Game: Love Colors
Genre: Casual, Lifestyle, Party
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam and Android)
Developer|Publisher: QubicGames | Vixa Games
Age Rating: EU 3+ | US Everyone
Price: US $3.99 | UK £3.59 | EU € 3,99
Release Date: September 17th, 2021
Review code provided with many thanks to Vixa Games
There are times when, as a gamer, you can’t wait to dive into a long and intense RPG. Or you want to roam with Link through an exciting world. Or sit on the edge of your seat racing with friends in Mario Kart. And then there is a time when your day job has been super stressful. A day when you feel that your brain has turned to mush from all the problems you’ve faced. You know those kinds of days right? For those moments, you need a laid back game. Super relaxing, playable even while you are watching a laid back rom-com, no need to think. That is where Love Colors comes in!
Fill the Squares
Love Colors is a paint by numbers game, where the images you give color are pixelated. The images are divided into various themes, from cute animals to mythical creatures, and from sweet cakes and fruits to yummy food.
There are over 150 pictures to color in 10 theme chapters and the number of pixels you have to color ranges from 200 to more than 3500 in a single image. And if that’s not enough, you can add DLC to get more complex images.
Slowly flooding the grey and white squares with abundant color is a very soothing experience. you can fill them in in several ways: using the joy-con and the D-pad, use your fingers (but that may not be accurate enough), or you can use a stylus.
If you accidentally touch another color other than the one you are currently using it’s no problem. Selecting a different color erases the typos.
Shortcuts, or Better Not?
The gameplay is fairly simple. Use your L and R shoulder buttons to chose the color that you want to tackle. The corresponding squares in the image turn grey, and you can give them the right color. When using a stylus you can color entire rows at once. On top, Love Colors shows how many squares you have colored and what percentage of the total of squares is done.
See the bar up top? Color a set amount of squares and you earn a round colored circle. Fill in even more and you earn a paint bucket. These two tools offer you faster progress: tap the bucket, and it fills out all the squares of one number that are adjacent. This means, when used strategically, you can color large areas at once. Alternately, tap on the colored circle and a circle in the painting is auto colored.
All you have to answer for yourself is whether you want to use these shortcuts. After all, you set out to find relaxation by filling in the squares and seeing what appears. Using the shortcuts in Love Colors kind of defies the purpose!
Party Element and Intricate Images
Love Colors is perfect for zoning out and relaxing on your own, but the developers have added a multiplayer feature. You can hand out joy-cons and play the game with up to 4 players. Make a race to see who can color the most squares, or just enjoy relaxation together.
The visuals are fairly simple at first look, which makes it extra nice to see the images appear after colouring them. I would have liked more intricate images with more colors and hues though. But, that is where the DLC comes in: there are two packs available, the Happy Pixels pack or the Pixel Adventure pack. Each cost $2.49 (£ 2.29 and € 2,49), and you can buy them both for $3.99 (£3.59 and € 3,99).
Conclusion – Paint by Numbers
Love Colors is a good game for those times when you don’t feel like doing difficult battles or go on an epic quest. Love Colors offers relaxing gameplay by filling the squares of a grey and white image and turning it into a bright and lovely image.
Be aware there is no real gameplay in this, nonetheless, it’s very soothing to do after a very busy day. And if you want to play it together with friends or family you can do so too. Tackle the 150+ images in the base game, or go for the more intricate images in the DLC. It’ll keep you painting by numbers for quite some time.
Final Verdict: I Like It 