As I refined A Game About Colors, More or Less, the color system became one of the most important aspects of the design. Early versions relied on fully saturated colors, which made the comparisons visually clear and, in many cases, too easy. During testing, it became obvious that players could identify the stronger or weaker color channels with very little effort, which reduced the level of deduction the game was meant to encourage.
To address this, I shifted the palette to include added black (K) values between 30% and 70%. Lowering saturation created a more subtle, more challenging set of swatches. Colors that once felt predictable became more ambiguous, and players had to make more thoughtful evaluations based on small differences, rather than relying on obvious saturation cues. This adjustment aligned the visual experience more closely with the intentions of the mechanics.
Throughout the development process, ChatGPT was used as a collaborative tool to help build, refine, and organize the rule set. It played a role in structuring the language of the rules, maintaining consistency across versions, documenting changes, and evaluating how each update affected clarity and player experience. It was also useful for keeping a clean version history and ensuring that revisions—such as the shift to a reduced-saturation deck—were incorporated accurately and consistently. The core design decisions remained my own, but ChatGPT helped make the documentation process more efficient and reliable.
This combination of iterative testing and structured rule development resulted in a color system that better supports the game’s deductive, perception-based gameplay.
Act 1 – Getting a feel for the deck’s color language
Early on, players are mostly just getting acquainted with how the deck moves. They make a guess, flip the card, and start noticing which kinds of shifts catch their eye — a bump in brightness, a little pull toward red, or a change in saturation that didn’t seem obvious at first. It’s basically a warm-up for the eyes, where players start realizing that the game isn’t about naming colors; it’s about noticing how they behave.
Act 2 – Learning what actually matters in a swatch
Once everyone has a few cards in front of them, they naturally start leaning on simple bits of color theory — whether they mean to or not. Some players pay attention to value first, because brightness jumps out. Some start tracking saturation because muted colors hide shifts better. Others zero in on hue and notice how small moves between neighbors (like teal to blue-green) feel trickier than big jumps. This is where players start building their own internal system for judging the cards, one clue at a time.
Act III – Stay consistent with the system you’ve built
The game doesn’t suddenly get more intense toward the end — it just asks you to stick with whatever approach you’ve developed. By this point, players have their own way of reading the swatches, and the last part of the game is about trusting that instinct. Maybe you’re watching for low-saturation curveballs, or maybe you’re checking how the brightness sits against the last few cards you saw. It’s steady, calm decision-making — more about consistency than pressure — and the satisfaction comes from seeing how well your eye held up across the whole run.
