[u]In short[/u]: The main mechanic is fun and this is close to a recommendation, but ultimately falls short because of how poorly thought-out the user interaction is and because of how little content there is. The concept is great, the execution is lacking.
[u]In long[/u]: Watch the store video, it is an accurate portrayal of the [u][b]main mechanic[/b][/u]. You are presented with a grid of linked hexagons in up to 4 different colours. Within a limited number of moves you are to paint them all in a single colour. Select a colour and click a tile to recolour all contiguous tiles of the same colour. The levels are cleverly laid-out, requiring you to carefully plan your steps so you don't exceed the move limit. Later-on new mechanics are introduced allowing you to swap two tiles or forcing you to deal with locked and locking tiles.
For how simple and bare-bones this is, I found it to be surprisingly fun and interesting. It's not overly demanding, but avoiding brute force trial-and-error requires a bit of thinking ahead, which I quite enjoyed. There are 75 levels across 6 categories, roughly in order of difficulty. You unlock the categories one at a time. After beating the last level, roughly 1.5 hours into the game, it just throws you back to the level selection screen, which feels a bit anti-climactic. There is no endless mode or level generator, but I could see myself replaying the later levels in a few years maybe.
The [u][b]visuals[/b][/u] are minimalist, but I still liked the looks of the game. The Unity loader takes care of the technical aspects (resolution, windowed mode). In-game the only menu option is disabling music and/or [u][b]sound[/b][/u] effects, with no sliders present. Sometimes the music seemed glitchy, but I couldn't pinpoint why and quickly turned it off anyway (I do on most puzzle games). The sound effects are decent.
Now onto my biggest gripe with the game - [u][b]UI and controls[/b][/u]. There are no hotkeys, not even Esc to go back to the menu or close the game. Be it through planning in advance or through trial-and-error - usually there comes a point where you know the way to victory on a level and just want to execute it. This is where frustration will quickly build up. Click on a colour, then click on the target tile. Now the UI for some reason completely locks up and forces you to watch up to a few seconds of the colour spreading. Only then you can go back to the bottom of the window and select the next colour, click on the next tile, stare at the screen as the colour spreads, etc etc. It's just cumbersome and excruciatingly slow! I don't want to compromise the artistic vision of the developers, but doubling the animation speed for filling and level transitions, or allowing to instantly complete animations with a second click would make the experience a lot smoother.
And why can't I select the next colour while the previous one spreads? Why doesn't the game buffer inputs? In fact, it provides no visual or auditory feedback whatsoever when you click a tile while the UI is locked. The first few times I just didn't know why nothing was happening. I would also like to see hotkeys for the colours (maybe 1, 2, 3, 4 and/or allow scrolling between them with the mouse wheel) and the undo button so I don't have to always go across the whole screen. Finally, if you are in swap mode and you click the wrong tile, you cannot unselect it - you have to switch to a colour and then back to swap mode. That's honestly just poor design!
This makes the game feel very basic and unpolished. I figured it would be something grown out of a game jam, a proof-of-concept or the first work of a single student [u][b]developer[/b][/u]. But looking at the website of PlayColorfulGames it turns out this the second game of a two-person development studio. Even though I like the mechanics and I see a lot of potential in this game, I can't bring myself to give them a pass on the very poor UI decisions. They should know better for their second game! Especially since they're asking 1.99 EUR for a 1.5 hour game. That would be a fair price if the experience was good and the game was polished. But it isn't. If you really like puzzle games, like I do, I can maybe recommend buying it on sale, just to check out the interesting and novel mechanics. Like I said at the start, this is actually pretty close to a recommendation and I don't regret my purchase at 50% off. But if you have a low tolerance for bad controls, this is definitely not for you.
