

Color the Truth

by mathbrush profile


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Number of Reviews: 4
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1-4 of 4

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A good detective mystery unfolds, July 1, 2017
by SpecialAgent (Sydney)
Color the Truth is well written and story driven, it does not feature any traditional lock-and-key puzzles (that I encountered), and focuses on narrative and conversation based puzzles instead. In some cases it was necessary to repeat conversations - a bit tedious at the time but in retrospect, a clever tactic to highlight the main premise. This offers a nice change of pace, and if you feel like something different, I can recommend Color the Truth.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Fun, unique gameplay with a great detective feel, January 28, 2017
I had a lot of fun with this game. The topic-linking mechanic did a great job of having the gameplay feel like being a tv-show detective, rather than someone who happens to solve a case by solving text-adventure puzzles. It gave the game a unique feel that I highly enjoyed, and the characters and descriptions definitely contributed to that feel. All in all, it felt very well-polished.

In the end, it seemed like this game had cool mechanics but wasn't necessarily maximally suited for a parser game. (Spoiler - click to show)In the present, really all you did was decide who to talk to, which topic to bring up, or what to link. The flashbacks were mostly fake interactivity and while it was cool to see the same places from different perspectives, it got old to repeat the unchanged parts of a flashback. I would've enjoyed a few more layers with less-obvious linkages. Also, I was disappointed that the color-based perspective didn't really end up being relevant to anything.

That said, I enjoyed this game and its link mechanic a lot, and look forward to future games by this author.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Great investigation mechanic based on dialogue and robust conversation, November 23, 2016
by streever (America)
I enjoyed this murder mystery work, a fairly short game focused on collecting statements and identifying the places where they didn't line up.

The writing was skilled and the mechanics were enjoyable, but I didn't ultimately feel as connected to this piece. While the overall polish is high, the mechanics are excellent, and the writing is evocative and tight, but for whatever reason, I failed to have a sense of deeper connection with the piece.

I finished the piece two days ago and have been mulling over my disconnect since. The characters feel real and believable, but the flow of the story and the pacing seems to break down; I had a sense what had happened fairly early in the story, but didn't feel a sense of satisfaction when I had solved the puzzle. I think it might benefit from some more steps, or some other modifications to the pacing; maybe keeping a sense of mystery even at the climax? I'm not sure what the answer is, precisely, but I'd still recommend this piece "as-is" to anyone who enjoys detective work and investigations in interactive fiction.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Crime investigation as it should be, October 22, 2016
It's an interesting question, whether playing and reviewing probably hundreds of IF games improves your skill as an IF writer. With Mr Rush that seems to be the case, at least judging from "Color the Truth".

"Color the Truth" is a detective adventure, in which you collect the statements of suspects in order to find hints, or rather topics, as they are called here. Topics represent a specific aspect of a suspect's statement, and sometimes this aspect is in contradiction to a topic from another person's statement. Then you can link the two contradicting topics in order to get a new one, that in turn will prompt a new statement, until you finally discover the truth.

So far so good, but the knack in this mechanic is that each statement is a mini adventure, played from the viewpoint of the interrogated suspect. You get to play through each of these minis several times, each time revised in the light of the new topic you raised.

This all works very well, and analysing and combining the hints and playing the resulting new statement is a lot of fun, as it conveys a sense of steady progress in revealing the mystery, and also because the writing is on point.

I have to say I was a tiny bit disappointed of not being able to play out the murder itself in a statement (I like creepy adventures), but probably that would not have fit the tone. My only other caveat is that the case at hand is rather simple and therefore has only few surprises. Maybe Mr Rush or someone else uses the mechanic for a more involved case in the future. I would certainly play that!

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