Hue is a puzzle-adventure game developed by Fiddlesticks and published by Curve Digital. It’s an indie title that features the use of colors to navigate increasingly difficult puzzles. I had the opportunity to purchase and play Hue on the Xbox One and found that it is a delightful game that is fun, challenging, and creative.
Hue is also the name of the protagonist. He is on a quest to find his mother who has disappeared. When you start the game the world is in a black, white, and grey scale. It has the resemblance of LIMBO with the character design. Hue is shadowy with white eyes much like the protagonist from LIMBO. When you find your first color, which is pretty quickly, the comparisons begin to fade. While being a 2D puzzle-adventure, it has nothing else in common with LIMBO other than the character art style.
Hue is set up in almost a metroidvania type map. You can explore wherever you want but you can only continue along that path once you have a certain color. I’ve heard some people say they have gotten lost because there is a lack of a real map in the game but I didn’t run into that problem. I remembered where I needed to go after I got each new color for my color wheel. Navigation wasn’t an issue for my on my play through.
The color wheel is what sets the gameplay in Hue apart from other indie games. You use an expanding array of colors to make obstacles in the world disappear. Doing this allows you to progress but you have to pick the right color, move objects around, avoid lasers, and use paint to solve each room’s riddle. The game is broken down into puzzle rooms. Some of them are as simple as selecting the correct color and pushing a box. Other’s rely on you to avoid hazards while switching between color palettes. All colors are selected with the right analog stick. This may sound difficult but the game slows time down when you open your color wheel giving you a few seconds to find the right color you are looking for. For me this created a sense of urgency and added to the fun of the game. I specifically enjoyed the jumping segments that required you to change colors in mid jump on the fly.
As you solve puzzles and discover more colors you will find notes along the path from Hue’s mother that explain events leading up to her disappearance. These are wonderfully voice acted and add a charm to the game that gets you invested in Hue’s quest. A lot of indie games don’t even have a story, Hue’s story is heartfelt and gets you to care about this 2D character in ways that some AAA games haven’t even done. The voice acting is top-notch and is a major attribute to the game’s atmosphere.
Another aspect of the atmosphere which is beautifully done is the music. The music is mostly piano based and really gives you a feel of relaxation among the frustration of solving a puzzle. I’m a firm believer in the health benefits of music and as I played Hue and I got just bit frustrated with a puzzle, I’d stop for a second and think and the music would flow allowing me to calm down and find a solution to the room’s puzzle. Not only does the music add to the game’s world, it adds to the player and helps them solve the increasingly difficult puzzles presented before them.
The puzzles can be difficult but I never found myself to the point of quitting due to the frustration. Just when I think the puzzle is out of reach something clicked and I was able to solve it. You cannot rush through Hue you need to take your time to understand the obstacles in front of you and which colors will help you get past it. I found that whenever I failed at a puzzle I just stopped and looked at the room and took my time interpreting what I needed to do. I commend the developer for creating challenging yet not super frustrating puzzles. Since the flow of the game was great, I finished it in two play sessions within two days.
Despite being a game based around the color spectrum, the developer wisely included a colorblind mode. This makes the game accessible for anyone even people who have trouble with viewing certain shades of color. The colorblind mode uses symbols to represent the colors.
Indie games are released every week and a majority of them are garbage but occasionally we get a diamond in the rough. Hue is that diamond in the rough of indie garbage. I put it up there with INSIDE and Hyper Light Drifter as one of the best indies in 2016. I recommend any gamer who likes puzzle-adventure games, indies, or just good quality games in general to pick up this game and support the developer.
Reviewed on Xbox One
