Adventure Gamers - Forums

Hello everyone!

We are a small team of indie game developers and we would like to introduce “The Color Gray,” a new adventure game for mobile platforms.

A few years ago my sister and I sat down and discussed what we enjoyed the most about adventure games. We loved the well crafted stories, the beautiful artwork, and the casual pacing.

We then started talking about what we enjoyed the least. One thing quickly stood out, even though it was an adventure game staple: the puzzles. We felt that the puzzles would actually break the immersion. Frustration would set in, or even worse, we’d get stuck and stop playing.  Could we remove these puzzles and still create an interesting experience? We thought we’d try.

The Color Gray is just that. An adventure game that follows a twisting story of deceit and manipulation with no traditional puzzles. Instead, we’ve introduced morally gray choices that must be made along the way. These decisions greatly affect the story and the characters you meet. The goal is to create an experience that felt like you were always progressing while at the same time giving you increased control of the results.

We are planning on releasing it for the iOS and Android in August. Any feedback or opinions are greatly appreciated!

You can find our trailer and more on our website: http://www.thecolorgraygame.com

Or follow us on Twitter: @colorgraygame

By your description the game sounds more like an interactive novel. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with that comparison. It’s definitely not an experience that includes big walls of text though. Very audio/visual focused.

TimovieMan - 07 July 2013 06:59 AM

And there’s far too little of them out there that aren’t bishôjo / eroge / hentai

You can never get too many eroge games

Great advice Timovieman about not advertising that we don’t have something.

My only concern with ‘visual novel’ is how non-interactive it sounds.

We like all the positive images in our heads when we hear ‘adventure game’ instead of something like ‘interactive fiction or choose your own adventure novel’.

In ‘The Color Gray’ you walk around freely, you talk to people in any order, and you make choices in certain events. We felt that adventure game without puzzles gave people an easier picture of what our game is. It’s very similar to where the Walking Dead is going, although they still have a few light puzzles. Heavy Rain is another example. They both have a little more ‘gameplay’ than we do, but I think we’re closer to those than we are to a novel.

Thanks for the post though, it got me thinking.

Seems really attractive to me. 
(Love the theme music on your trailer !)

I totally agree with TimovieMan, you definitly should re-write the “no puzzle”. 

Good luck !

I must say I agree that the way you’re promoting the game is a bit strange. Generally speaking, people who like adventure games like puzzles and people who prefer more interactive novel type of games don’t really like adventures games. So essentially you may end up alienating both parties with the tag line “adventure with no puzzles”.
I could very well be completely wrong about that though.

Anyway, your game seems interesting, I hope it proves really successful.

I like adventure games and the idea of no puzzles, so it doesn’t put me off Though I remember Girl With A Heart Of was similar story-based and ended up having little fanfare so I hope this doesn’t suffer the same fate.

sounds interesting, different takes on the genre should be encouraged