As much as I love AAA games, it’s the indie games that often stick out to me the most, because they’re the ones who really take chances with a game. Sometimes the chance is a visual design, sometimes it’s a story topic that may be too sensitive or controversial, and sometimes it’s a simple game mechanic. Curve Digital took their chance in using color as a puzzle-solving mechanic. It’s unbelievably simple, and yet this indie team found a way to make something so simple be so incredibly complex. Hue starts off leading players to the water, showing how simple and easy it is to just drink, and then when the player leans over to lap up the water, Hue kicks them in. The player may flap around wildly in an attempt not to drown, but they won’t try to leave, because now they’re hooked. That’s what Hue will do to you, even if you’re like me and loathe platformers with a passion. Hue Is a Bit Off-Color.
Hue is about a boy also named Hue, who goes on a mission to restore color that was lost in the world. All he has to go on are letters left behind by his mother, who was researching how to see colors not in our visible spectrum. She created a Color Ring to try to see beyond the spectrum of light, and it broke, and the colors vanished. As a result, she fell into those invisible colors, disappeared from Hue’s sight, and Hue’s world is now a bleak grey. However, as Hue walks around his small fishing village, he (and the...