For those who missed Part 1:
The Colour series by Silver-Stitch was released back in 2009. It’s a collection of scrawled art games where you play a tenacious stick figure searching for his lady love in a monochrome dystopia. Each episode is fairly short, so you can play them all back-to-back in just shy of an hour. The series has won its fair share of awards on Newgrounds, its hosting site: “Colour My World” won both Daily Feature and Weekly Users’ Choice, “Colour My Dreams” won Daily 2nd Place, and “Colour My Fate” won both Daily Feature and Weekly 5th Place. Let’s find out why!
“Colour My Fate” is the last interactive installment in the series, and it comes in the form of a drawn-out fetch quest. As with “Colour My Dreams”, love and creativity take a backseat to the spirit of the holidays, and this time the holiday in question is Christmas. This episode does place a heavier emphasis on color, which given the name of the series, was a nice touch. Stick has to run around B+W City to collect colored Christmas ornaments, and whenever he grabs a certain color, he can fill the city with that color and operate new kinds of machines. He can also interact with the sparkles in the environment to deck the halls.
*CHRISTMAS INTENSIFIES*
This game is about twice as long as the others and the map is enormous, so Silver-Stitch was kind enough to include a walkthrough link in the startup menu. I’ll be the big man here and admit that I had no idea how to get past the live beam testing room. It doesn’t help that there are such huge gaps between the integral areas; I get that there needs to be some stylistic whimsy and there would be no challenge if every item you needed was right next door to everything else, but there are way too many empty tunnels for my comfort. At least you can now choose between using WASD or the arrows so you can at least be comfortable while you run about like a headless chicken. Still, for those who celebrate Christmas, it’s fun running around and spreading the flamboyant Yuletide love.
The last installment of the series is “Colour My Life”, a straightforward animation about Stick confronting the populace of B+W City. All the citizens have spent their lives caged up in their homes, following the rules, and staying monochrome, so Stick addresses them on live TV and opens their eyes to sweet beautiful color. The people are entranced by his speech, and they hesitantly go out to explore their world.
“I’M GRAY AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
So yeah everybody learns to mess around with color and it’s precious and good job Stick. It’s a good thematic end to the series but since it’s not a game I’m glossing over it. In the description for “Colour My Life”, Silver-Stitch claims that there are still sparkly prompts to interact with the video, but after three viewings I still couldn’t find the little buggers.
I do recommend playing the Colour series, but maybe just once. The atmospheres do their jobs, whether the goal is to warm your heart, inspire you to go color something, or send you under the table to cry in fear. However, after that first experience there’s not much else to get out of it, except for a couple easter eggs in “Colour My Dreams”. Easter eggs for Halloween? Sure, why not. The gameplay itself isn’t gripping enough to draw you in for another go, especially not the eternity of crossed wires that is “Colour My Fate”. But Silver-Stitch developed each of the games in about a month each (except for “Colour My Heart” which took a week), and they were made as gifts for a friend, so I’d say they’re excellent for what they are. A man poured his feelings and thoughts into Flash and the rest of us are just along for the ride. If you’re curious about award-winning indie games, or just want a charming hour-long distraction, definitely try out the Colour series.
Hey folks, I'm FairyGodmoose (Figgy for short)! I gravitate toward cult films and kids movies, but anything crazy will do.
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