Sunday stream game! Completed until the credits, not 100% at the moment.
I'd actually already watched a let's play of this game, so I went in knowing the story and the game mechanics, but I did want to experience this game for myself. Also, I bought the soundtrack for this game before playing it - it's written by Lena Raine (Celeste soundtrack) and it's really, really good (and has some really fun stuff in the liner notes! It's very easily glossed over, but even the music calls to the themes of the story.)
!! Spoilers below !! (I do sometimes wonder why I write this like a review when there are spoilers in it)
The gameplay was the main reason I wanted to play this personally - it's pretty rare to find a game that has so much customisability, and not because of procedural generation or whatnot. I think it's pretty unique that like, there's NOTHING different or left up to chance for every player, actually? It's entirely you and what you choose to draw on the screen.
I think my only gripe was that the controls were pretty odd on the left hand (couldn't get used to ctrl for jumping) but keybinds could be changed, so that wasn't a problem. There are a lot of options that are configurable for accessibility as well, so battle difficulty wasn't a problem. Mechanics were pretty cool and progression made sense...perhaps the only mechanics that gave me issues were the ones that involved depth perception...I really don't have a lot to say here.
What I thought was cool were the limitations on drawing resolution and colour palette - no doubt some of these limitations were there in order to do some cool stuff like replaying the colour of the entire world, but it really characterised the main character (Pancake, in my case). By heavily restricting your ability to draw "good" like Chicory does, a lot of times the stuff you draw will look...well...bad! Or at least, not how you wanted it to look! Maybe the trees on the overworld would look better if they stood out more from the background! But everything has a similar saturation/brightness level! It's like if you had a colouring book, but was bound by a rule to colour an object with just one colour each. It's frustrating when you know you could do this better if you had the freedom to do it...but when this is all you have to work with (Pancake's lack of knowledge of artistic principles manifesting as limitations on your controls), and you HAVE to work with it, what do you do? I feel like you could either give up on it (don't engage with the game)...or you could do what you can within what you're given.
I thought being restricted to doing "bad" art was a relief, honestly - I don't have to keep my honour as an artist by making everything look the best possible (and this ties in with the story, where Chicory felt like her best was never good enough...). Some colour is good enough, it's better than leaving things untouched (although for the sake of completing the game, I did not colour everything)...and the regional palettes aren't bad! Restrictive maybe, but they're nice. I have a lot of love for the restrictions on the artistic controls imposed on this game where you are supposed to do art - it's not trying to be an art program. I've seen occasions where people try to one-up each other by doing something ludicrously good with potato controls, but these controls are so potato it's almost impossible in the first place. But ironically or no, it brings out the joy of drawing - the simple fun of doodling a smiley face, or a character's face in front of their house, or accidentally colouring a fountain brown and going yeugh that was NOT the right colour. Mushrooms explode and leave a little colourful crater, vines go splat, kittens pop out of trees the colour you poked them with. In giving up on quality, you regain a childlike sense of wonder and lose the fear of putting brush to canvas. That's not to say I didn't go hard sometimes, but the lack of pressure was very conducive to exploration.
Story-wise, I would consider Chicory one of the least...heavy...stories I've read recently...that's not to say that it isn't deep, but it's pretty clear what the message from the devs is. There's an intended right and wrong. It's not hard to agree with, and a lot of the world is good people, people who look out for each other, people who care about you. It's very careful to not blame you for anything (specifically, drawing badly) - the worst you get is from Blackberry and the main character's sister's friend, I think. I feel like it could have pushed more in that direction and have that addressed, but it would probably have required making an empty statement on whether your art is worthy, and perhaps they wanted you to come to that conclusion yourself without...you know...having actual real world meanness in it.
But I also think that the intended audience for this game isn't quite me - I understand that it's very much about institutions of art (something that should be accessible to the public), the pressure of perfectionism and expectations, and how the former causes both the latter and a whole host of other problems, with a good helping of impostor syndrome. I agree with this on the whole and I think it's expressed in a way that shows how each of these factors play into each other...but personally I'm kind of detached from that as I didn't go to art school and strictly consider art as a hobby. Yes, I would like to get better at art, but I don't feel like I have to perform for anyone to begin with (except for the odd zine application)...so it feels like something I understand in theory but don't relate to. I do acknowledge that this is real though, and is related to my next point, which is kind of tangential, but bear with me here (or skip it, whatever).
I struggled to explain this on stream, but - this game was extremely relevant to me in the wake of the AI image generation boom. Chicory's not a new game, but it's...weird how it's more relevant than ever, isn't it? Like...a major excuse from AI bros is that they like using AI generation because it makes "good" art quick. Artists can tell them that they too can learn to draw, but they don't want to train for 1 year just to draw their waifu with amateur quality and get 0 likes, they want it looking like a professional did it in a matter of seconds. How do you argue with that? You can't change their minds on the value of doing art if they weren't interested in art in the first place. Can you change their minds on what is "good" art, then? There is, obviously, some kind of judgement criteria here...yeah, taste is relative, depends on the greater trend etc. etc. but anyone with a highly specific aesthetic preference that doesn't follow this trend is probably already an artist trying to make stuff they like. What IS the value of art? What value does art have to me, even as a person who doesn't consider themself a professional artist? Does my art have value in existence?
So, like, in recent years, my art has been increasingly profit-oriented - not as in a "this might someday be my main income" sort of way, but a lot of what I draw is merch art, adoptables and so on. I polish it in ways that specifically appeal to other people - not that I don't like it myself, but I'm always thinking about how to make people like it more. And...I used to churn out hundreds and hundreds of tiny doodles in previous years (mostly OCs) before I started all this (and I did really want to have a section of corownet to upload these), but these days I rarely open up a drawing program with the intention of drawing something that's not for sale. I don't think I'd ever quit drawing forever, but at the worst of it I felt like I was just not into art any longer, which...kind of gave me an existential crisis because art has been a constant to me since I was small; I did not go into an art profession because I didn't want to lose my love for it (that and parental expectations but u kno). Then AI image generation tech became mainstream and the value of art debate happened, I saw many artists question the value of their art, and being the contrary person that I am, that ironically made me want to love art again.
And I think Chicory hit all the notes for the reasons to do art - it's doing stuff that no one will see because it's for you, it's drawing cursed shitposts to make the people you love laugh, it's...well...love, I guess! The one bird guy who's a huge fan of your art and did fanart? I initially thought of them as a nice NPC who's there to praise your art regardless of how good or bad your art is, but towards the end of the game I basically started tearing up whenever they showed up because dude! There's no way you can possibly draw anything good in this game! This is in comparison with Chicory, who isn't bound by the pixel grid and 4-colour palette! They genuinely LOVE your at-best-mediocre-by-the-standards-of-the-average-person art! It's a game about making bad art, and seeing the point in doing so; that making art is important, and the final image here is but a 2D slice* of the human experience, shaped by the imperfections of perception and skill. Not everyone will understand that and/or see beyond that 2D slice, but as an artist it's...I think...very important to remember this in order to keep being an artist.
* Talking about drawings here, but you know what I mean
I didn't know where to put this but my favourite side character is Pickle (the fox who only talks in lowercase).
This turned into me having a breakdown over my relationship with art (I am still working things out but doing better)...but anyway, Chicory is more relevant than ever. Every time something happens that cannibalises humanity's self-expression for profit - social media, NFTs, AI - Chicory is relevant. Make some bad art! Have some fun with it! Depending on whether you do consider yourself an artist, I think the game might resonate with you on a different level, but even if not, it's an interesting experience of a game with a really cool soundtrack to boot.