I Fell In Love With The Majesty of Colors is a poetic exploration of alienation and social interaction by Gregory Weir, sort of like I Wish I Were The Moon but with tentacles. Are you a man dreaming you´re a cthonic leviathan? Or a cthonic leviathan dreaming you´re a man? Or are you a player trying to deduce a finite number of endings? The answer is C).
Gameplay involves moving your beastly tentacle around with the mouse and grabbing things. The curl of the tentacle as it folds up and furls out is the most poetic thing about it, the sentiment of the words and the shift from monochrome to color are secondary. The situations you´re put in, posed between empathy and paranoia as your monstrous form interacts with human vacationers, sit on the verge of being meaningful interactions. You´re almost fooled the first few times, until you realize that all this analogue slithering is just an asymmetric parsing of a binary decision tree. And by "you" I really mean me, you might be taken in by the weird charm and look no further into the murky eyes beneath.
I like to see more stuff like this actually, precious snowflakes of content that unfold like one of those paper-folded fortune tellers kids play with. But I´d like to see more exploration of these issues of alienation and language gaps done with algorithmic rigor. Is the barrier one of imagination or implementation resources? Based on my experience with Flash, it´s hard to pull off genetic algorithms and other specimens of process intensity, but its easy to do shallow but highly stylized games. I don´t know, do you? Can anyone propose a design where the theme of this game has more discrete nuance than five endings (same goes for I Wish I Were The Moon)? This is an open challenge.
Could have been better
It's too bad that it's still rooted in the win/lose gameplay indeed.
Whay would have been just perfect is a complete neutral point of view from the monster. I let the shark eat the child, and so I lost. But why ? Why should I've saved him ? I'm a giant monster from the abyss, what do I care/know ?!
Clever algorithms are all
Clever algorithms are all very well, but this game would be fine with just a more complex binary tree. The problem I had with it, which I imagine would mirror most people's experience, is that I got 4 endings pretty quickly, and then I had a load of cool ideas for what ending #5 could be which weren't supported by the game at all; for example, what if I just sat under the water, lurking and unseen, for the duration? You'd think you could knock out some good prose for that situation. But no, all the people just waited around for my interaction.
Of course, however deep you go, there will always be a point where the illusion is shattered and you realise you're playing a computer game. With a bit of work, tho, this point could have been driven a bit further back than '10 minutes after your first play'.
Beautiful
Great little game. I developed an emotional connection with a Lovecraftian horror in moments.
Great premise that deserves more...
The opening of this game had me quite intrigued, and I was quite disappointed when I discovered how little there was to it. As it stands, it seems like a prototype, little more than a playable proposal for a game. I can see the potential of a game built with the ideas presented here, but this itself is not that game.
I concur shteev, inaction
I concur shteev, inaction should have been an option. The dialogue is great, I just wish there was more to it. The game has tons of potential, but I don't think it's realized here.
Majesty of Colors vs. My Life With Master
I've been thinking about this, and it's starting to remind me of My Life With Master. MLWM has a well-defined setting and a specific, granular set of thematic outcomes. You play a monstrous minion working for a Dr. Frankenstein type, and at the end of the game your minion will be killed by townsfolk, kill himself, integrate peacefully with the townsfolk or rise to become the new Master. The set of outcomes is fixed, and each one is designed to make sense within the setting. Similarly, Majesty of Colors has a small number of fixed outcomes, but each one of them makes sense and is well developed.
(Well, that's my theory, in truth I've only seen one of the Majesty of Colors endings...)