Chuchel is an adventure game set in a colorful world full of unique characters.You’re tasked with helping Chuchel, a tiny fuzzy black creature, and his little rodent friend get his sacred cherry back after it repeatedly gets stolen in a series of strange and hilarious ways.
Made by developer Amanita Design, who previously created Machinarium and Samorost 3, Chuchel looks and sounds like a mashup of a Dr. Seuss book and an episode of Captain Caveman. The fun comes from watching characters interact with each other in unpredictable ways, like when a character’s head gets used as a hot tub. It sounds disturbing at first, but watching it all play out is actually really funny.
The gameplay is simple— click around on things and creatures in the environment until you stumble on the correct sequence of events to clear the path for Chuchel to reunite with his cherry. Sometimes you’ll even find mini games that put you inside variations on classic titles like Pac-Man or Tetris. While the gameplay is not particularly challenging, it is amusing to just watch. In one scene, I had to scramble to win back the cherry from a skeleton who mistook it for his own eyeball. It makes sense that this game is coming out on mobile as well, because it feels like the perfect thing to throw on an iPad to keep a kid—or yourself—busy for a while.
Chuchel is available March 7 on PC and Mac. It will also be released for Android and iOS later this year.