What can color do in games?
Explore the color mechanism in games.
I’m a UX designer and interested in game production. However, there isn’t much about game UX/UI in school course so I’ve been explored it on my own for a while. In this article, I want to talk about some of my observations about color usage in my previous game experience. I would take some games that have a clear purpose for color usage as examples.
Branding & Genre
Our visual perception provides us information patterns every day. When seeing a specific color pattern, we can immediately start to relate them to some of our experience of similar things. And because of individual differences (e.g. cultural background), there can be so many different meanings of the color pattern. But there are some common senses about the color used for major game genres and game branding.
For example, casual games usually have light and active colors while 3A games tend to have a color palette that has greater grayscale and more realistic. Moreover, the specific colors used throughout the game can make games easily recognizable. You don’t have to look closely at the picture below and if you are a gamer, you should be able to easily recognize what game it is.
Progression
This is an interesting usage and I’ve only discovered how implicitly powerful it is in games. Commonly speaking, colors can evoke emotion and designers are familiar with ways of using color to create specific experiences for players. Using color as progression can facilitate the communication between the story and the player and thus create a more immersive experience in terms of changes in time or location. Journey and Alto’s Adventure are great examples using color to specify different moods and contexts.
Mechanism
Using color as a core mechanism is not unique. Match-three puzzle games like Candy crash are the most common ones. Building on that, there are still some interesting mechanisms from the games I’ve seen and want to share here. Color Edge is an indie arcade game that derives from match-three puzzle game but with a more interesting, satisfying, and innovative interaction. Since there’s no video about it on YouTube or Vimeo, if you are interested in it, check it out here.
