Color Dash, a new color mixing puzzle game for the [iPhone]

Tube

WELCOME TO COLOR DASH!

Before I begin the pitch, here's a little backstory. My name is Ben Gray and I joined the PA forums back in 2007 when I was selected for the Omegathon (I lost in the finals of Halo 3). While time has past, my passion for games and creating has grown stronger. In 2013, I met the women who would end up being my wife, aka Mrs. Dover. She is an extremely talented programmer at Microsoft and loves gaming as much as I do. In December of 2013 we decided to make one of my college game concepts into a reality. The reality is finally here! Welcome to our new iPhone game, Color Dash!

Color Dash is a puzzle game where players must mix colors to solve increasingly challenging levels. After finishing a world, a new twist is thrown into the mix, keeping the game fresh and challenging.


The players add red, blue, or yellow to the circles to add color to the columns and rows of the lower playfield. The goal is to match the solution board above. Levels start 3x3 in size but grow into 4x4 and 5x5.


Color Dash features over 100 levels spread over ten worlds. The game is free to start, with the first two worlds (20 levels) ready to play. After that, the first four levels of each new world are accessible to the players so they can get a taste of each of the new challenges that lie ahead. The full game can be purchased for $0.99, which will unlock all the levels and remove the ads.


Not all levels are a simple row and column design. Things start to shake up the further you go!


Each world starts with a tutorial that explains how the new mechanic works. The first four levels will ease you into the mechanic before getting more complex. I don't believe in stumping people with unfair or unclear instructions. Players can always hit the "Help" button for a quick reminder of what the mechanic does or to see the color mixing combinations.


Each new world introduces a new mechanic. Here we have a pair of Transporters that take in the blue and red colors and shoot them out somewhere else. Notice that the two colors come out mixed together.


As the player progresses, beyond the second world, the game starts mashing mechanics together. The last four levels of each world are a combination of everything you've encountered prior. The final world brings it all together and can get crazy!


Here is a mix of several mechanics together!


Our game has been approved by Apple already and we are setting a launch date of Thursday, January 21st. I've included some demo codes that has the game fully unlocked so that you can give your thoughts and opinions on the entire experience. Please note that the demo codes give you access to everything, but will become void after 30 days. Please comment if you take a code so I can strike it out.

Demo codes:
F696RPHL7TXJ
JL9X9LAP6WXE
7TNH4FT9FJFE
ERK6FXJRNTYK
W6W33X64MR4F

Oh, and here's our trailer for the game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ8DnMRTxRM


Color Dash is a fun, laid-back puzzle game for anyone of any age to enjoy. It has a very straight-forward and clean look with some catchy up-beat tunes. If you like what you see, give it a download. Like I said, it's free to start so you have nothing to lose. And while you're at it, give it a review. I don't mind if it's a 1-star or 5-star, I just want to get some feedback on what you think.

You can find us in the App Store under the company name Sunspark Entertainment. Here's our App icon:

kime

Grabbed the first code, and looks like I can play the game already (before the 21st), just FYI.

RandomHajile

@MNC Dover -- I grabbed the last one there.

Edit: Some quick feedback after messing with it for a couple minutes. I think it would be nice if you could drag the color from the color bar to the dot on the bottom. And maybe make the color chooser bar in the middle made up of circles instead of squares so that it matches with the place where you're dropping it?

djmitchella

Second last one taken -- thanks! Game seems to launch okay, so I'll post thoughts momentarily.
[edit]Okay, I've played it for a while, here's some thoughts.

Positive:

• It's nice and clean - the UI is polished enough to not feel 'cheap' but also clean enough to not be annoying / distracting, which is a tough balance to hit.
• The difficulty curve is, so far (to level 3-7) almost exactly perfect -- just at the point where I thought "okay, I've got this, it is now easy" the next level started and I had to work out how to deal with the new mechanic.
• The levels are (so far) short enough that I did 'just one more level' a lot of times in a row.
• The puzzles make sense, the tutorial explains things well enough for me to understand what's going on so I get how to solve things.

Suggestions for improvements (sorry about these, but I write code for a living too, so I'm inclined to be possibly overly picky about this stuff)

• The hints tell me about mechanics that I haven't seen yet, which was a bit confusing.
• A second or so of "you won!" animation after getting the last colour selected correctly would be nice -- as it is, I put blue in the first row (or whatever) and it instantly puts the 'congratulations' popup up, which doesn't make it as satisfying as it could be to complete a level.
• It might be nice to show which cells are correct/incorrect on the main board -- I found myself occasionally thinking "that's got it", but I hadn't, and then I had to manually look back and forth to work out where I needed to fix. I'm not sure if this is a conscious decision on your part, though, it feels like it would change the difficulty somehow and I'm not sure if that'd be good or not.
• I didn't realise there were stars for completing levels quickly until one of the hints told me about it, and even once I did know they were there, I didn't really feel any urge to go back and re-play levels to get three stars. Maybe show a countdown in the game screen to show me how many stars I still have left? As it is, I don't know how quickly I'd need to complete a level to get three stars, so I don't know if it's worth my time to re-try it; a countdown would also make it feel more tense when playing levels, which may or may not be a good thing)
• (or, and this is a bigger change, add something where three-star levels get me hints that I can use to solve later, more difficult, levels?)

MNC Dover

I forgot I can't edit the OP, so I'll update the code list here:

Demo codes:
F696RPHL7TXJ
JL9X9LAP6WXE
7TNH4FT9FJFE
ERK6FXJRNTYK
W6W33X64MR4F

kime wrote: »

Grabbed the first code, and looks like I can play the game already (before the 21st), just FYI.

I should have mentioned that the game you're playing is a fully unlocked version that is only being used for demo codes. The regular game is locked after the first two worlds.

RandomHajile wrote: »

@MNC Dover -- I grabbed the last one there.

Edit: Some quick feedback after messing with it for a couple minutes. I think it would be nice if you could drag the color from the color bar to the dot on the bottom. And maybe make the color chooser bar in the middle made up of circles instead of squares so that it matches with the place where you're dropping it?

We did try to implement that drag/drop system but were never happy with the results. We might revisit it down the road in a patch if the game sells well enough. But man, I could kick myself for not thinking about making the center colors circles. Ugh! >.<

kime

I have a crash I am able to reproduce!

Trying to clear any of the two Splitters (I think that's what it's called) on the right side of level 3-12 causes the Splitter to go gray. Doing almost anything else causes the game to crash and exit.

iPhone 6s, updated iOS

Edit: it's not only clearing them that does this apparently. Changing the color does sometimes at least.

MNC Dover

kime wrote: »

I have a crash I am able to reproduce!

Trying to clear any of the two Splitters (I think that's what it's called) on the right side of level 3-12 causes the Splitter to go gray. Doing almost anything else causes the game to crash and exit.

iPhone 6s, updated iOS

Edit: it's not only clearing them that does this apparently. Changing the color does sometimes at least.

Oh shit. Ok cool, I'll let the wife know. It happens whenever the cell overlaps a turning cell.

Thanks for the find.

kime

One other minor thing, it's kind of weird that the hints before each level often have to do with things I've never heard or seen before.

Frem

Grabbed code 3. I'll play it on the train this evening and return with impressions!

MNC Dover

Bug fixed! Wife just submitted the new build. Sigh...I hate that it delays us further.

I'll report on everyone's comments when I get home. I hate trying to type out large responses on my phone.

RandomHajile

MNC Dover wrote: »

RandomHajile wrote: »

I think it would be nice if you could drag the color from the color bar to the dot on the bottom.

We did try to implement that drag/drop system but were never happy with the results. We might revisit it down the road in a patch if the game sells well enough.

I don't know what you tried, but in my mind I envision dragging a filled circle to the empty circle, and then when you get over it or close enough, the empty circle kind of pops open a bit bigger than the filled circle that you're dragging. Maybe it pulses? Also, I could see, like, an easy/allow preview mode where you can see what will happen to the other boxes on the board while you're hovering?

Really, though, I'm not far in, and when you start adding extra rows/columns, the click and and the click the column works for quickly painting multiple rows/columns where dragging wouldn't. Anyway, this is a cool thing, and perhaps I'm getting a bit too armchair dev here.

MNC Dover

djmitchella wrote: »

Second last one taken -- thanks! Game seems to launch okay, so I'll post thoughts momentarily.
[edit]Okay, I've played it for a while, here's some thoughts.

Positive:

• It's nice and clean - the UI is polished enough to not feel 'cheap' but also clean enough to not be annoying / distracting, which is a tough balance to hit.
• The difficulty curve is, so far (to level 3-7) almost exactly perfect -- just at the point where I thought "okay, I've got this, it is now easy" the next level started and I had to work out how to deal with the new mechanic.
• The levels are (so far) short enough that I did 'just one more level' a lot of times in a row.
• The puzzles make sense, the tutorial explains things well enough for me to understand what's going on so I get how to solve things.

Suggestions for improvements (sorry about these, but I write code for a living too, so I'm inclined to be possibly overly picky about this stuff)

• The hints tell me about mechanics that I haven't seen yet, which was a bit confusing.
• A second or so of "you won!" animation after getting the last colour selected correctly would be nice -- as it is, I put blue in the first row (or whatever) and it instantly puts the 'congratulations' popup up, which doesn't make it as satisfying as it could be to complete a level.
• It might be nice to show which cells are correct/incorrect on the main board -- I found myself occasionally thinking "that's got it", but I hadn't, and then I had to manually look back and forth to work out where I needed to fix. I'm not sure if this is a conscious decision on your part, though, it feels like it would change the difficulty somehow and I'm not sure if that'd be good or not.
• I didn't realise there were stars for completing levels quickly until one of the hints told me about it, and even once I did know they were there, I didn't really feel any urge to go back and re-play levels to get three stars. Maybe show a countdown in the game screen to show me how many stars I still have left? As it is, I don't know how quickly I'd need to complete a level to get three stars, so I don't know if it's worth my time to re-try it; a countdown would also make it feel more tense when playing levels, which may or may not be a good thing)
• (or, and this is a bigger change, add something where three-star levels get me hints that I can use to solve later, more difficult, levels?)

Thanks for the feedback. The compliments are very nice of you. We definitely tried hard to find a nice balance of difficulty and ramping. So hard to tell if it's right after playing the game so much. >.<

As for the improvements, I'll touch on those with some "fun facts" about the development of the game.

The game originally had not only what you see here, but get this, a Story Mode. I created a small script involving three main characters (Red, Blue, and Yellow) as students at BRY University. After class one day, they saw one of their professors go into a hidden room on campus. They followed him and discovered a machine that represents the playfield. Each world would be a different professor's attempt at shaping the space/color modulation device. Yeah, the whole thing was very silly indeed...just the way I like it. Naturally it got cut because there are only two of use on the project and we wanted to release the game this decade.

The "you win" animation used to have no delay at all. We found it a bit jarring and changed it to have a slight delay. Our last discussion on it was to have the final correct input create a little firework sparkle from the cell and victory music to play. It got cut due to time and not having the audio clue noticeable by people playing without sound. Definitely something we're seriously considering adding in though in a future update.

Ah, the cell correct/incorrect problem. This was brought up before by some friends during our early tests. We spent a while trying to find a good way to implement a solution. We tried solid blocks of color, transparent backdrops, and different art drops. Unfortunately, everything either cluttered up the playfield (ruining the clean visual look) or caused a lot of coding headaches based on the special cells. It was going to be a toggle-on/off feature, but it got cut because it just wasn't a perfect fit.

The stars are there as a slight replayability feature. They don't do anything and are easy to cheat in since you can memorize and replay the levels. I had a lot of cut ideas on how stars were going to play a bigger role in expandability of the game. You'd use stars as an in-game income source to unlock things like backgrounds, themes, music, and so forth. They stayed in as a reward, but have no real purpose beyond the look. If we do update the game with newer features that got cut, they will become a bigger deal.

The timer has always counted up, but I did have a game mode where it counted down instead. Again, a LOT of my ideas got cut because the scope was just too big. I have a bunch of extra mechanics and playmodes on the cutting room floor taunting me. I really hope the game becomes successful just so we can justify working on adding all the cut content into the game. But this is our first game and we're both learning as we go. Having a new baby certainly brought a lot of things to a screeching halt.

Frem

A few thoughts:

The music is really... upbeat, I guess? I had to turn it off because it was too intense for me to listen to while playing. IDK why; I leave the volume up in Threes all the time.

It wasn't immediately apparent that the order I applied colors to the puzzle didn't matter.

In the middle of 3-7, I suddenly noticed that the X-dots were colorless and was momentarily confused if they had been colorless I previous puzzles, and if I needed to reach a solution in which they were blank.

MNC Dover

Frem wrote: »

A few thoughts:

The music is really... upbeat, I guess? I had to turn it off because it was too intense for me to listen to while playing. IDK why; I leave the volume up in Threes all the time.

It wasn't immediately apparent that the order I applied colors to the puzzle didn't matter.

In the middle of 3-7, I suddenly noticed that the X-dots were colorless and was momentarily confused if they had been colorless I previous puzzles, and if I needed to reach a solution in which they were blank.

We definitely wanted some upbeat music, but I wanted the variety to be there. My favorite is actually the more mysterious sounding song.

Yeah, I couldn't add color to the solution board for the special cells without giving them away.

Everyone enjoying the game? Any extra thoughts? Anyone beat the game yet?

kime

I will try to give more thoughts later, but I am enjoying it a lot. As someone else mentioned, the pacing is fantastic. Like, in all honesty, this is some of the best pacing in a game I've ever played. I'm around level.... 8-something?

RandomHajile

MNC Dover wrote: »

Frem wrote: »

A few thoughts:

The music is really... upbeat, I guess? I had to turn it off because it was too intense for me to listen to while playing. IDK why; I leave the volume up in Threes all the time.

It wasn't immediately apparent that the order I applied colors to the puzzle didn't matter.

In the middle of 3-7, I suddenly noticed that the X-dots were colorless and was momentarily confused if they had been colorless I previous puzzles, and if I needed to reach a solution in which they were blank.

We definitely wanted some upbeat music, but I wanted the variety to be there. My favorite is actually the more mysterious sounding song.

Yeah, I couldn't add color to the solution board for the special cells without giving them away.

Everyone enjoying the game? Any extra thoughts? Anyone beat the game yet?

I finished it last night. A couple really tricky ones there in the last row of puzzles of the last couple of levels. Overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. I am waffling on saying whether I wanted another level or not, because I'm not sure if I could beat anything tougher than what was there. Once I got into it, it was like a nonogram (picross) or sudoku of sorts, or one of those old-timey logic puzzles where you have to draw out a matrix to figure out "oh, the redheaded lady was not sitting next to the blonde man whois named Bob." Start with what I'm sure of and eliminate possibilities logically.

I will also say that by the end I didn't really care about the lack of drag and drop. Quite often, I would start with multiple selections of a primary color, which would be more cumbersome with drag and drop. I do still think the color chooser should be circles, but again, it doesn't matter much when you're in the meat of the game.

djmitchella

It seems like I can end a level that I haven't actually beaten - middle right cell in the main game doesn't match the solution here? Or is this that it showed me the 'you won' page before finishing updating the board?

MNC Dover

djmitchella wrote: »

It seems like I can end a level that I haven't actually beaten - middle right cell in the main game doesn't match the solution here? Or is this that it showed me the 'you won' page before finishing updating the board?

Huh, that's strange. I can't reproduce it either. Do you remember doing anything special or did it just happen? BUGS!!!1!

djmitchella

No, I was just playing that level, and it ended all and I noticed that I was there. I can't remember what the last move was, but it shows the 'you won' screen pretty much the instant I make the correct selection and it feels like I was just sort of trying things at random at that point because I wasn't quite clear on how to get the solution.

(edit: it might be nice to have the 'you won' message not overlap the board, because even when I do end things properly, it'd be nice to be able to look at _how_ I won to make sure I have it clear in my mind before going on to the next level)

MNC Dover

Our game is live! Go download it right now! Best way to find it is to search for "Color Dash Sunspark".

Then, force your friends, family, and co-workers to do the same. Don't forget to leave a rating! Every little bit helps!

MNC Irving

Okay, I should disclose that Dover and I are old friends so that's something to keep in mind when you read my comments. However, I really like this game! When Dover first told me his idea I thought it very reminiscent of Glow Artisan and wasn't sure how he was going to differentiate Color Dash from that (admittedly very little-known) title. I have to hand it to Color Dash though. It takes a simple concept and layers on complexity without losing its core idea and its inherent joy, and ultimately stands out better due to its good design. A neat mobile title that fits the mobile life - fun in short bursts but also good for longer game sessions.

MNC Dover

MNC Irving wrote: »

Okay, I should disclose that Dover and I are old friends so that's something to keep in mind when you read my comments. However, I really like this game! When Dover first told me his idea I thought it very reminiscent of Glow Artisan and wasn't sure how he was going to differentiate Color Dash from that (admittedly very little-known) title. I have to hand it to Color Dash though. It takes a simple concept and layers on complexity without losing its core idea and its inherent joy, and ultimately stands out better due to its good design. A neat mobile title that fits the mobile life - fun in short bursts but also good for longer game sessions.

Wow, a wild Irving appears! You haven't posted in forever.

I approve this completely unbiased message! Also, told the wife of your problem and she'll look at it.

kime

MNC Dover wrote: »

kime wrote: »

I have a crash I am able to reproduce!

Trying to clear any of the two Splitters (I think that's what it's called) on the right side of level 3-12 causes the Splitter to go gray. Doing almost anything else causes the game to crash and exit.

iPhone 6s, updated iOS

Edit: it's not only clearing them that does this apparently. Changing the color does sometimes at least.

Oh shit. Ok cool, I'll let the wife know. It happens whenever the cell overlaps a turning cell.

Thanks for the find.

So I'm still enjoying this game, but the bug is making me stop playing. I'm at the last set of levels, but they are complicated enough that I can't get everything right on the first try. Which means I can't finish a level without it crashing...

Can you update here when this fix is live?

MNC Dover

kime wrote: »

MNC Dover wrote: »

kime wrote: »

I have a crash I am able to reproduce!

Trying to clear any of the two Splitters (I think that's what it's called) on the right side of level 3-12 causes the Splitter to go gray. Doing almost anything else causes the game to crash and exit.

iPhone 6s, updated iOS

Edit: it's not only clearing them that does this apparently. Changing the color does sometimes at least.

Oh shit. Ok cool, I'll let the wife know. It happens whenever the cell overlaps a turning cell.

Thanks for the find.

So I'm still enjoying this game, but the bug is making me stop playing. I'm at the last set of levels, but they are complicated enough that I can't get everything right on the first try. Which means I can't finish a level without it crashing...

Can you update here when this fix is live?

That bug was fixed in the final release. If you're still using the promo code, then it won't get fixed since that version of the game was just for promo codes and never intended for release. You could always download the free version and I could paypal you the $0.99.