Imagine the beeping of a flash grenade just waiting to explode, and then imagine the chaotic rain of the assault rifle a few seconds after, with the high-pitched ringing in your ear. And then imagine when you look around, when visibility returns, and you are crouching behind a dirty broken wall, there’s dust and destruction all around. Now imagine the exact opposite of that.
Chuchel is what you’d call a ‘game for kids’ if you play it for 30 seconds. After that, you’ll sink into the calming indie music and continue playing for the next two hours (till it suddenly ends), fuelled by the curiosity of what lies behind that next click. Chuchel is our furry circle-shaped hero who spends his time trying to reach a red berry. Each puzzle scenario is a failed attempt of Chuchel grabbing this mystical fruit that is as large as he is.
Chuchel is the most recent in developer Amanita Design’s deck of indie games that include Machinarium, Botanicula and Samorost. Each of these games are elegiac, but in a cheery way.
They are simultaneously cute and creepy. You start out every game wondering why you play this weird point-and-click adventure with the graphics clearly intended for a very young audience. But then you immediately get attached to the characters. You really want Chuchel to get that berry, and your heart simultaneously breaks a bit, and also cheers up when he doesn’t get to this level, because it means you get to spend some more time playing.
The premise of each of the games is a wet cloth dripping melancholy despite the glowy artwork and cheery music. Machinarium is the story of a lonely droid trying to get by in a dystopian universe. The berry manages to evade Chuchel in every level, and Somarost is in a beautiful yet completely solitary universe. But these are precisely the kind of games that are a perfect pick-me-up: the background artwork feels like you’re in a dream that you don’t want to wake up from — the equivalent of a videogame hug.
Anusha Ganapathi
@quaffle_waffle
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)