Developer Greg Lobanov, Alexis Dean-Jones, Lena Raine, Madeline Berger, A Shell In The Pit 

Publisher Finji 

Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5

Release Out now

There’s a moment early in Chicory when you attend your first art class. You’re presented with a blank canvas, given access to the tools you’ve accrued so far – an array of colour palettes, brush styles and stamps – and asked to paint something to ‘express joy’. We slap down an assortment of shapes (hearts, stars and crosses), suspecting we won’t be marked on it. And, sure enough, we’re praised for our insightful work by the teacher. Later, you’ll encounter the painting again, hanging in your parents’ house. Study it, and you’re treated to a quick animation of its creation, those hearts and stars gathering themselves in fast-forward.Suddenly, it feels like art, these shapes a careful work of abstraction. This is our process that’s being captured here, one that can be exported as a GIF to keep for posterity or share outside the game. By the second class, we’re taking things much more seriously.

Chicory is a tribute to the joys of creativity, something it encourages in the player and is bursting with itself. At the outset, your character (not named ‘Chicory’, but after a seeming non-sequitur question asked up front, landing our hero with the moniker ‘EGGS!’) is handed a magical paintbrush. It grants you the ability to colour in your black-and-white surroundings, even the inhabitants you meet – and its powers only grow from there. Before long, you’re using it to cast light, drawing lines to guide characters, and leaping between puddles of paint like an Inkling. Mightier than the sword? Without doubt.