Comedy, says Amanita, is what Chuchel is all about. Although it’s still an adventure game, it has a look, tone and design that has little in common with the studio’s previous work. ![]() The Czech indie studio is renowned for gorgeous, intricately detailed titles like Machinarium, the Samorost series and Botanicula, the first two of which focus on brain-melting puzzles.īut Amanita is going in a different direction with its next project, Chuchel. From the classic point-and-click titles of yesteryear to the modern dialogue-driven experiences made by Telltale Games, adventure games have been making people laugh more consistently than any other genre.Īmanita Design has built a name for itself making traditional point-and-click adventure games - but not the kinds of ones that make you laugh. I enjoy the more outwardly ambitious titles too, but it’s refreshing to play a title that concentrates on a simpler approach.If comedy has any true home in video games, it’s in graphic adventure games. The stripped back, immediate response approach to gameplay is the antithesis of the epic, movie inspired blockbusters that dominate the gaming landscape. Most of the time I found myself delaying the correct action in order to see every possible response, almost the complete opposite of how most games are meant to be played. There are a vast amount of individual actions to perform and an accompanying range of reactions. Some screens contain hints in the background whilst others simply need you to work your way through the options. Every screen has a number of interactive objects or characters and to progress you need to puzzle out the order in which to prod, poke, push, lick, jump on them. ![]() Unlike many other games, where discussion of the mechanics and controls can occupy several paragraphs of insightful commentary, here the controls are delightfully simple as you click away with your mouse. With all this being said, one of the most interesting things about Chuchel is how difficult it is to summarise in written form. If your main criteria for a game’s value is its length, though, Chuchel is not for you. Whilst this sounds slight, the ratio of fun to gameplay time is much more impressive, and I’d certainly choose Chuchel over many more substantial games. Completing the game and getting the achievements is possible in just a couple of hours. The only negative is that it is clearly a very short experience. Almost every one of the game’s 30 screens contains numerous opportunities for experimentation and offers the potential for a range of cute and funny animations. It should be clear that I loved Chuchel and found myself smiling far more than is natural for such a jaded and cynical old man. The result is a true feeling of playful exploration, where each click is generally rewarded by a suitable animation, whether successful or not. ![]() Interactive objects are generally easy to spot but don’t feel shoehorned into the scenes either. This unity of vision is one of the most impressive parts of the game, and perfectly complements the gameplay. All of the weird and bizarre creations feel like they belong and, as with Samorost, Machinarium and Botanicula before it, the overall effect is of an impressively cohesive and well designed world. Utilising the full spectrum of bright colours and exhibiting a lovely crude hand-drawn aesthetic, the inhabitants of Chuchel are all chock-full of character. The most obvious place to start with Chuchel is with its vivid artstyle. Full of grotesque and cute characters and buttons, levers and objects to push, pull, and manipulate, Chuchel’s quest for a tasty cherry has more imagination in each screen than many big budget games demonstrate in their entirety. Instead of the weird sci-fi stylings of Samorost, however, Chuchel takes place in a colourful world that looks and feels like a kid’s cartoon. Coming from the makers of the wonderfully imaginative Samorost games, Chuchel continues the static screen environmental puzzling of its predecessors.
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