Color the Truth

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!

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.

This is a fresh take on a detective mystery, where the player has to link and corroborate suspects' statements to trigger new insights or findings.

The in-game hints are adequate (no walkthrough needed), although I came across one hint that sounded somewhat harsh: (Spoiler - click to show)"Just type [COMMAND]", although there was nothing in the narrative that mentioned about that specific command involving a certain object (the object wasn't mentioned in the narrative either), and this was only at the second hint attempt on the same topic. The subsequent re-played flashbacks could do away with the initial required activities; having to repeat the same actions felt unnecessary.

Otherwise, the plot was well thought-out and sufficiently complex, without requiring too long a gameplay. A good game to wind down after a busy day.