Day 233, Game 233 - ColorMania

I swear, I have no idea how I stumble upon the games I do, or why exactly I get drawn into them so easily sometimes, especially when they probably have no business ever seeing the light of day on this blog. I really wish I could explain it, but it's like these games have a way of finding me, catching me off guard and hypnotizing me into playing them waaaaay longer than I should. That of course leads to me having to write about them, because most likely I'll never put the same amount of time in during the course of a day as I would the first day, if I ever go back to them again, that is. 

I can't even remember how I found out about ColorMania today. Somehow, somewhere I came across it, and was immediately intrigued. The tagline for the game posed the question: "Recognize this character? Think you can color him?" Of course, they showed a black and grey version of a silhouetted Mario, which right off the bat means that I am interested. But the concept that they posed intrigued me as well. Sure, I, like many Americans, consider myself pretty familiar with brands and especially their logos. We see them all the time, all over the place, every day, all day. Brands and logos are everywhere we look, and I didn't think I would have any problem identifying them. 

But would I remember the exact colors for them? My initial thought was yes, of course I could. Yet the more I thought about it, I started second-guessing myself on how accurately I could remember exact colors. Seems easy to do, until you try it. So I did. I downloaded ColorMania for my phone, for free, and started playing. And by started playing, I mean I played almost up until I reach triple digits in the images. 

They give you a black and grey image each time. Some are logos, some are characters, but all are pretty recognizable. Underneath you have a pallet of colors to choose from, in which you simply tap on a color you think is in the picture and hope for the best. Finish the picture and move on to the next, but get a color wrong and you lose a heart, the equivalent of a life. Once you run out of lives, you are forced to sit and wait for the chance to regain some life by spinning what looks to be a Wheel of Fortune wheel. With more lives, you can continue on. And the process repeats as long as you want it to. 

One thing important to remember is that the higher levels you go, the longer the cool-down period is before you can get back any lives. Where I finally stopped, it was a 25 minute wait to keep playing, where as the first few rounds, it was only like 10 seconds. The better you get, the more you have to wait when you're wrong. At that point though, you're hooked, and the wait seems reasonable. The catch is that if you are impatient, you can buy extra lives with your own personal, hard-earned real life money. Of course I haven't paid a single penny towards this game, but it is the perfect example of how archaic the free-to-play model really is. Not only that, but every 5 pictures or so, you are bombarded with an ad for Candy Crush ... of all things!

I'm telling you folks, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is doing this new school free-to-play method perfectly, and I hope more games follow suit and drop this business that ColorMania is running on. Overall, however, it's a fun little game that will definitely test your memory, and your allegiance to this great country of ours. Or something like that.  

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