Color theory, sayeth Wikipedia, is "a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations." Color Theory, by Joseph Cox (Groovemastercox), is a puzzle platformer where you play a color-shifting pixel-man whose hue lets him pass through similarly colored obstacles. Both teach similar lessons: You know that red and green make yellow, green and blue make cyan, and blue and red make magenta, don't you? You should, if you want to master Color Theory.
All you need are the [arrow] keys to move and jump around. Touching a colored plus sign repaints your dude, allowing him to pass through platforms and spikes of the same color. Using your newfound knowledge of color theory, you will learn that certain colored signs make more than one color platform passable: a yellow sign makes red and green passable, for example. You can only pass through one color, or set of colors, at a time, so there will always be some colored block that is stable. Spikes, gravity-switching, and some Space Invaders-style bad guys round out the repertoire of tricks and obstacles to contend with. Jump, change colors, and try to make it to the magical, glowing white nimbus at the end of each level.
The quasi-retro design is perhaps a little plain, but along with the quirky electronic soundtrack, it gives Color Theory a style of its own. The puzzles are solid, clever, and at 30 levels, are a good showcase for a nifty mechanic. Some puzzlers may resent the twitchy, reflex-based platforming that certain levels require, but others will enjoy the blend of puzzles and arcade action. All in all, it's the best RGB-CYM puzzle platformer that this reviewer expects to play in some time.
This game pleases me.
Also, level 19 reminds me of Babies Dream of Dead Worlds.
Fun concept, even if the arrows telling me where to go insult my intelligence a little. I would rather be able to zoom out and see the level, then have to puzzle out the solution myself. Instead I feel like it's spoon-fed to me and I just have to go through the motions.
Level 22 is bad and whoever made it should feel bad. It does not make use of this game's distinctive mechanics. Any platform game could have a level that is horrible in exactly that way.
How do I do Level 30?
I checked the video walkthrough. Level 30 is done by superhuman timing. Goodbye, Color Theory, it was fun while it lasted.
Played it all the way through. Not much of an ending.
Almost gave up on level 30, but stuck with it. It's nasty.
This game + me = no. Oh wellI, I have never been that good at platformers :P
Level 22 makes me want to cry.
I would totally play a Color Theory Director's Cut that eliminates level 22 and tweaks level 30.
I like the concept. It is easy to learn but hard to master, especially because it lags my comp. :(
Level 30 makes me want to cry even more.
Finally beat it! Level 30...
You have to start running before the level appears. Jump only at the gaps and spikes, and make sure to keep running and hit the color balls. Just keep running and you won't die.
I'm pretty happy with this trend of at least one puzzle-platformer per day.
That said, this was pretty unimaginative, and the level design was incoherent. I'm not sure this game understood what it was.
Moony, that's level 29.
Yeah, Ezra, I was about to say, I didn't remember any running in the last level... Personally, the only hard part of the level was
avoiding the spikes on the first jump down. After that, it was easy (except at the end part on the gravity flip, when I somehow missed the red-color-changey-thing the first two times I tried it and so I died).
At last! A game where I can put my art minor to use!
If you prefer subtractive colors in your puzzle platformer, play Chromatic.
Nice game with a good concept, but why would they use RGB as the "main" colors? Having panels that mix them just leads to confusion that could have easily been avoided if they just used RGY. :/
That was OK and well implemented, but it was fairly uninspiring. It didn't break new ground or have any particularly unique puzzles, and there were a few times when it forced you to die because you weren't going to know what's coming. Also level 30.
Nevertheless, it was polished and the controls were to my liking, so if he makes more I hope he learns from his experience and takes it further.
I really enjoyed this game, it's very well-polished, lots of fun on the levels, some of them were totally epic in my opinion.
To summarize, this is what casual games is all about.
I thought the game was really fun. It was pretty easy, as I managed to beat it with minimal difficulty. Even levels 29 and 30 I only had to replay five or six times before I beat them each, which is well within my rage-quit threshold. Neat concept, well executed! I liked it!
Side spikes make me sad.
And so does level 28. The comments don't make me feel better about what's coming up. Although 22 wasn't good, for sure, it still wasn't rage-quit inducing.
Well then, that really wasn't so bad. The last level was easier than it looked, but still not by any means fun. Hum. I guess that was my appetizer; now on to the really rage-quit-inducing Tower Of Heaven!
Pretty good time filler, didn't leave me satisfied that I had finished it though.
(*o*) ~sighs
Fun little distraction, but I agree with keith, way up there. There wasn't much of a challenge beyond perfect timing on a few levels. Usually, when there was anything to figure out, the game told you exactly what to do. Most levels didn't really require strategy based on the colors. That doesn't make it terrible, but since that's the premise of the game, it's a missed opportunity for sure.
But it's a neat way to burn a few minutes, anyway.
I managed to beat this game without ever once figuring out exactly how the + colors affect the colors that you fall through.
Interpret that as you will.
It's an interesting premise, but this game is more platform than puzzle. The truly difficult parts are not about figuring out the puzzle, but having a good reaction timing.
Contrary to what some of you are suggesting, this game is much harder than Tower of Heaven. While the latter game is not easy, it's manageable once you figure out what you're supposed to do. This game is... required 1/6 second reaction timing pwns my 1/3 second reaction timing.
Level 27 was cool, while 22/30 were not.
Also, the ending sucked.
I don't feel like the color mechanic was used all that well. Most of the time it was just running through the level, hitting each switch as you came to it... there were only a couple of levels where you really had to think about which color switch you should hit.
And yeah, levels 22 and 30 were just stupid.
Me too. I didn't once figure out how the colors worked but it took me about 10 minutes to finish the game. The game play itself had some good points.
Level 22 is the best. Ever play Z-Kart on the TI-83 graphing calculator? Its just like that.
I would love to see an expanded version of this. This seems very proof of concept. And the concept is essentially good! And it works. It also took me about 19 minutes to play through.
Is 30 the last level? Because I beat level 29 and then the game brought me back to the menu... glitch?
I thought this was a great game....and this is coming from a tombraider master....when i went to play the saved game on my computer thanks to browser tools which let me save the game in the cache and play it later in IE....the game complimented me....lets see you master that programming.... thanks to.... Joseph Cox...finished all 30 levels....
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