Quest for Colour

Let me start this review by saying what I expected from Quest For Colour.

I’ve played and reviewed two of Overkill’s games, Molasses Meow and Monster Magnet Meow. They both had really interesting concepts and ideas, especially the firt one, since MMM wasted a nice gameplay idea in a way-smaller-than-should-be game. Molasses Meow had cool custom graphics, really “edgy” gameplay elements and funny dialogs. The idea of color being stolen from the world (from its basic elements – red, green and blue), and being set on a mission to recover it is very cool, and it opens to several interesting possibilities of story and gaming experience. So I had high expectations for a game I knew to be simple.

Quest for Colour is not a bad game, but it’s not anything like I expected. Here’s what it is:

The three crystals of color (red, green and blue) have been stolen, and without them the world will go grayscale. You have a limited set of time to get them back before it happens. To do so, you must defeat three giant slimes. To defeat the three giant slimes, you must kill X slimes/each. Meanwhile, you have to collect color bits scattered around the world to give you more time (and more color).



Apparently, battling slimes consisted of some simple battle system before, but this battle system was (unfortunately) removed in the latest version, and now all you have to do is touch the slime and press Enter... which is exactly the same thing you do to collect the color bits. So the gameplay of Quest for Colour is basically running around on really big maps looking for slimes and color bits. Slimes are somewhat easy to find, because they’re big and you hear a sound when you’re near one... but finding a 3x3 pixel dot in a colorful map can be hard. I do consider this to be more challenging than annoying, though. What really disappointed me in this game is the (lack of) gameplay variety. It’s a timed game where you have to run around and touch objects. Not too bad, reminds me of The Particle of Infinite Free Will. But maybe not a good exploration of the concept. I expected things like... different color effects happening when you recover each color crystal, clear color-themed maps, etc, or something like that.

The only nice elements related to the “color” theme are that you change your char color when you get a color bit, and that, as you run out of time, the screen gets less saturated... grayer. They were nice touches.

Things I didn’t like:
The game design is very straightforward, but there’s some completely unnecessary switch puzzle-thingie in one of the dungeons. Felt out of place.
Other than the king who sends you on the mission, there’s one NPC, and he gives you a color bit... being the only NPC and the only color bit not in the map (is it?), also felt out of place.
Not being able to skip the intro. The game is short and has difficulty levels, so it can be replayed a few times. But you’ll have to watch the intro over and over.
Lack of battles. Really, "capturing" slimes was really lame... and the final "battle" seemed completely pointless since all you had to do to defeat the slimes was touch them and press Enter.

Things I liked:
Difficulty levels. There are all sorts of gamers, and even simple games like this can be difficult for some people... so there is an easy difficulty, and there’s also a hard difficulty for people who really like the rush of a timed game.
Success percentage: The game ends when you recover all 3 crystals, but it tells you the percentage of color bits you recovered. So you can beat the game with less than 100%, which might make you want to play it again.
Soundtrack: Really, really good. I mean, REALLY good.
The name input sequence. It really made me laugh. If you don't feel like playing the game to check it out, I'll be happy to spoil it for you:



Play this game is you like time challenges.