The world is in peril and has been drained of all its colors! Its denizens have abandoned all hope and staged an exodus of Biblical proportions leaving their once beautiful home behind. As Tint, the protagonist in developer Morsel’s Kaleidoscope, you have choosen to remain behind to aid in the recovery of all the lost colors of the world and to stop the problem at its source!

Gameplay

Kaleidoscope is an adventure platformer with many of the usual staples of the genre. You jump on enemies to return them to their docile state by coloring them , use platforms sprinkled through the levels to get to your objectives, collect objects scattered across the stages,  and do a fantastic little dance once those objectives are achieved. In addition to these normal mechanics there are also included a shield, a slow fall, and a speed boost. Each of these basic mechanics go into finding your way safely through the levels by allowing you to deflect projectiles or make great leaps or slow y our decent through a maze of spikes.

There is not a signifigantly high degree of difficulty in the game, which works well for it, allowing you to go through and really take in the environments. The extremely generous check point system often puts you within just a few obstacles of where you just expired with no load time whatsoever. This makes it a very low frustration game and is greatly appreciated since I’m anti-frustration.

The only real issues within the gameplay of Kaleidoscope that I encountered were some strange physics when on horizontally moving platforms. Jumping from these platforms seems to cause a  an excessive loss of  momentum and this lateral force seemed to be somewhat applied to your character even while just walking on it. That said, it wasn’t game breaking and was just a “that doesn’t feel quite right” moment as if you had just picked up a glass that you thought was full but wasn’t.

Audio Visual

This is the category that brings home the bacon for Kaleidoscope. The game is an absolute treat to look at. Each level starts out in gray scale and as Tint progresses through the level and collects little colored balls of pigment the environment slowly begins to regain its color. Collecting a few blues fills in sky and a few greens fills in the leaves so on and so forth until the world is this bright vibrant color orgy.

The levels themselves each have a stylistic motif. One level has smooth elegant lines and bright pastel swirls adorning the tree branches. While another level has a distinctive pixel cubist look that makes you think of the pixel art days of old. Another level yet is in stark contrast to all the others comprised of dark silhouettes with lanterns lit up in different colors hanging from the trees throughout the levels. It feels like you have just played through an artists exhibition.

The creature designs are all very simple and endearing, in this case less was more when it came to their detail. Tint himself appears to be a black cherry like shape with two spindly legs dangling about and two little white dots for eyes. It just all works for this game.

The soundtrack for Kaleidoscope is just as impressive as the visuals and is great on every level. They’ve got the full soundtrack available as a torrent here. (Big thanks to Anosou the music dude for dropping the link and cluing us in on the wonderfully dynamic nature of the Kaleidoscope soundscape!)

Summary

While the game is a little short, in the neighborhood of just a few hours for initial run through, it is easily worth the asking price of three dollars on the Xbox Indie Marketplace. I rate this one a buy with no reservations at all, but if you are still having trust issues because I didn’t explicitly tell you NOT to buy “Fish Listening to Radio” then just go check out the free trial and fall in love for yourself.