PixlBit

I have a saying I use when describing a popular cell phone game that just about everybody I know, gamer or not, has played: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. It's also Angry Birds. When Colour Bind is at its best, it's a fun, physics-intensive puzzle game that's delivers a satisfying experience. When it's at its worst, it's a lot like Angry Birds.

The game isn't terribly complicated. The object is to drive a little cart to a goal marked in each level. Your can move the cart left, right, apply your brakes, and cause it to hop by pressing up to, I kid you not, embiggen your tires (tyres?) Sometimes you use your cart to manipulate objects in the environment, like flip a switch or knock over a block. It sounds simple, and it is, until Colour Bind’s take on the laws of physics get involved.

On the bottom of the screen are several color (colour?) coded dials with arrows in them. They exist to tell you that objects matching the color of these dials will be pulled by gravity in the direction of the arrow within the dial, and will continue to be pulled in that direction until acted upon. The size of the arrow determines the intensity of the gravitational pull.

These aren't static laws though, oh no. Switches in the environment can change the direction of gravity instantly. Furthermore, there are lasers strewn about that change the color of any object that touches them into the color of the laser, making it respond to new gravitational laws associated with that color. This could be a box you just pushed into it, a ball rolling down a hill, or your own cart. Then there are other lasers that turn off gravity altogether to send you adrift in whatever direction your momentum takes you.

Now all this sounds like great material for a fun puzzle game, and Colour Bind gave me some genuinely brilliant times. Unfortunately, for every stage these mechanics are implemented in a fun and interesting way, the kind of level where solving it gives you a satisfying "Aha!" moment, there's another where knowing the solution isn't enough, and a certain degree of luck is required to successfully complete the level.

Now any physicist will tell you while everything is measurable not everything is predictable (See Apollo 13), but I frankly don't want troublesome random elements invading a puzzle game that's already difficult enough. Imagine, for example, if, while playing Trials HD you drove your bike through a wall of blocks. That's not so bad. But imagine if one of those blocks flew ahead of you and took out a bridge that you needed to cross in order to complete the level, ruining your perfect run. That's the kind of stuff that happens in Colour Bind.

If you're not some sort of super hardcore sadistic puzzle game fanatic, I imagine this would quickly become a significant frustration. For myself, and probably most normal human beings, knowing I had solved the level, but couldn't move on to the next one (you have to beat each stage in order to unlock the next) because the game simply wasn't going my way became an annoyance. Instead of feeling the satisfied elation that comes from solving a good platforming riddle, I only felt relief that dealing with this part of the game was finally over.

Were this only one or two levels out of the bunch, I would have just noted it and moved on, but it happened often enough to truly turn this game into a chore.

I'm willing to concede that there may be an audience out there for this game, and I may just not get it, similar to the way I found Dark Souls to be my favorite (favourite?) game last year, but several people simply couldn't appreciate it. If you're someone who goes nuts for Trials HD and enjoys those puzzle games where you bounce light off of mirrors that you arrange on a grid and you've been dreaming of a way to combine those two worlds, maybe you'll be into this sort of thing, but I suspect that's a pretty limited audience. For the average individual, there's not a whole lot to get excited about in Colour Bind, but it might be worth checking out sometime if it's on sale.