Hue (video game)

Hue is a 2016 puzzle-platform game developed by Fiddlesticks and published by Curve Digital. The game was released on August 30, 2016, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One; on November 29, 2016, for the PlayStation Vita; and on June 6, 2019, for Nintendo Switch. There were further releases for iOS on January 25, 2020 and Android on April 22, 2020.

Gameplay
Hue is a side-scrolling puzzle platform game. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Hue, searching for his mother (voiced by Anna Acton), who turned an 'impossible colour' due to the fracturing of the Annular Spectrum, a ring that she developed to allow perception and alteration of colour. Hue, the player character, can walk, jump, climb ladders and push or pull objects. During this journey, the player searches through multiple areas in a greyscale world. In some cases, it is required to collect a key in order to access the next room, and the player can gather Erlenmeyer flasks hidden within levels.

As the player progresses, Hue collects eight shards of different colours of the Annular Spectrum. The colours are aqua, navy, purple, pink, orange, red, yellow, and green. Players can access them in the form of a colour wheel, and picking a shard makes the background colour match the selected piece. This in turn makes certain in-game elements temporarily cease to exist if they are the same colour, blending into the background. If the colour is changed again, they reappear. These elements include walls, movable boxes, lasers that kill the player on contact, bouncing blocks that shift their colour when jumped on, slime jets that change the colour of other objects, and others. If Hue touches a spike or a laser, gets hit by a falling object or falls into the abyss, he gets sent back to the start of the room. As the player progresses, collecting more shards and unlocking more colours, the complexity of the puzzles increases, and previously unreachable areas can be accessed.

Development and release
Development began in late 2014. In 2022, Curve Games acquired Fiddlesticks Games.

Reception
Hue received "generally favorable" reviews on Metacritic.