Developer: MythicOwl
Publisher: MythicOwl
Platform: PC, Switch, Android
Tested on: PC
One Line Coloring – Review
Puzzle games have been one of the most popular gaming genres for years, especially with the rise of better smartphones. The genre can offer relaxing experiences, but it can also put your brain to the test. Sometimes a developer wants to offer a bit of both, and that’s exactly the case for One Line Coloring. The game consists of puzzles where you have to draw a (low-poly) figure using only one line while connecting the dots. This may sound simple on paper, it can actually be quite hard knowing you cannot draw your line through already connected dots more than once.
Story
One Line Coloring is void of any story content. You’ll just be able to solve puzzles within a certain theme, and the more puzzles you solve, the more objects you can see on a diorama of that theme. It’s basic stuff, but it’s more than enough for a game such as this.
Graphics
Graphically One Line Coloring is not that much to look at. The simplistic visuals with soft color tones do the trick quite nicely, but you’ll never be wowed by the designs of the low-poly objects you ‘draw’. The game looks good and it doesn’t overload your senses, allowing you to properly relax. The dioramas are a nice touch, but they are probably just an incentive to keep solving puzzles within a specific theme.
We do feel that this game wasn’t properly designed for PC, as the UI is clunky and feels as if it belongs on a tablet or a smartphone. More than often it’s laggy to navigate through the menus, and the game doesn’t even animate menu selections. While less is often more, the menu design feels very lazy.
Sound
The game comes with a suitable soundtrack that may remind some of generic elevator music. Even though for some this may sound negative, it actually works really well for this title, as it has a very relaxing effect. Other than that, there’s not much more to the overall sound design. We do regret that there are no proper volume controls available in the game, as you only have the option to choose between having your eardrums explode or mute the audio completely.
Gameplay
One Line Coloring is a simplistic puzzle game in which you solve puzzles by drawing a single line between dots, to draw a picture. The only rule is that you can never draw over the same two connected dots again, thus you’ll have to solve the puzzle in ‘one go’. You can of course stop drawing when you connect one dot to another, to see what next dot you best draw your line to next. In case you mess up, you can undo moves or simply restart the puzzle. The game does introduce a few new mechanics later on, such as dots that can only be connected in one specific direction, forcing you to find a specific solution.
Overall, the game has enough content to keep you occupied for some time, and you’ll have a nice mix between simple and hard puzzles. This makes sure you can keep unlocking new themes with different puzzles, while also adding a bit of challenge to the mix for those wanting to complete all the puzzles in the game. There are 100 puzzles to solve, and some may take you mere seconds to finish, while others may require a few retries, a few presses of the undo button, or just some good old-fashioned reasoning and trial and error. The balance feels as it should be for a puzzle game like this. The controls do not always feel very responsive, especially when you are selecting your starting point.
Conclusion
One Line Coloring is a fairly relaxing puzzle game to play in between bigger titles. The game has enough easier puzzles to give you a sense of progress, while also offering harder puzzles to put your gray matter to work. It’s also quite nice that you can start trying out the puzzles of a new theme after only solving a handful of the previous theme. For its asking price, you’re getting a lot of content, and we would have scored the game even higher if it were not for the lack of basic options and poor menu design.
One Line Coloring - Review,
No Comments