Hidden Gem of the Week: Yellow & Red

By , on June 6, 2018
Last modified 6 years, 6 months ago

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Bart Bonte's library of games is one of weird, quirky, tacitle puzzles, often with a focus on experimentation to discover rules and solutions. His two color-themed games Yellow and Red fit this design perfectly, offering myriad mininalist challenges.

Both games feature 50 stages, all aesthetically themed as a black background overlaid by a puzzle in the games' corresponding color. Your goal is to fill the screen with a single color, but how you accomplish this goal is what makes Yellow and Red such enjoyable experiences. Every stage features a distinct rule, to be discovered and understand, to solve a puzzle; through experimental taps and swipes and observation, soon that rule or pattern becomes apparent. That sense of discovery never ceases to satisfy, which is even more impressive given the design limitations of each game's minimal color scheme.

From figuring the specific action and pattern that pressing a button causes, to messing with dials and switches and other objects, Yellow and Red both ingeniously wring myriad ways to interact with their premises, and imbues each level a new sense of discovery. Both games can be downloaded for free on iOS (Yellow, Red) or Android (Yellow, Red), and both include an in-app purchase to remove ads. For similar puzzles, Bonte's games What's Inside The Box and Furiosity both provide similar tactile discovery-minded challenges.