Publisher: Amanita Design
Developer: Amanita Design
Platform: PC/Mac/iOS/Android
Release: 07/03/2018 (PC/Mac), TBC (iOS/Android)
Who or what is Chucel, you may ask? The character can probably be compared to those enchanted dustballs you might recall from Studio Ghibli animations, except he also has stick limbs and a mouth for making lots of unintelligible noises. As for the game, of which he is the hapless hero of, it’s of the funniest things you can play right now.
Beginning with you trying to wake Chuchel up to start what will turn out to be a long arduous day for him, this is a point-and-click adventure (with some occasional direction key presses), only instead of the head-aching logic LucasArts style games these tend to be associated with, this is less about affecting your cranium and more your funny bone.
What strikes you about Chuchel is both its minimalism, with most of the action often just taking place in a blank backdrop, and its surreal warped designs, which reminds me of 90s-era Nickelodeon cartoons. A bird is never quite just a bird, while everything from clouds to trees have their own quirky animated personality.
The poor little hairball just wants to enjoy a cherry, but so does his rival Kekel, a creature that I think might be a dog but I couldn’t say for sure. Essentially, you’ll follow him through a series of sketch-like scenarios in order to retrieve that cherry, though each victory is also scuppered by a large Pythonesque hand snatching your prize away and pulling you onto the next vignette like a sadistic version of announcing ‘The Princess is in another Castle’.
These puzzles are often fairly basic, though a few do require a little bit more thought, though never without some handy hints to gently prod you along. Ultimately, it’s not about leaving you stuck in any one scenario for too long as it’s more about experimenting with different solutions and laughing at how the excellent animations provides feedback. In some cases, the solution is simply about clicking on new options as they appear, each one turning out to be a hilarious error until Chuchel loses his temper and just thrashes out a solution. With so many adventure games often requiring you to figure out only one obscure solution and little indication on how to progress otherwise, it’s a joy that for almost every input you’ll get rewarded for something to tickle you.
When you’re not laughing out loud, you might also just wonder if there’s any real structure to it other than just an excuse to fire off dozens of sketches, which even includes one that involves a mini-arcade riffing on Pac-Man, Tetris and Space Invaders. There’s even a few times Chuchel successfully gets his cherry and you’d think that’ll be that, until greed or some other foible gets the better of him. But it continues with dizzying inventiveness as long as a feature-length cartoon, which seems just about right before running out of steam.
There have been some terrific short games of late, such as Gorogoa that really gets you thinking, while Florence really gets you in the feels, so it seems about right that something like Chuchel comes along and fills that often overlooked gap of simply making you laugh.
DaMisanthrope 