (from 4 hues which are designated to that area of the game) change the size of the brush, paint and erase. The right stick controls the paintbrush reticule. These frames are all connected to one another via clear paths/edges and you can navigate the main character through them using the left stick on the DualShock controller. The game world itself is presented in frames, each of which looks like the page of an untouched colouring book. The game play in Chicory centres around its most unique element – the paint brush.
It’s smart implementation of an exemplary script. While the player has this important, overarching goal to restore colour to the world, these demands put upon you and distract you from your aims and this is referenced a few times in the narrative. While all of these activities are relatively fun, they do show how much of a demand is put on them as a character. Perceived as the new wielder, they have a responsibility to uphold. An example that I hope won’t spoil anything: Pizza (or whatever you call them), as the person currently holding the brush, gets asked a number of times to perform tasks by other characters around the world. What’s more, I was constantly impressed by how the story in Chicory mirrored the feelings of the player. It’s uncomfortably real in others, touching on imposter syndrome, the effects of depression, how burdensome responsibility can be some times, dealing with failure and trying to meet the expectations placed upon you. It’s beautiful at times, as the relationships between these characters grow and how they blossom as people. What I will say though is that this game contains a surprisingly deep, emotionally honest narrative with a cast of flawed by relatable characters. Needless to say, from here, the protagonist of Chicory goes on a pretty wild adventure but to mention what happens, even in abstract terms, would be to ruin some of the games more poignant moments. Everything above happens in the game’s first five minutes. Now, I don’t really want to spoil any more of the finer story details by describing them here. So, Pizza (or whatever food name you choose) takes the brush and sets out to see if she can find out why the colour of the world has disappeared. Setting out to investigate, Pizza finds the magic brush abandoned and its wielder locked away in her room, unresponsive. Pizza is cleaning up the technicolor home of Chicory when something weird starts to happen and all the colour of the world vanishes. At the start of this game, the aforementioned Chicory is the current owner of the brush. This brush is passed from wielder to wielder, each of which has their own style. They are the ones that give this world its colour by using a magical paintbrush. In the fantasy world that this game is set, there is always one ‘wielder’. My canine cleaner ended up being called Pizza. In fact, every place and character you meet in this game is named after food or eating related terms. This character isn’t the titular character however – the game will ask you to name your favourite food which will actually name the anthropomorphic pooch protagonist.
In Chicory, you play as a plucky dog character who begins the game as a janitor. That talent certainly comes to the fore during Chicory. Lena Raine created the sublime soundtrack to Celeste. Greg Lobanov was behind one of my favourite games of 2018 – Wandersong. Em Halberstadt was part of the team that brought to life Rossko’s most favourite game of all time, Night In The Woods. I stumbled into it by accident and triggered the credits where I saw a few familiar names. There’s a way to reach a secret ending of Chicory within the first few moments. Or the unbridled creativity that’s possible within its world.
#CHICORY A COLORFUL TALE PS4 FULL#
Or the beautiful soundtrack which will surely win a literal truck full of awards. Or the bristling emotion that shines through in a fantastically written plot involving a cast of relatable characters. I wasn’t quite prepared for the near complete marriage of mechanics and game/puzzle design I found in Chicory, creating one of the most enjoyable titles I’ve played in quite some time. Based on those, I expected it to leverage creativity and art by using the paint brush mechanic in some pretty inventive ways. I’d seen the gifs regularly going viral on Twitter as far back as when it was called Drawdog. I came to this title with little knowledge of what it actually was.
0 kommentar(er)
