By John Walker on May 6th, 2010 at 12:15 am.
Right now, this instant, play Hue Shift. Goodness me, it’s brilliant.
The instructions from developers Broken Radio Games are not exactly clear. Let me quote:
“You can change the colour of the player. If the colour of the player matches the colour of a levelblock, this and all other blocks in the same colour become solid. If the player and the levelblocks have different colours the player does not collide with the blocks.”
But it’s not nearly this complicated. To understand. To play – that’s another matter.
The game is a series of coloured platforms in a tall column, either green, red, blue or white. You control a square which can be green, red or blue by your choice. When it’s green, it will pass through red and blue platforms. And so on. When it’s the same colour as the platform, it will bang into it if below, or slide along it if above. The aim is to see how high you can get.
Your control of movement is only jumping. The block moves left and right itself, changing direction each time it reaches one side of the column. So it’s just jumping and changing colour you’re in charge of. Which seems simple. Until you try to do it.
There’s two control methods – either cycling through the colours by hitting left or right, or choosing each colour directly with left, right, and down. (Or ASD of course.) So if you want to get onto a red platform, turn green or blue, then switch to red to land. Then maybe it’s a blue platform that turns red halfway along, so you’ll either need to jump again or switch to red and blue for that length. But if the platform above is blue, you’re going to need to pick red or green at the right moment. But red for red, right, except now it’s blue, and oh no!
Which is the pattern of things. In panic, it’s so easy to fall through everything. You lose if you fall further than the bottom of the screen, with your highest point marked for your next attempt. Attempting to maintain the correct tactics in your head is enormously fun, and when you fail it’s always, always, always your fault. It’s that combination of exasperation and laughing at your own mistake, and of course the need to have another go. It’s free. You can play it here.
Here’s the trailer:
06/05/2010 at 00:24 Hal Kilmer says:
I’ve been playing for 5 minutes, but I can see this lasting a long time. I love games that make me feel utterly useless.
06/05/2010 at 00:24 LewieP says:
Yep, that’s a fun game.
06/05/2010 at 00:27 Kirrus says:
Argh.. makes my brain go all gooey and horrible.. can’t play that :(
06/05/2010 at 00:45 Vandelay says:
Was completely hopeless at this, until I switched to control style B. Now I’m just merely bad at it.
Great fun though.
06/05/2010 at 04:22 Thants says:
Control Style B is clearly superior and I’ll fight anyone who says different!
06/05/2010 at 00:55 HarbourMaster says:
Made 1059 on second attempt. Had enough then.
06/05/2010 at 01:48 Clovis says:
I’m just terrible at this stuff. I think it took me 15 minutes to get to 1000. I finally got a 1700 and gave up. This reminds of how amazingly bad I am at QTEs. They almost completely ruined Prince of Persia for me.
06/05/2010 at 00:57 Raum says:
This is the kind of game that annoys me to the point that I’m gonna obsess over it.
06/05/2010 at 01:02 merc says:
Pretty good, but having to do the little tutorial bit every time you start again makes it slightly duller than it should be.
06/05/2010 at 01:03 Hobbes says:
Oh dear, there goes the degree… one to file alone with Canabalt and Airfield Mayhem in the DO-NOT-OPEN drawer.
06/05/2010 at 01:15 John Peat says:
That’s – erm – that’s just a form of mental torture wrapped up in Lego…
Don’t mean to be mean but I thought we’d moved past games like that into more rewarding and satisfying stuff (Canabalt falls into the same pit really – being random and hard just for the sake of it).
06/05/2010 at 01:21 John Walker says:
No, “we” haven’t moved on from games like Canabalt! It’s just you. You should come back, because we’re all having rather a lot of fun.
06/05/2010 at 01:32 Mo says:
Yeah, it’s not really about “moving on” from this type of game. We all get different things out of our games. And we want different things at different times. On the bus, I want to squeeze a quick puzzle game in on my iPhone, just to pass the time. When I get home, I want to play something with narrative and drama. Or maybe I’m not up for all that and just want to play a mindless shmup. It all depends on context.
06/05/2010 at 01:50 Stu says:
Speaking of Canabalt, I see it’s gone all Mavis Beacon:
http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/edu/
06/05/2010 at 01:59 Vinraith says:
@John Peat
There’s no “moving on,” there’s just what individual people find entertaining. Personally I don’t find anything rewarding about games like this or Canabalt, I played both for a mere few minutes before getting bored and moving on. Other people may find it compelling and addictive, and that’s fine too.
06/05/2010 at 03:58 Bret says:
I dug it. Not, you know, boundless love, but it’s fun enough.
Now Canabalt, that’s love.
06/05/2010 at 01:17 Robert says:
Cheers.
06/05/2010 at 01:53 Akirasfriend says:
Ach, it’s too much for my feeble brains to cope with. But OH THE PRETTY COLOURS.
But I genuinely cannae play this. D:
06/05/2010 at 02:02 Veret says:
Interesting. I’m not going to post my score, because…well, it royally sucks. But still, interesting.
On the theme of color-shifting, though, have any of the hivemind seen Primary? It’s got the same mechanic of color-coordinated platforms, but it also throws in a pleasantly surprising mix of elements from Trine and N. Just as long as you can get past the god-awful narrator at the beginning.
06/05/2010 at 02:26 Erik says:
If the gameplay was fun, it would cover over the garish sound and graphics.
06/05/2010 at 04:21 Thants says:
Good news, it is!
06/05/2010 at 02:51 DMJ says:
My head asplode.
06/05/2010 at 05:05 Serenegoose says:
It’s supposed to be red blue green? It’s red blue yellow to me. :( Yeah, double checked. To me, that’s bright yellow. To adapt, I had to change it so that I looked at the block, and then the colour I wanted to get to, and thought of it in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’ rather than colours. “To get up onto that block, I’ll need to press right” rather than ‘be yellow’ fun game though. :)
06/05/2010 at 06:04 MWoody says:
Out of curiosity, how does green looking like yellow change the game if you can still tell the difference between the three?
06/05/2010 at 05:45 Clippit says:
waaaaaargh %D
06/05/2010 at 06:36 Serenegoose says:
It doesn’t, MWoody. What you witnessed there was when I typed out one post, then changed my mind, typed out another, but forgot to remove all evidence of the first. I was originally going to make a bit more of a point of how my mind doesn’t work visually, and so I don’t play colour games by thinking of colours, but in other terms – in this case, direction. All that’s there is a mistake on my part that I didn’t notice.
06/05/2010 at 08:15 Risingson says:
Zoop. Am I the only one thinking about Zoop?
06/05/2010 at 09:52 John Walker says:
Yes. But now I’m thinking about Zool. Which is weird.
06/05/2010 at 10:54 Risingson says:
You can also think about Doot. DootDoot.
http://goear.com/listen/0c52e2b/doot-doot-freur
06/05/2010 at 12:45 Clovis says:
Zuul?
06/05/2010 at 16:02 Hodge says:
Doop?
06/05/2010 at 09:55 Serenegoose says:
Let none say ‘John Walker is verily afraid to kicketh it olde school’. Zool. I was playing that game before they sent me to -school-. Not Zool School, though.
06/05/2010 at 10:04 Skusey says:
It’s too early to have to think this hard.
06/05/2010 at 12:12 Hmm.-Hmm. says:
Ooh. Fun!
06/05/2010 at 12:17 Sagan says:
This succeeded in making me feel completely stupid. I barely got past 500, no matter the control style.
06/05/2010 at 13:51 Robin says:
Two same-coloured, full-width platforms in a row = impassible obstacle. Hmm.
06/05/2010 at 14:37 Malibu Stacey says:
Hint: You can switch the blocks colour at any time.
06/05/2010 at 14:37 ZamFear says:
blargh. I’m already terrible at platformers. Trying to play a game of Simon at the same time makes my head hurt :(
06/05/2010 at 15:46 Durns says:
That explanation reminds me of this
The colours move, but the blocks won’t change. That one changed, but why???
06/05/2010 at 16:20 Sanns says:
It’s a cute concept and I hardily agree its worth 2 minutes to play, but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the You-Must-Be-At-Least-This-Twitchy-To-Ride variety of games.
06/05/2010 at 16:49 JuJuCam says:
I’d buy it for my iPod Touch.
06/05/2010 at 22:37 disperse says:
@Serenegoose
First thing I thought of when looking at the color palette was “what a terrible color choices for gamers with colorblindess”. There was even an article on this very site about the issue: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/12/colourblind-gaming-is-it-in-his-eyes/
Red/Green should not be a designer’s go-to colors.
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05/02/2011 at 13:35 flashgameport says:
Flushed a different subject. In this respect, an interesting point. Of course, everyone may feel different, but the way the mind are one. Thank you for your contributions.
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