Colorous

Red makes green via yellow, but what goes with orange; and really, how is off eggshell any different from white? Okay, we admit: colour theory has always confused us. We were never really sure what it was. As such, we were a bit cautious of Colorous. After all, the basis of the game is in colour theory.

A puzzler by nature, Colorous asks you to match up secondary colours to make them dissapear and to score points (against a clock, no less!). Simple really. Unless you aren't sure what makes a secondary colour these days, or what happens when you mix two of them together... (it turns them into primary colours in the game; we're pretty certain that's not how it worked at school).

To score your points you have to swap the little coloured smiley faces around the grid. Mixing them with their neighbours to make your combos and score ever higher points: mix a red smiley with a blue smiley, you get a pair of purple ones. That sort of thing.

Sadly, especially for the first few levels, things happen a whole lot more randomly than this. Sure, you know what you should be doing. But remembering all the stupid bloody colour rules is a pain. Couple this with utilising the objects about the place (some swap around more colours in the grid, freeze other smiley's etc) and you don't play, so much as swan about the place mixing colours like a colour-blind Homebase employee in denial.

That isn't to say there is no tact to Colorous. There is plenty to do here for anyone enthused by these puzzles, and after a while of fumbling around in the brightly coloured dark, you do get the hang of things.

The real twist comes from a, er... a real twist. That is to say: spin your phone and the smiley faced bastards will spin to face the new "down", meaning that they will fall that way, and new blocks will come from the new "above". A relatively simple concept, but one that does allow you to set up some truly mammoth combos and chains and score a hectic amount of points.

It's in this small addition that the real depth of Colorous is brought out. Before this, you had a fairly polished puzzle game. With this, for those that way inclined, you have something that you can really get involved with. Much like the primary school colour wheel. Only without paint all over your hands / feet / face.