LogFAQs > #969393951

It's a week later now. I'm not kidding. See? I have a fucking problem, and it got me again. Okay, what was I talking about? Right, I was stumbling through finding the words to convey a deeply sentimental obsession with a game about a dog that tries to paint.

Just kidding, I had a power outage for three days first.

Seriously, I've been sitting on this writeup for a month now and I don't even know where to begin. I know I'm taking this thing too damn seriously at this point. Chicory is sitting on my shoulder, and she's growing even more upset with me. I have failed to learn anything. I am supposed to just *paint* and I still don't know how. I have, at least, closed the Slice & Dice window.

You know, I've always wanted to learn how to draw, but I know it's not my calling. People who can draw always say that the key to learning how to draw is just learning by doing; you have to practice or you'll never be good at drawing. I never believe them. I feel like I lack the natural skill for it; my hand is too clumsy, my brain can't hold images very easily, and something gets lost in the translation between what I want to draw in my head and what actually gets produced by the movement of my wrist. I feel like if there was a time for me to learn how to do it better, it was sometime in the past; my non-malleable adult brain, 20+ years removed from being a proper child, is in no position to really cope with the demands of developing a skill like this. But I don't know if there was ever a time I could have done it. I have skills in music, in writing, in game design; it's too greedy to ask that I also have a knack for the visual arts, even though I desperately wish I did.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/4/AAA-H0AAD4Fa.jpg

That's certainly part of why Chicory: A Colorful Tale resonated with me; it's an invitation for me, the artistically challenged, to engage in the hobby a little bit anyway. It's okay that I can't draw; Fries can't either! (I named my main character Fries, by the way. Her default name is Pizza, but I named her Fries. Also I think her gender's supposed to be ambiguous but I interpreted her as a girl so I'm just going with it.) I suppose that if you're actually good at drawing, then it turns out your main character CAN draw, but my main character is Fries, and her drawing ability is exactly equal to mine. Coincidentally, she feels about as self-conscious about it as I do! This is a role I was born to play. I roleplayed the hell out of this game.

But despite the fact that I can't draw, all of the nice people in this world are thankful for my efforts in coloring in the world anyway! Normally I don't really connect with the idea of being a hero and saving the world; that's not really a fantasy that I have any interest in living out. But becoming a great artist from humble beginnings? I actually found myself really getting into the story and playing the character, and going through the trials to become a true Wielder of this magical paintbrush felt personal, somehow, in a way that other games' hero's journeys don't feel personal. They feel like I'm directing someone else's adventure. This one made me feel excited about my own accomplishments.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/5/AAA-H0AAD4Fb.jpg

It helps that the denizens of the world are all actually reactive to what you're doing; they know you're the new Wielder and they react appropriately, and that makes for a fun little NPC quest. Remember when I talked about NPC Quests way back when, which are games where the main point of the game is mostly just talking to cute and useless NPCs? Chicory has a lot of this! Lots of walking around and chatting with folks, but this game does it really well; the characters are unique and fun to talk to. My only complaint about the game in total is that some of them run out of things to talk to a little too quickly, and then never talk to you again.

But there's a lot more to the game than just being an NPC Quest - it's a complete package. The gameplay's fun and varied; it's mostly little puzzles that you have to solve with your various paintbrush powers, coloring stuff on the screen and moving around Splatoon-style in the paint you draw. It's mostly simple, but the game always keeps it moving at a new pace - it introduces new gimmicks and never has you doing them for too long. It mixes exploration with puzzles and action and the occasional boss fight thrown in and each element of the game is just kind of fun. The world is about as large as any Zelda game and as rich with secrets to find, even though all of the secrets are increasingly fancy hats instead of powerups and the like. It makes it no less gratifying to scour each screen for hidden things.

But for me, the most gratifying part of the game was the coloring. When I got to that point where I was falling in love with the game and I didn't want it to end, I just decided to slow it allllll the way down and just... color. My favorite game of 2021 is a glorified coloring book! Go figure. Yeah, like 30% of all the coloring in this game is just coloring in trees, but there's something that's just so relaxing about it. It's strangely novel. Coloring books are nice enough; making an entire playable Zelda-like game that is itself a functioning coloring book is a stroke of genius. It doesn't serve any purpose; coloring everything in doesn't get you anything. It's just something to do for fun! I don't know why this gameplay mechanic of all things is so fascinating to me, but the way it invited me to just slow down and appreciate every little spot on the map was a joy. Ironically, although I'm known for speedrunning, I've always loved taking a game I really love slowly, and Chicory's invitation to take this game slowly was just what I needed.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/6/AAA-H0AAD4Fc.jpg

The art classes were a lot of fun, too. Again, this game's literally about making art, and you can just go take art classes in which the game gives you a prompt for something to draw. It doesn't judge you or anything; it's not really able to, of course. It's just for fun. But it is fun! I really gave it my best attempt, and at the end of the day, I think I did become just a little bit better at drawing. I never really got good at using the tools in this game - I still feel like the paintbrush is a little too wide to draw thin lines with, and I have no idea how people who are really good at drawing manage to make crazy good-looking art in this game. But what I did was good enough for me, and I managed to make stuff that I was kind of proud of. The more I played Chicory, the better I got at actually drawing, and because I got better at drawing, Fries got better at drawing, too. There's a meta-element to the storytelling there that's great.