Show off your in-game skills all the time — Chico preview

Gaming has come a long way, especially on the PC front. From recording to streaming, gaming has become a more accessible and exciting – and with that, so have the ways to capture all the great moments you experience. What if there was a game that allowed you to capture those great moments as a screensaver and have them on repeat over and over? The developers at 1Monkey2brains made Chico, a game that records your gameplay and allows you to save it for your screensaver.

To begin, Chico is a different type of game – not one where you simply follow a waypoint to a destination and complete a task, but one where your choices and your actions are at the center of the experience. With its cartoonish art style and simplistic controls, it’s easy to pick up and play to your heart’s content. Moving Chico is as simple as pointing and clicking, making him strut his cowboy butt where you direct him. You can use the scroll wheel of the mouse to zoom in and out and holding down the left control key while moving the mouse allows you to pan around the scene. Set in the middle of what looks to be the western region of the United States, you begin your experience as a lone cowboy surrounded by a somewhat open world to explore. The only things around you are what nature’s given, and it’s how you will craft all types of items.

Accessing your inventory will show you a list of items you can craft in order to make a plethora of other items in the world for you to interact with. Because building shelter and other items in the world require tools, you’ll need to use what’s in the environment to get the job done in the meantime. For the most part, you just need to collect the items needed to make the tool and the game lets you craft that item.

To start, I had to use fisticuffs to smash rocks, small trees, cacti, and other items to make the necessary items to craft larger structures such as shelter, a camp, fire, and other necessities. Unfortunately, because beating a rock with your fist isn’t the most efficient way to mine for stone, it takes some time to break items down. It would have been nice to start with some sort of basic tool. Though you don’t have a health bar and survival is guaranteed, Chico will respond differently depending on what you craft and what items you give him to interact with.

While doing this, all of your actions are being saved to be set as your screensaver. What makes this game unique is that what you do in-game can be used as your screensaver to show off your crafting abilities. With the game in early access, there is still much to be desired, but the developers have made it clear that they plan to release new tools, updates, and buildings on a monthly basis.

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