Hue

 

Release: 2016

Developer: Fiddlesticks Games

Publisher: Curve Digital

Genre: Puzzle Platformer

Gameplay Stats: 5/28 potions, Maybe 6 hours?

Visuals: The visual style of the game is pretty minimal, starts out entirely in black and white. As you gather more colors, there are more colored objects and backgrounds to cycle through but the game remains minimal. I think this is actually a strength of the game since it allows for readability, always an important part of puzzle games. I do think they could have improved on some of the textures of the moveable/immovable objects, but overall I think it was good. There were a couple times I didn't notice something was able to move initially, but that could've just been me. I also kind of wish the yellow and orange colors were a bit more visually distinct. I didn't have too many issues, but with split second decisions it made it a little tricky sometimes. I think the yellow was too orange, but I suppose it couldn't be proper yellow with expecting white lines to give texture.

Audio: Some nice classical music in the background of these puzzles. I could see returning to the music if I needed to study or something. The sound effects were a bit boring though. Didn't seem like a ton of love was put into that aspect of the soundscape. The voice acting was nice! I think there were only a couple voiced characters, as in only a couple communicated with words, but the voicing was nice. It held the correct emotion in the correct amounts. Not many complaints here.

Plot: Allegory of the cave! The in game universe is black and white, but your mom discovers color while working in a university. Her research advisor doesn't want her to tell the world but she insists. You start out hearing only her side but you later get the advisors side of the story. It made for a satisfying little arc to be honest. The motivations made sense. While I was here for the puzzles, I genuinely think the plot was a nice little bonus.

Gameplay: Pretty simple physics for a puzzle platformer, not a whole lot to wrap your head around on that front. The main gimmick here is that you have access to a wheel of color, doled out one color at a time over the course of the game. When you select a color with the right stick it changes the color of the background and makes all objects of that color intangible/invisible. It's pretty neat! Some of the puzzles made me think quite a bit before being able to solve them. I think my only complaint here was that there weren't any puzzles that used all 8 colors. I think I had to get all of them throughout the game, but I think the most a single puzzle used was 6. I don't have any idea how they would have increased the complexity, but I would've liked to see an attempt.

Pretty solid little game! I think I paid a few bucks for it and I definitely enjoyed my time. They came up with an idea and did a decent job exploring the puzzles that could come from the idea. I don't think they did as much as they could here, but I appreciate a game that shows restraint with good follow through versus a game that's overambitious and doesn't stick the landing. [8/10]