4/10/2023 0 Comments Botanicula good old games![]() ![]() Many of them begin and end the same way: Kukel runs away from Chuchel with his cherry, Kukel then loses the cherry, which leaves Chuchel to get it back - often to his detriment. Coyote then Kukel is the Road Runner - as if to make the connection explicit, at one point, a tonne weight falls out of the sky and squashes Chuchel after he foolishly presses a red button.ĭevelopers Amanita Design - known for Machinarium, Botanicula, and the Samorost series - get 30 short episodes out of this classic comedy routine. He stops his counterpart from getting to the cherry, not necessarily because he wants it for himself, but because that is his role. Essentially a pink bean with rodent features, Kukel is inferior to Chuchel in size and strength, but smarter, quicker, and always up for mischief. Kukel plays the rival in this double act. His devastating flaw is that he will stop at nothing to do so. But, most of all, he wants to eat a tasty cherry. He has the temperament of a toddler and is therefore a creature of primal passions: he loves to laugh and sing out of tune, will explore new surroundings with his tongue, and descends into a strop if proceedings do not go his way. An acorn shell sits upside-down on his scribbly head while grouchy orange lips frame a mouth that can enlarge to any size. Neither is difficult, but especially the latter feels jarringly incongruous within the rest of the game.Ĭhuchel is a hairy, angry, but loveable speck. A slightly imaginative take on Space Invaders just overstays its welcome, but worse is a dreary section in which you dodge obstacles in a side-scrolling obstacle course for far, far too long. ![]() There are two arcade sequences in there that go on for too long. I’m very aware, from the experience of the first 37 years of my life, how unhelpful it can be for reviews to fixate on what a game offers to a parent and child playing together, so I’m going to write about that specifically and separately in another article, but for now let me just make the aside that no other game has had me and my boy both laughing out loud at the same jokes, turning to each other and telling each other how much we’re loving it.įrustratingly, it makes one – one – mistake, in a run otherwise close to perfection. And joyously, my three year old son has joined in with the giggling. It’s so long since I’ve laughed so often, and so loudly, at a game. The violence is squarely in the Tom & Jerry variety, giant hammers blatting creatures into daft shapes, everything reset to normal at the start of a new scene. Chuchel himself has what might politely be described as anger issues, and the universe’s peculiar obsession with preventing his reaching the food he so desperately wants to eat seems to increasingly drive him towards the world’s most adorable breakdown. And it’s always with the slightest edge of mania, ensuring it never feels cutesy or saccharine. This is daft happiness at its purest, titrated into gaming. It still plays in the familiar manner of just clicking on things on the screen to see what they do, and then delighting when they do it, and here it’s all about a little fuzzy black creature desperately trying to get his hands on a cherry. Whereas their games are usually better described as organic adventure puzzles, Chuchel is a much more straightforward puzzle game. Chuchel is, beyond belief, wonderful.įrom Amanita, who have previously brought us utterly beautiful games like Machinarium, Samorost and Botanicula, this is in some ways a diversion, in others true to their wondrously animated form. ![]() I exhaust every repeated joke until it loops, don’t mind when they do, and call people in from other rooms to see the funniest moments. This is a game where I find myself trying to work out what is the correct solution to any given puzzle, just so I can avoid clicking on it before I’ve clicked on everything else. And then, as you click on every element on the screen, delightful, silly and gorgeous things happen. Every new scene is a glorious delight just to look at, before you even start playing with it. Chuchel is a tour de force of animation, every scene so vibrant and hilarious, colourful and manic, the slightest tweaks in character facial expressions eliciting guffaws. ![]()
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