#you all know being concise isn't a strong suit of mine

[snatcher-no-snatching]

Ok so. Chicory was a really fun and cute game that absolutely sucker punched me multiple times. I expected nothing less from the team that made it, but still

In summary, you play as a little dog in a world that's naturally black and white, but coloured in by an ancient tool called the magic brush. The brush has been passed down through hundreds of different wielders over the years, and it's their job to keep the world coloured and beautiful. The current wielder, Chicory, suddenly resigns, so the brush and all it's responsibilities now fall to you, the protagonist.

I'm sure any artist can connect with the themes and narrative of the game, but I really like how it presents creation as something than can be damaging to us as well as liberating, especially if you do art for a living. For talking animals, all the characters are so human in the way they have stressful expections, both from themselves and others. It's really nice getting to see them talk about this stuff and find the support they need, and really figure out what happiness means for themselves even if it means "letting down" others.

Now, despite that entire last paragraph, the game itself is still overall very cheerful and fun to play, I really liked getting to colour in the whole world and talk to the cool NPCs. Your colour choices are actually very limited, just 4 per area, but I think this forced simplicity was paradoxically very liberating for me? It was kinda nice to not even have the option to overthink it; you know, just make art because it's fun. Other than that, there's also a bunch of cool mechanics for exploring the map and finding secrets, and there's even bossfights! Yeah, that took me by surprise tbh. VERY reminiscent of JSaB bosses in playstyle, and even music. Oh right I forgot to mention, the music for the game as a whole is amazing. Again, as expected, but really I can't overstate how good it is.

There's just SO much to talk about when it comes to this game so I think you should just experience it for yourselves. Go play it. There's a lot of accessibility settings you can tweak if you're mostly just interested in the story. But seriously, 10/10, totally recommend, go play Chicory and also Wandersong if you haven't already