Hue (2016)

I got this game for free on Steam, and I am not disappointed at all! This game was unique and interesting.

I titled my review after this hilarious meme. If Limbo is darkness and despair, Hue is color and optimism.

The colorful

• The controls are very simple; you can jump, push, or pull objects and swap the colors on the wheel to solve puzzles. Despite this being simple, the game starts making things more complicated, like introducing timing and future planning puzzles.

• The use of color is very well done. The graphics are all 2D and gray, but the instant you get more than two colors, the game starts slowly becoming more and more lively. I found this detail very interesting.

• The puzzles get more and more complicated the more you advance; at the start, you are forced to swap between two or three colors, but the instant you almost complete the wheel, the game will start throwing curveballs at you, like making you pull levers, color things in certain ways, so you can pass an obstacle, time jumps with the wheel switching, etc.

• The voice acting is decent, but I cannot elaborate on it because it would reveal too many plot details; but I really liked how the plot is given to you via narration.

• The atmosphere is well done, you can distinguish the areas not only by the objects used, but by the backgrounds even; even while limited to gray and black.

• The music is very relaxing and fits perfectly with the atmosphere the game wants to give, a very chill and relaxing atmosphere in a world that is slowly being colored.

The gray

• Some puzzles can get frustrating, especially near the end, because they force you to take actions that aren't evident at first glance. This will happen a lot when the paint is introduced, since you have to deal with the paint changing the color of objects.
• It doesn't have many memorable or intense moments, but this is understandable since it is focused on a younger audience.

Conclusion

Reading Rainbow as a game.

Nice little puzzle platformer. Enjoyed every little second of this game. Moderately challenging puzzles with a very unique gimmick using colors to advance. Most of the puzzles don't require heavy lateral thinking but there is sometimes a real-time constraint to the formula that requires you to think fast and right which makes it a rather unique puzzler.

The main concept of the game revolves around switching the world's ambient color so that some elements of the level appear and disappear depending on how the color affects them and the designer's variations on this theme are as numerous as they are ingenious. The artwork is simple yet lovely, the soundtrack features some delightful piano pieces which render a calm and soothing mood and the story/narration while simple, is well told, heartfelt and very much engaging - this makes for a very well done game in every regard.

In short, if you appreciated Braid, Fez, and Limbo, then Hue is a game for you.

This was one of the free games I claimed from epic at one point. It looked interesting so I gave it a shot.

Narrative

The story is told through letters picked up by the main character Hue. The letters are from his mom and are about her research into color. They are pretty interesting, philosphical and discussing ethics. I liked it. It wasn't anything super amazing but enjoyable. There wasn't really any character development, just that story told through letters.

Gameplay

It's a puzzle platformer. You have to make use of your color wheel to solve the puzzles. You collect all the different colors on the way. Most puzzles are pure puzzle, but a few are timing based. I didn't love the timing ones, but overal there were some pretty good puzzles. Not too easy, not too difficult. I had to look up a solution twice, usually it turned out that I had the right idea but didn't have the timing down. Which sounds like me. There were some small frustrations, but they were with myself not the game. Overall the gameplay was smooth and enjoyable.

Setting

The background music is fitting, calming but nothing extremely special. Some piano tunes, I can't even really remember what they are and I just finished it 5 minutes ago. Yes the music fitted the game but it wasn't superb. The art style i did really like a lot. Fat lines, beaming with bright colors. More and more colors as the game goes on. I thought it was a great look.

Conclusion

It was an enjoyable little game, with nice puzzles with an interesting little mechanic. I would recommend playing it through once, just to have an enjoyable 4-5 hours. It is nothing groundbreaking but what it does, it does well.

This is free on the Epic store this week:

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/hue/home

Conan Exiles was supposed to be free too but the devs decided against it.

Next week we get Killing Floor 2, Lifeless Planet and The Escapists 2.

At least, we're supposed to. I think they promised to give The Escapists 2 away a few weeks ago.

A simple designed, yet beautiful puzzle game. The gameplay objective is pretty simple. You continue through a world without color, and your job is to traverse this world to unlock these colors. Each color not only adds to the atmosphere the world, but they are also important to solving puzzles, which I found quite unique. There really isn't too much more to that gameplay wise.

Story-wise however, it is very interesting in that, as you find each color, you also find a note from your mother to Hue (the protagonist) which is narrated by her explaining some of her past. She also often asks some important philosophical questions, which I very much appreciated! It isn't a very complex story but it is thoughtful and insightful. I definitely recommend at least one playthrough! I can totally understand however, that this wouldn't appeal to too many, but it is a good relaxing puzzle game, with good art and a simple and thoughtful story.

A simple designed, yet beautiful puzzle game. The gameplay objective is pretty simple. You continue through a world without color, and your job is to traverse this world to unlock these colors. Each color not only adds to the atmosphere the world, but they are also important to solving puzzles, which I found quite unique. There really isn't too much more to that gameplay wise.

Story-wise however, it is very interesting in that, as you find each color, you also find a note from your mother to Hue (the protagonist) which is narrated by her explaining some of her past. She also often asks some important philosophical questions, which I very much appreciated! It isn't a very complex story but it is thoughtful and insightful.

I definitely recommend at least one playthrough! I can totally understand however, that this wouldn't appeal to too many, but it is a good relaxing puzzle game, with good art and a simple and thoughtful story.

“But are you really seeing blue the same way that I see it?” -Hue’s mother

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Hue is a 2016 puzzle platformer which was a PlayStation Plus offering in October of 2017. It was through PlayStation Plus that I obtained a copy and played it for the first time. Since then I have not only beaten it but I have obtained 100% game completion.

Hue is set in a monochrome world that gradually becomes more colourful as you progress through the game in an attempt to find your mother. The game is reminiscent of Limbo albeit more colourful, which is such a pleasant experience in a time where games often forsake bright, colourful experiences for realistic graphics and palettes of brown.

The story is slowly fed to you through the use of an apocalyptic log. At the beginning it seems like a simple tale where you are the main character; Hue has to find your missing mother. As you obtain letters progressing through the story, you slowly learn what happened between your mother and Dr. Grey which resulted in her disappearance. A story that seems simple at the surface throws the reader curve balls as it takes quite a philosophical turn through the discussion of a fourth dimensions, true colour and do we really all see certain colours in the same way?

The puzzle platformer gameplay has you using a colour wheel to change the colour of the background environment to make objects in each level appear or disappear. Doing so provides you with platforms you can use to reach areas, a way to avoid potential hazards and many more creative situations. Whilst the colour wheel is present on the screen, time is significantly slowed down. This allows you to change colour mid-jump and slow down onslaughts of oncoming colourful boulders.

Whilst the difficulty does increase as each new colour and puzzle mechanic is introduced, Hue does a wonderful job of showing you the ropes as opposed to throwing you in the deep end. The first level puzzles are always mechanically simple and as your confidence grows, so too does the level of difficulty presented through the challenges. The main difficulty found within the game was changing to the wrong colour incorrectly in a panic. Once the colour wheel was memorised, changing colours in a pinch was a simple task.

Speaking of changing colours, Hue does a wonderful job at including all players with it’s colourblind setting. This setting gives every coloured block a unique pattern so that these players can also enjoy the game. It’s a simple inclusion yet at the same time it so often isn’t present, so props to Fiddlesticks for incorporating ways to include all players.

The game has a Metroidvania feel to it as it contains sections earlier on in the game that you are unable to reach and have to backtrack to at a later point in the game once you have unlocked the correct colour for manipulating the environment. These areas contain vials which are the collectible in the game. There are 28 vials to collect all up and whilst collecting them is straightforward and is necessary to obtain 100% completion in the game, the vials serve no purpose themselves.

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.com/2018/01/26/hue/

I like puzzle games. Really, I do. I'm not a puzzle nut so I like them short-ish and varied. Most of all, I like them with a nice difficulty curve.

Hue manages to be all of the above, albeit with a somewhat bloated-feeling middle and some quasi-philosophical talkie sections I did not find very compelling.

Hue is fin but I recommend playing it in bursts - there is only so much color-shifting puzzles wuth boxes and doors one can take in a day.

Esta pequeña joya que adquirí como un juego gratuito de PS+ no podía haberme dejado mas satisfecho. Es un puzzle-plataformas al estilo de aquellos pertenecientes a la revolución indie como Limbo, Braid o Thomas was Alone así que si extrañan esa época muy seguramente van a disfrutar de Hue.

El gimmick en esta ocasión es el color, el cual usamos para hacer aparecer, desaparecer y afectar objetos en cada pantalla para poder avanzar.

Los puzzles tienen su reto pero no resultan frustrantes. El arte es minimalista pero muy bello y lo mismo se puede decir de su música. La historia nos pone a buscar a la madre del protagonista y nos da algo de datos interesantes sobre la naturaleza filosófica del color, pero a la larga no es nada especial. De todos modos no importa tanto porque el enfoque está en los acertijos y aspectos visuales, y ahi sobresale.

Solo toma entre 4 y 5 horas el terminarlo y aunque uno queda con ganas de mas, la verdad es que su duración es perfecta para que no nos aburramos de él.

Muy recomendado.