There are a million games influenced by The Legend of Zelda, but I genuinely believe that Chicory: A Colorful Tale is among the best of them. It’s got the fundamentals down—a top-down view, mechanics that blur the line between combat and exploration, and dungeons packed with puzzles—but it also stands apart for a major reason. Chicory is basically a drawing book turned into a game, and for just $10 on Steam right now, you can wield the brush that will restore color to its blank world.
There is no wrong way to color in Chicory. The game never penalizes you for going in a different direction. Leaves should be green, right? Well if you want them to be blue, Chicory won’t tell you otherwise. Grass can be orange, and otherwise earthy rocks can be red. The world is quite literally your canvas, and the game never polices what can and cannot be drawn on, nor does it chastise you if you choose to leave the world blank in many places. Story advancement will require you to engage with the mechanic at some point, but for the most part, you’re allowed to be as creative as you want to be. For folks who doubt their creative abilities (like me), Chicory is a very freeing experience and I found myself constantly grateful for its willingness to meet me on my terms rather than the other way around.
Its story follows Pizza, an anthropomorphic dog that comes to possess a magical brush passed down to Wielders, a select few individuals tasked with the coloring of their respective lands. Chicory is the wielder of the Picnic Province where the game takes place, only she’s stopped coloring and fallen into a depressive bout. She doubts her ability to color and cracks under the pressure of having to bolster the Picnic Province, at which point Pizza, and the player, unceremoniously assume the role in her absence.
Chicory’s primary gameplay mechanic is the brush, which is tied to your mouse or one of your thumbsticks. You can hold down the paint button to fill in a certain element of the world or you can flick the brush around and physically paint every bit of it. There are puzzles to be solved, including filling pathways with paint to light up paths through dark caverns, or coloring in a vine so that you can use it to quickly travel between spots. 90 percent of the time, Chicory is the world’s most adorable puzzle game, though the solutions are rarely ever so dense that you perplexedly stare at your screen trying to figure it out.
Otherwise, Chicory is an adventure that is as heartfelt as it is painfully honest. It is obviously a game that presents itself as cute and cozy, but it’s also a deeply empathetic look into the creative struggle and the hardship of believing in oneself. You will take on drawing challenges sometimes, and while you’re encouraged to do your absolute best, the game refuses to judge you. Chicory isn’t interested in establishing a hierarchy of art, or trying to define good and bad examples of it. It welcomes your attempts and claps you on the back for even trying. It’s the most accepting game I’ve ever played,a piece of work so utterly driven by the belief that art, and whatever shape it takes, is one of the best things we do.
Chicory’s boss fights, which are the only instances of combat in the game and include this banger of a track, build off of some of these notions. During each one of them, you are faced with the manifestations of deep-seated insecurities. They are sometimes gnarly fights against distorted versions of familiar characters and creatures that devolve into bullet hells. Our psyche is often our most damning critic, and unlike most people in the real world, our negative thoughts are rarely sparing. The only way to overcome them is to express yourself through your art. In practice, it’s as simple as simply using the brush to paint over your opponent in most situations, but in real life it could be any number of things. It’s going outside and taking some pictures or picking up a guitar and strumming till you break through that wall impeding your progress.
I’ve rarely played a game in which themes and mechanics were tied together this well. Chicory is an absolutely breathtaking game, and one that feels bound to strike some kind of chord, no matter what walk of life you come to it from. If you want a game that feels like a warm and understanding hug, grab Chicory now and thank me later.