The protagonist of Chicory: A Colorful Tale is perhaps the most relatable character of 2021. It’s not because this dog rocks cool t-shirts and constantly calls home to ask their parents for help. It’s because they’re dealing with acute self-doubt and burnout.
For our 2021 game of the year coverage, Polygon is celebrating our top 10 video games with a collection of essays. You can see our full Top 50 list here. Throughout December, we’ll also be looking back on the year with special videos, essays, and more!
At the beginning of Chicory, I take control of a dog I named Pasta, who also happens to be the janitor on duty when they find a magical paintbrush laying on the floor. The brush belonged to Chicory, who holds the position of “Wielder,” a term for a powerful artist and leader who colors the world. When we start, Chicory has disappeared, along with all the color in the world, and so it falls on our excitable puppy dog to bring color back.
Chicory’s overworld is filled with charm — it’s named Picnic and all the characters are named after food. The game, developed by Greg Lobanov and a small team of artists, looks like a giant digital coloring book that I paint as I move Pasta throughout the map. Each zone has its own set of colors: An area called Supper Woods has fall colors like gold, crimson, and orange, while Gulp Swamp uses a lightened color palette of lime and blue-green. As you explore and overcome challenges, you unlock new kinds of brushes and stamps.
Image: Greg Lobanov, Alexis Dean-Jones, Madeline Berger, Em Halberstadt, Lena Raine/Finji
True to the expressive nature of the game, painting is a breeze, and you don’t actually have to be artistic to color pretty scenes. At one point, I figured out how to create a fun effect by laying down a solid color and then rolling my mouse’s scroll wheel to alternate colors quickly with the striped textured brush. For any person who grew up using wacky brushes in game series like Kid Pix, Chicory is a joyous return to that childlike practice. And while I often found myself unleashing pure scribbling chaos, in some moments, I would take a break and color the entire scene in more detail as a way to pay reverence to the world. At one point, I ran into Hummus, a Koala whose friend passed away recently. I colored in the full scene as a way to express my respect for him, his lost friend, and the beautiful water he sat beside.
Other than the painting, the game largely functions like a top-down Zelda game, so much so that it feels like one of the most meaningful iterations on the formula since A Link To the Past. Like in Zelda, a lot of puzzles center around relatively basic actions: moving …….