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Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a top-down Adventure Game developed by Greg Lobanov at Wishes Unlimited and published by Finji. A demo was released in 2019, and drew further attention in Summer 2021 due to its rerelease in Steam's Next Fest. The full game was released on June 10, 2021 for PC via Steam, Playstation 4, and Playstation 5, and on Nintendo Switch on December 15, 2021.

You play as a dog who works as a janitor for Chicory, the newest Wielder of the Brush, responsible for giving the world its color. One day, color is suddenly drained from the world, and Chicory is nowhere to be found. You decide to take the Brush, find out what happened to Chicory, and save the world's color. As you explore the world to find out the source of the color disappearing, the more it seems to be connected to Chicory herself...

Gameplay revolves around the brush, which you can use to paint on anything and anyone in the world, including yourself. Sometimes, it's used to manipulate the environment, make progress, and solve puzzles, while other times it's just for fun.


Chicory: A Colorful Tale provides examples of:

  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: You can find new clothes in small gifts scattered around the world, usually as a reward for solving a puzzle in a different way. There's also a character who wants to see certain outfits, and will reward you with... more clothes.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Boss fights are the only combat in this game, and the difficulty of said fights can be adjusted freely in the menu, even during the boss fights themselves. It can go all the way from making you a One-Hit-Point Wonder to letting you take an infinite number of hits. And if even that's too much, you can just make yourself untouchable so that bosses can't even hit you.
    • Calling Pizza's parents will give hints to get around. Pizza's mom gives you general hints as to where you should be going, with an option for her to pass the phone to Pizza's dad, who will give exact details about what you need to do to progress. These hints even factor in the phone booth that you called from for Dad's directions. For instance, Mom might say "you should go to the dark tree", with Dad following up with "you need to go two screens to the left, then follow the road".
    • Content warnings for intense moments can be enabled, and they give the option to proceed or skip potentially triggering scenes.
    • While rare, it's possible while swimming through paint to accidentally end up in an area you weren't supposed to get to yet with no way back. To counteract this, you can just teleport right back to Luncheon.
  • Art Attacker: You primarily fight with the Brush, but not until you face the eye-like creatures that serve as the first boss, where you paint over them to attack them.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: Done twice. The first boss you face is a giant eye monster. When facing the second boss, it seems to be the same, only that there are two big eyes now... until it turns out the eyes are actually part of the head of a floating rabbit monster. And for the third boss, the same cutscene happens, only for the rabbit monster to turn into Dark Chicory.
  • Bathroom Stall Graffiti: The floor of the Wielder Temple has hidden messages that can only be revealed by coloring the floor, giving hints to the puzzles within... as well as graffiti from someone who loved the word "butts". There's even counter-graffiti from an exasperated maintainer of the Temple begging them to stop.
  • Berserker Tears: Subtle, but when fighting Chicory in Luncheon Tower, small dots of paint can be seen coming out from below Chicory's screaming face when the ink transforms into it.
  • Blackout Basement: There's a dark cave which you can enter early, but you can't progress until you gain the ability to make glowing paint after defeating the first boss.
  • The Cameo:
  • Cat Up a Tree: Many of the lost kids can be found hiding in trees.
  • The Chosen Many: Invoked at the end of the game. After learning to make their own brushes, Pizza and Chicory decide to help other people create their own brushes to keep color around but not perpetuate the cycle that created the corruption.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Clementine assures you not to take on too many quests at one time and that it's okay to say no. You keep saying yes to quests anyway. Lampshaded by one NPC who scolds their companion for making the wielder do things for them, only for you to comment that people do that all the time.
  • Classical Anti-Hero: Both Pizza and Chicory are examples of this, as Pizza continually doubts their stance as a Wielder, and Chicory has to deal with her mental health issues. However, they both get better- Pizza becomes far more confident after they create their own brush, and Chicory at least starts to heal by the end of the game.
  • Collection Sidequest: Many collectibles are scattered all around Picnic, including lost kids, litter, clothes, brush styles, and a mail delivery quest.
  • Coloring in the World: The game starts with a color wipe causing all of the color from the setting to disappear. In the beginning of the game, you become the new wielder, able to use a magic brush to color in the world as you explore it, to return the world to its colored state as is the duty of wielders of The Brush in general and to find out what caused the color wipe.
  • Content Warnings: You can enable content warnings in the game's settings. They kick in before scenes dealing with potentially triggering subjects like panic attacks, abuse, and the death of a loved one.
  • Co-Op Multiplayer: In which the second player acts as the second painter (only the first player may control Pizza, though).
  • Creative Closing Credits: At the end of the game, it shows off the areas you spent the most time painting, and then ends with a shot of the entire world map with the colors you filled in.
  • Dark Is Evil: The corruptions that stole colors away are depicted as inky black darkness.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: You can only take two hits from bosses by default before getting knocked out, but you merely restart from the phase when you "died". You can even adjust the number of hits you can take or be completely invincible if you die several times.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • The player is asked what their favorite food is at the start of the game, which determines the name of the dog protagonist. If an important character already has that name (ex. "Chicory"), instead of refusing your entry, you're asked what your second-favorite food is. If you keep doing it intentionally, it goes all the way up to tenth-favorite before going with a more generic next-favorite. And if you name yourself as a lesser NPC, they may even comment on it (ex. "Curry" in Brekkie wonders if they should start a club for Curries).
    • Caramel runs back and forth offscreen to find items for the Clothing Swap store. If you swap out multiple clothes in the same trip, Caramel gets unique animations where he's visibly more and more sweaty and winded.
    • At the end of the credits, if the player beat the game under a certain amount of time, Chicory will comment that you were, quote, "REALLY FAST".
    • After the sequence where you have a fight with Chicory shortly after discovering she's spawning the corruption, you're immediately given where to go for the next area. However, you can go back and call your mother (normally just the Hint System), which will start a unique conversation discussing what just happened with her, after which you'll get the hint option like normal.
    • If you try to use the transit bench during the climax where Pizza is stripped of the Brush and all hope seems to be lost, there is a note saying that the transit system is closed due to "seemingly apocalyptic circumstances".
    • Normally, dying during a fight will cause Pizza to fall down hurt before the game inexplicably rewinds back to the phase you were currently on. While mechanically the same, dying during the final boss fight against the brush, specifically during the phases after Chicory's Big Damn Heroes moment will have Chicory helping you up instead.
  • Developer's Room: If the player completes every single Collection Sidequest and explores the entire world map, the dev team's avatars appear at Pizza's house to talk about making the game.
  • Door to Before: Some areas have shortcuts that immediately take you back to the entrance after you go through them at least once. For example, there's a paintable wall in Grub Caverns that takes you back outside, but it's only accessible right after you unlock the ability to swim through paint up it.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Working together, Pizza and Chicory destroy the true source of the Black Forest, the brush, with brushes of their own. Not only is the cycle of Wielders broken, but they intend to teach others how to make and use brushes of their own, thus preventing color of Picnic from fading.
  • Edible Theme Naming: People in this game are anthropomorphic animals named after foods, and places in Picnic Province are named after something related to food (such as "Nibble Tunnel"). The foods themselves are all known by different names, such as "joe" for coffee, "holey" for donuts, and "squeeze" for fruit juice. What food you pick as your favorite becomes your character's name.
  • Effortless Achievement: Most of the achievements are acquired by clearing mandatory story beats such as picking up the Brush and meeting Chicory herself.
  • Eldritch Location: Inside the black tree is a dungeon formed from insecurities and corruption. At the end of the game, the one atop Luncheon Tower first takes the form of a Bigger on the Inside grove. When you're kicked out and re-enter, it recreates the houses of four of its past wielders: yourself, Chicory, Blackberry, and Cardamom.
  • Empathic Weapon: The brush. It's the true source of the corruption, manifests the darkness and doubt of every past wielder, and takes on their forms in the finale.
  • Enemy Within: The corruptions often manifest in boss fights as darker versions of characters and embody their worst thoughts and flaws.
  • Family Business: Talking to your father at home has him comment on how he thought your artistic sister would be a brush wielder, while you were more likely to end up inheriting ownership of his "holey" shop. With that said, he's still happy that you're doing what you want.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: By the end of the game, Pizza and Chicory form a strong bond from all the things they've been through together, from Pizza risking their life to save Chicory from the corruption at Chapter 5 to Chicory and Pizza fighting the original brush side by side in the game's finale.
  • Floral Theme Naming: The bugs living in Feast are named after various plants such as Drosera, Prunus, Wisteria, and Melaleuca.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • If you try to color in Chicory and her room enough times the first time you enter it, she'll eventually get angry, erase all the colors, and disable the brush until you leave, hinting at the colors disappearing being linked back to her. It also hints at the fact that the power of the wielders do not stem entirely from the brush.
    • Talking to Cardamom reveals the reason why he passed the brush to Blackberry was because the demands and duties required from him as the wielder eventually wore him out. Chicory allowing Pizza to take the brush turns out to be from a similar mindset.
  • Gender-Inclusive Writing: The English script never refers to Pizza's gender, instead using "they/them" pronouns for the character. Other languages ask before beginning the game if you want to be referred to with male, female, or gender-neutral pronouns. It's still an Ambiguous Gender for Pizza, because the English script never clarifies if Pizza is male, female, or non-binary.
  • Hell Is That Noise:
    • Music noticeably distorts around the darkness, adding to its creepiness.
    • Chicory's screams during her boss fight startles Pizza as they try confronting her.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: While you can name your character whatever you want, you're encouraged to name them after your favorite food, to go along with the theme naming that everyone else has.
  • Hint System: You can call home at phone booths in order to get some advice on what to do next from Pizza's mom. If that's not enough, you can then have her pass the phone to Pizza's dad, who shares step-by-step instructions. For instance, Mom might say "you need to go to this city", while Dad will say "you need to go two screens to the right, and this is how you do the puzzle that you find on that screen".
  • Holiday Mode: Playing on your birthday will trigger a special phone call from Pizza's parents and sister, and many NPCs will drop by your house in Luncheon to celebrate.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: There are gifts across the world that give you clothes. According to the game's Kickstarter page, it's common to hide one's old clothes for others to find.
  • An Interior Designer Is You: You can obtain various decor objects during the game that can be placed in various locations, including Pizza's home.
  • Interspecies Romance: Pizza's parents are a dog (mother) and a raccoon (father). Later, you end up playing a role in getting Beans, a female cat, and Pepper, a female skunk, to start dating.
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: The position of being the wielder is desirable due to the ability to inherit the Brush and color the world with it, in fact, the tradition of choosing a worthy wielder started to prevent people from taking the brush with violence. The position had ended up being unbearable for Chicory to inherit, given her strained relationship with her predecessor, Blackberry, and all of the stress and self-doubt she has held within her ends up becoming the breaking point that unleashes the corruption onto the world. A previous wielder, Cardamom, had quickly passed over his position as wielder to Blackberry because he found the position to be too stressful. It also shows that Pizza isn't fully satisfied with being the wielder nor has it resolved all of their inner feelings and conflicts during the game. During the game, the corruption manifests those very forms of self-doubt of Chicory and Pizza onto them as well. It turns out that the Brush itself carries all of the suppressed emotions of every wielder in history, and in the end, the protagonists create their own brushes and destroy the original Brush, so in the end, anyone has the potential to create their own brush to color the world, not just one chosen wielder.
  • It Was with You All Along: In the climax, even though the brush was corrupted and taken away from Pizza, they manage to manifest a new one to fight back. It inspires Chicory to make her own and fight alongside you, too.
  • Last Lousy Point:
    • The direct hints Dad won't give you include lost kids, gifts, and litter locations. So if the tracker says they're somewhere in a very large region, you'll have to scour the whole place.
    • The Art Academy sidequest is required for both its own achievement and the "all decor" achievement. While you COULD simply mash that you're done with each painting the moment the art screen pops up, you only get ONE chance to do each painting, and a few of the art pieces require a certain amount of brush styles to be collected first before letting you start it, so unless you have enough to finish the academy from the start, you'll not be able to just go through it all in one go.
  • Mirror Boss: Chapter 4 ends with Pizza fighting a color-inverted manifestation of their own self-doubt. It occurs again in the finale, when the corrupted brush takes on the forms of its past wielders, yourself included.
  • Mystery Episode: "Simmering Springs" has one where the furniture in the hotel's VIP room is stolen and Pizza has to find clues to find out what happened. It turns out the concierge Quince was indulging with copious amounts of her favorite food "squeeze" (aka fruit juice) in the room and accidentally splattered it all over the furniture. In a panic, she'd tossed all the furniture into the river to hide the evidence. The owner forgives her for this, because she's relieved it wasn't a crime, Pizza has already replaced the furniture, and the concierge is her best employee.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: If you just repeatedly refuse to take Chicory's discarded brush at the beginning of the game, the credits start silently playing over a blank void. Once they're done, you're allowed to immediately resume from that decision.
  • Notice This: Lost kids can be found in shaking trees, bushes, and plants, often needing to be painted repeatedly to lure them out.
  • One-Steve Limit: Zig-Zagged. You can't name the player character the same as a major character like Chicory. However, they can have the same name as minor characters, and some even comment on it.
  • Only One Save File: Only one save file can be made at a time, so starting a new game overwrites the old save.
  • Photo Mode: The Camera-Map lets you take a picture of your current location and add filters to it and change Pizza's expression and pose.
  • Production Throwback:
    • In the "Teatime Meadows" area, there's a bird named Kiwi that's dressed exactly like the Wandersong protagonist (who's also called Kiwi by the devs), who asks that you help make music using said game's directional mechanic. As a reward, you're given a brush style that lets you stamp music notes on the environment.
    • Additionally, one of the final boss' attack patterns is the falling feathers from Celeste.
  • Red Herring: While investigating for the Simmering Springs mystery, you encounter a crocodile named Chili who admits he loves stealing things in the same room with a piece of evidence. He clarifies later that while he loves stealing things, he only stole Quince's "squeeze" supply, not the furniture.
  • Repression Never Ends Well: Chicory's struggle to become the wielder involved her hiding her own insecurities and perceived imperfections, which proves to be the main reason the corruption appears and the color wipe occurs. Furthermore, the final chapter reveals that the Brush itself is responsible for the corruption in the first place due to channeling the repressed fears and emotions of every wielder in history.
  • Safely Secluded Science Center: The science lab where colour creation is studied is isolated between cliffs on the foothills of the mountains.
  • Secondary Character Title: Chicory is deuteragonist of the game. She is the artist who motivates Pizza's journey and the story is just as much about her as it is about Pizza.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The music that plays during the interrogation for the "Simmering Springs" mystery is called "Turnabout Squeeze", complete with the real culprit having a breakdown during their confession.
    • One of the furniture pieces in the Studio set is a painting in the style of graffiti artist Keith Haring (referred to as a Herring Painting, of course).
    • The achievement/trophy for solving all of Oats's clothing riddles is "Passion for Fashion".
    • Brussels Sprout claims to be good at Mega Mash Sisters, while Pizza is terrible at it.
  • Something We Forgot: Lampshaded in the postgame, where after getting 100% completion and wandering to another screen, Prunus the bug reminds Pizza that he's still on Pizza's head and asks permission to head back to Feast to raise a newfound family.
  • Sound Test: You can buy sound systems as decor and play various BGM of the game with them.
  • Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The majority of the game is cute, but there are hints at darker, more serious subjects, which are then brought to the forefront when entering the trees produced by the corruption. However, those segments are less about scaring the player, and more a representation of dealing with anxiety and low self-worth.
  • Too Much Information: Prunus refuses to translate Quercus's saying about the former being a big fan of Wielders because the latter's being "really embarrassing".
  • Totem Pole Trench: There's an NPC at the Dinners Transit Office called "An Adult", who's actually three kids in a trench coat. They try to pass themselves as an adult to get a transit pass, but while they're terrible at it, they manage to steal Pizza's pass if the latter relents and gives it to them. Not that that's Plum's problem since he can just give them a new one.
  • Trash of the Titans: Beans's house, when you first meet her, is messy and filled with objects and things she's collected over the years. As she decides to take in more lost kids until she can locate their families, she starts cleaning up to make more space for them, allowing Pizza to collect and use the decor sets.
  • The Unchosen One: Normally, wielders of the brush are chosen by a predecessor, but Pizza just picked it up in order to help Chicory. Chicory eventually reveals they let them keep the brush because they were Unchosen, not wanting to perpetuate a cycle of great expectations that already gave her intense grief.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: Normally the game has Pizza traveling Picnic Province to color it in with their magic paintbrush and solve puzzles with it. The Wielder Trial at the Mountain Top involves an osu! style rhythm game.
  • Unexpected Shmup Level: Boss battles have the game suddenly change to a Bullet Hell-like game where you use the arrow keys to dodge attacks and the mouse to paint when the boss is vulnerable.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: The swimming-through-paint mechanic allows for accidental wall-clips, letting you access areas ahead of time with no way to get back. To counter this, a patch was added that allowed for instant teleportation to Luncheon if you got stuck.
  • Variable Mix: Some BGM have instruments that are added or removed depending on where you are on the map. For example, Grub Caverns has more percussion in the deeper parts of the cave.
  • Virtual Paper Doll: You can find existing clothes to customize Pizza and make your own clothes with custom designs.
  • Warp Whistle: Once you get a transit pass, you can fast travel to any transit bench on the map.
  • Wingdinglish: The insects speak in "bug language", which is rendered in scribbles. Prunus can translate them for Pizza.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: It doesn't take until beating the third boss that you unlock the ability to jump across small gaps.

Alternative Title(s): Chicory

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