Brilliantly captivating game.

As one of my friends who reads a lot put it, she finally understands what people say when they mean they want to be able to read a book for the first time again - a massive part about the Talos Principle is discovery and learning, and sadly, you can't really do that again a second time.

I think I'dve enjoyed the game more if I played it without searching for every secret and went with the surface story, then dug deeper the 2nd time around, because I'd find it hard to play it a 2nd time otherwise. However, I intensely enjoyed this game, and would reccomend it anyways.

This is a beautiful puzzle platformer with a perfect soundtrack by Lena Raine (who did the soundtrack for Celeste, and the Minecraft nether update!). It's got incredible writing across the board, from the story, to the individual characters, and to the minute dialogues and just how diverse everything is. The topics covered are also incredibly good, to say the least (very introspective, deals with mental illness and a lot of other struggles).

The game is very accessible, with robust in-game hints, that let you pick between 'soft' hints and more 'direct' hints. There's content warnings you can enable, and the few 'combat'-y parts have configurable hitpoints (with generous checkpoints; the combat is not at all the primary focus - the story is).

Chicory is just easily the most thoughtfully and lovingly crafted game I've ever played. The soundtrack, all of the writing, and the gameplay are just all incredible and it's the most touching game I've had the pleasure of playing.

edit: I've seen a couple reviews mention eyestrain; the game has a setting for that! it has three settings (None, Default, and Lots) - I got a migraine playing on the default, but was fine when I set it to Lots (and once I'd colored in most of the game, I was fine switching back to Default) - I think that generally, most accessibility concerns are addressed.

(There's also a nice 'click and hold to fill up to the lines' mechanic to make painting in the lines very easy)