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.

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.

“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/