(I Fell in Love with) The Majesty of Colors
Genre: Art Game
Platform:Browser (Flash)
Developed By: Gregory Weir
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The Scoop:“Last night I had a dream. I floated in darkness, immense, squamous. My mind flowed like my body, slowly and sinuously, tremendous wheels both too slow and too fast for me to describe to you now.”
Thus opens The Majesty of Colors. Gamers play as a Lovecraftian underwater horror (or I should say gamers play as a person dreaming that they’re a Lovecraftian horror). The only control the player has is over a lone tentacle, which can pick up and release various objects that wander into reach.
Actions the player take from nearly the first moment sends the dream down one of a handful of branching paths, resulting in one of five possible endings. To be clear, The Majesty of Colors isn’t much of a “game;” I wouldn’t describe it as particularly fun. But just because something is interactive doesn’t mean that it’s purpose needs to be entertainment. I believe The Majesty of Colors was meant to evoke emotion and critical thought from the player. And it succeeds. At least, it did with me.
Right at the beginning of the experience, I accidentally killed a little pixelated person. I didn’t mean to – I just didn’t really understand what was going on, yet. This set me down a path where more pixelated people appeared, attempting to kill me. They can’t be communicated with – there’s no way to return to a more “happy” path. There’s no way to explain that that first death was an accident.
This resonated with me. Due to simple ignorance, that initial interaction between man and monster got off on the wrong foot. The monster is full of poetic introspection and observation (we as the player know this, as we get to read it), but all the humans see is a tentacled beast that said “hello” by killing.
It’s an interesting experience.
(15 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Links:
Design Postmortem
JayIsGames Review
Play This Thing! Write-Up
Offworld Write-Up
Kongregate Mirror
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