Discolored is a surrealist spy thriller by way of Myst
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Reported today in The Verge.
Discolored is a surrealist spy thriller by way of Myst
It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.
At the start of this year, I wrote about What Never Was, a first-person puzzle game similar to Myst or Gone Home, though on a much smaller scale. In the game, you are confined to a single attic room where all of the puzzles and storytelling takes place. Discolored is similar, except you are confined to an entire deserted and desaturated desert diner.
In Discolored, you play what seems to be some sort of secret agent working to return color to a world that has mostly become monotone due to some strange force. There is a 1960s surrealist spy movie feel and look to the world, which only gets stronger over the course of the game; the vibe steadily influences the puzzle design, for better and for worse.
The game opens in a fully colored office, which serves as a basic tutorial for the game's few controls. Mainly, there are certain items that can be picked up and put into an inventory, some items can be combined with other items in the inventory, and things can be taken from the inventory and used on something in the world. For instance, you might find two pieces of a broken key. By dragging one on top of the other in the inventory, they'd combine into a single key, which you could then drag out of the inventory to unlock a door.
After using some items in the office, you find yourself - through rather surreal means - inside a monotone painting of a remote desert diner. By poking around inside and outside the diner, you'll find various objects and a few puzzles to solve, which m