Benjamin Williams 
From the makers of Wandersong, a new Kickstarter project is born!.
Many of you may have been following the mysterious Draw Dog game on Twitter, announced today, officially, as Chicory: A Colorful Tale. Early signs look really good, with the developers of Wandersong and the composer from Celeste, it is
already amongst the most promising indie projects on the horizon. The game itself is a cheerful adventure title where you play as a dog with a big paintbrush – what’s not to love. You can paint anything you want, because the world has been drained of colour. You goal is to figure out why, but also, you can just draw! I was lucky enough to try out the demo, so here is what you can expect from Chicory.
You start the game as a lowly janitor, working for the Wielder of the Brush, the eponymous Chicory. However, she leaves it lying around, so it’s your time to shine! With the Brush, you can colour in anything and everything. You can change the size of your brush, erase and zoom in to add detail. Your colour palette changes depending on your location. The main town, Luncheon, gives you a broad mix of shades whereas the Supper Forest offers more colours from nature, like orange and yellow. Everything looks great though (as you can tell by the amount of screenshots I took).
In the demo, the story so far is that you have to find one of the previous Wielders of the Brush, a deer named Blackberry. She is very concerned about the absence of colour, so you start to investigate! To do that, you need to solve short puzzles to explore the forest, mainly by using paint to make plants grow and shrink. If you are looking for a non-violent video game to shove in your elderly relative’s face, Chicory has got you covered.
The act of colouring is satisfying in itself, so much so that it took me a while to stop getting distracted by the pretty colours. In the little town, there are lots of cute friends to make and every character in the game is a little animal with a food name, which is adorable. Some of them just want to chat or give you helpful advice. Others will give you a task to complete, like colouring in their house or designing a T-shirt for their café.
Want to read my screenplay?
The aesthetic of the game is very cutesy and charming. You inhabit a world of talking animals and magic colours, and the whole world is your canvas. However, it does not mean that the game is all sunshine and rainbows. When trouble is afoot, little dogs named Burgers needs to protect themselves. At the end of the demo, there is a paint-based battle with a giant evil eye. It really surprised me; the cute little art dog had to actually fight evil! After the initial shock, the fight was entertaining and challenging. The game was an interactive colouring book up until suddenly, conflict!
However, rest assured that the cute art dog game is still a cute art dog game. There are lots of fun diversions to enjoy, like side quests and collectible clothing. Small challenges and favours for the residents of Luncheon will often provide you with fresh threads. Other wholesome features include: picking up litter, calling your parents for help and local co-op.
There is plenty to explore in the world of Chicory, but I have a sneaking suspicion it will also try and make me cry. Call it the ‘Undertale’ effect if you feel so inclined, but everything is cute and happy until it’s not. Unless it’s like Frog Detective, where everything stays happy. Either way, you will find me hanging out with my cool new animal friends in this in-game hipster café. You probably haven’t heard of it, given that this is a preview into a game that was just announced, but you get the point.
Check out the game’s Kickstarter and social media for even more details!
