Sometimes the world can feel colourless. Yet when we attempt to add some of our own — a splash of vivid red across, for example, a bus shelter — we're on the wrong side of a vandalism charge. So to the escapist world of gaming we once again turn, leaping into this absolute charmer about the emotional burden of creativity. Okay, that sounds quite exhausting, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale sees you take control of a chipper custodian (named after your favourite food) for the titular Chicory themselves, who is the latest in a long line of wielders of a magic paintbrush that allows them to deftly add colour to the world. Chicory has gone missing and left the paintbrush behind for Superintendent Jaffa Cakes to take up the bristles and go Bob Ross on the game world's candy ass.

It's smooth, slick and brilliantly polished stuff — we appreciate this is a slightly reductive statement, but there's no indie jank here. This has the flair of a AAA title, as well as the playtime: you could easily spend in excess of 20 hours in Chicory's marvelously-realised world, interacting with its well-written and profoundly likeable characters and solving colouring-based environmental puzzles with a seemingly ever-expanding number of different artistic tools that brilliantly balance versatility with ease of use. If we can criticise anything, there's obviously a world of difference between using the DualSense to paint and using a mouse in the PC version.

An indie adventure with the confidence of heavy hitters like Undertale, Chicory: A Colorful Tale is one hell of a pleasant surprise that excels on every level it is possible to do so. Would it be too hackneyed to say it belongs in an art gallery?