The Colour Of Madness: Hue Shift
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: