A deserted diner on the edge of nowhere is an intriguing premise.
Throw in the strange tower nearby, and the fact that if you try and
leave the local environment you get thrown back to the diner, and the
intrigue grows a little. The flat minimalism of the presentation, and
the monochromatic palette, add a little something as well.
Well, more than a little something.
The lack of colour is the point. The aim is to restore colour to the
world, by solving the conundrums presented to you. Green, blue and red,
then a grand conflagration that produces a “full spectrum”. It’s
still an austere place, but eventually far more colourful.
Discolored is a gentle, solitary game, a tad surrealistic and a tad
directionless at times. It took me about 90 minutes but I had played the
demo, so skipped through that bit reasonably quickly. Still, I would be
surprised if it clocked in much over that regardless. Find things, use
things, prod and poke and have a think. It took me a little while to put
the pieces together, to twig to how the coloured prisms worked in the
game, and I enjoyed doing so. It may not have been hard or very long,
but I had a good time colouring my world.
The moon puzzle warrants a special mention.
It did end a little unsatisfactorily, but the ending suggests there
might be more to come one day. As well, some YouTube watching after
finishing the game identifies some other (small) areas are available,
had I been more meticulous in my exploration. Unfortunately, unless I
have missed something, you can’t go back to an earlier point to access
these (there is one autosave) but you can play again. Which I may well
do.
You move with the WASD keys and explore the world with the mouse. The
cursor though is fixed centre screen, and moving the mouse
"drags" the world around that point. Right click brings up the
inventory ribbon top of screen, and clicking an object allows it to be
viewed or used in the game world, or combined with other items. You
can't however move the game world while the ribbon is open, so if you
want to, e.g. use a hook on a rope, you need to have the rope in view
when you activate the ribbon. Occasionally I did have to exit the
inventory, shift my view of the game world, then go back into the
inventory in order to complete my desired action.
The centre cursor will generally indicate something can be done
somewhere, but not always, so it pays to try things regardless. There is
no spoken word, but there is no one to converse with anyway. The musical
score changes as you move through the game.
I played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-9700k 3.7GHz
