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Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a game brimming with the joy or creativity. But that joy is paired with a fairly limited central mechanic. Chicory is a game about art, but it's also a game about why we create art and the power it has to affect those who create it.
I'd seen this video on i am a dot's channel a while back and I wanted to watch it, but not before I'd played the game myself. Now that I have played the game myself, I watched it. It went places I wasn't expecting, as most i am a dot videos do (such as talking at length about André 3000 and his 7 Piano Sketches album, which... I get it, but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting to see/hear from a video about Chicory: A Colorful Tale, that's for sure [EDIT] and I have since listened to the album... it's all right, I guess, though I get the point made about who would actually give a shit if it hadn't been released by an already "famous" musician [/EDIT]). The parts about the game itself were pretty good, though, and only mildly spoiler-ish.
Now, just for shits and giggles, I am going to link to the art class images that I drew (some of which were shown in the above video, except with i am a dot's own versions of them).
*pauses writing this post to upload some stuff to Google Photos*
Okay, I'm back.
I won't be embedding here, because Google Photos is ass for that. Just links.
There were 20 classes in total. Here is the overall gist of the classes, though I'll be repeating most of this below as well.
The first class's directive was to "express 'joy'" which I did with this. Basically, I just plopped down a few shapes with the "Brush Styles" tools and that was it. Took less than a minute. I didn't take that one super-seriously.
The second class was where shit started to get real. I was tasked with re-creating this image. My version of it is here.
The third class directive was to paint "a cute creature." This was my not-great attempt at that.
The fourth class goal was to re-create this image, which I did here.
The fifth class wanted an expression of "fear." This was mine. It's... just a white square. Kind of a cop-out, as I was in a mindset of like "fear of the unknown, har har har" or some shit, meaning mostly I just wasn't really feeling it and didn't care to really try on this one. However, when I found where they'd placed this in the world and looked at it, I was reminded that the game recorded all of your brush strokes when you paint something, because when I viewed it, there was a very brief flash of color before it went back to white again. This is from when I filled the entire canvas with a dark greenish-blue color, but then went nah, I'll just make it all white again. With that in mind, if I were to do this again, I'd fill the canvas several times with different colors in a row, repeatedly, before reverting it back to white, instead of just the once. That way, when viewing it in the world, there'd be a rapid flashing strobe effect as the game re-created the thing using my own inputs, which could very well possibly depict "fear," in a way, if you think about it. Also, it was after this class that Radish got angry, quit the art school altogether, and fucked off back home, because she was sick of everyone else blowing smoke up the player character's ass and saying how "good" and "interesting" it was. Pizza[1] (or "Fajitas" as i am a dot refers to the PC in his video above) was a bit distraught, but I, the player, was like "Ha ha, no, Radish was totally right. That shit is so ass, and Radish was the only one willing to call a spade a spade."
The sixth class job was to re-create this. This was my attempt at that.
The seventh class directive was to draw "your first memory." I painted this. (My literal first IRL memory was of my paternal grandmother, who died of cancer when I was three years old, and the wheelchair she was using at that time. I remember pushing the wheelchair around the room when she wasn't sitting in it, like it was a big toy, and then when she would actually sit in it, it would upset me, because I could no longer push the chair around, due to it being too heavy for me to move. I was sure I'd already posted about that on this blog, at some point, but I wasn't able to immediately find it and gave up looking [and my $3 month of paid subscription to Dreamwidth had already expired half a month ago or so, so I no longer have access to the "search my own journal" functionality anymore *eye roll*].)
The eighth class was for re-creating this image. My version is here.
The ninth class task was to draw "a dream." Here is mine. I sometimes have dreams about being underwater, and this was a minimalist (read: cop-out) attempt at depicting that.
The tenth class wanted me to try to re-create this, which I did here.
The eleventh class wanted me to "express 'melancholy.'" I used it as an excuse to dump on Trump. ¬_¬ (Yes, the "hair" was created with a "brush style" that looked like poop, and I also just put a brown one on his face at around mouth level, because it felt appropriate.)
The twelfth class asked for a re-creation of this wizard dog, so I painted this as a result. My version looks a bit more like smiledog than I would've liked, but oh well.
The thirteenth class said to draw "a friend." I just made a stick figure. Yet another cop-out "I don't feel like taking this one seriously and would rather just return to the game now" thing.
The fourteenth class requested a re-creation of this. I started this one with every intention of taking it as seriously as the previous ones, but this is one of the only ones during which I actually got fed up, just said fuck it, and basically gave up after a couple of minutes. (As opposed to just not taking it seriously from the get go, as with some of the other ones.)
The fifteenth class wanted me to "express 'anger.'" So... ...I drew another picture of the SCROTUS IMPOTUS. ¬_¬
The sixteenth class asked for a re-creation of this anime/manga-looking thing. Here is my version.
The seventeenth class directive was to draw "a cool or scary creature." Interestingly, I didn't think to draw yet another picture of Trump (probably because Trump is the diametric opposite of "cool," though he definitely fits the description of "scary creature"). Instead, I drew a sort of Cthulhu-looking thing.
The eighteenth class wanted a re-creation of this. Mine ended up being another sort of cop-out.
The nineteenth class directive was to "express 'love.'" So I just drew a big red heart. *shrug*
And for the final, twentieth class, I was given a literal photo of a real-life horse. Here is my shitty, fucked up, creepy looking version of that horse.
Aside from the class stuff, here are a couple other things I was asked to draw elsewhere in the game.
Here is my version of the painting of Chicory herself that she required before she would show her version of Pizza(/"Fajitas"/whatever name the player gives the main character[1]), as mentioned in the above video.
At one point, Chicory requested a self-portrait (of Pizza, that is). Here is my version of it. Interestingly, another NPC I talked to later gave Pizza a "fan art" that they had done of my Pizza "self-portrait." That was actually kind of cool.
[1] - I actually named her[2] "Pizza," as in I typed in "Pizza," when the game asked for "favorite food." I wasn't aware until much later that the main character's default name apparently was, in fact, "Pizza." If my whim/mood had been different when I started the game, though, it could have just as easily been "Pasta" or "Spaghetti" or even "Salad" or something.
[2] - I decided that my Pizza was a girl, though the game never refers to the player character in a gendered way at all. The audio clips used for Pizza's "voice" sounded like a girl's voice, though, at least to me.
