Colorless Life

I track numbers for a living, and the numbers here are about as grim as the game's own aesthetic. Colorless Life is an interactive narrative from solo outfit HIPIX, built around a single character named Vince who is fighting a psychological war against himself. The premise has genuine potential: a man's inner demon takes on a life of its own, and the player's choices steer whether Vince survives that conflict or collapses under it. Depression as subject matter is not new to indie games, and when handled well it can produce something genuinely affecting. That potential is real. The execution is where things get complicated. Structurally, the game sits in the light visual-novel and interactive-story space, with puzzle elements layered into a gloomy, low-color aesthetic. The choices you make are supposed to matter to the outcome, and there is some structural variation in how Vince's story resolves. For a player who is drawn to short, mood-driven narrative experiences rather than systems or replayability, that premise is worth understanding before dismissal. The runtime is short - well under two hours by most accounts - and the scope is intentionally micro-scale. Think of it less as a game you play and more as a branching short story you navigate. The practical problems are hard to ignore, though. Player reception on Steam is one of the lowest approval ratings you will see on any released title. The language in the game was clearly written in Russian first and carries rough patches in the English translation that undercut immersion at critical emotional moments. The puzzle logic is minimal, so players expecting a meaningful mechanical layer alongside the story will find the experience thinner than advertised. There is no mod ecosystem, no post-launch content history worth noting, and zero community support infrastructure at this point. For a strategy or sim player like me who evaluates a purchase on depth and replayability, this scores near zero on every axis I care about. Who actually might get something from this? If you have a specific appetite for ultra-short, lo-fi indie narrative games with a horror-adjacent psychological tone and you are the kind of person who finishes everything in their library out of curiosity, the runtime is short enough to not constitute a major loss. The horror and demons tags that the community applied hint at some dark supernatural framing around Vince's breakdown, which gives it a slightly different texture than a straight depression simulator. But the bar for recommendation here is narrow. The game was released through Steam Greenlight in 2017, has received essentially no post-launch attention, and carries no critical coverage from any outlet. That is a combination that rarely signals a hidden gem.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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