Parents' Guide to Hue

Though based on familiar side-scrolling, platforming mechanics, this adorable platformer gets inventive by adding a colorful element to the proceedings. In Hue, you play a kid who lives in a mostly black-and-white world. But by changing the background color, anything of that color on the screen disappears, which can reveal or hide parts of the world that were previously unseen. So, for instance, if your path is blocked by some blue bricks, simply turn the color wheel to blue, and the bricks will disappear (although this can also change the world). If some boulders are being held in place by an orange wall, and you change the background to orange, the wall will disappear, allowing the boulders to fall. While this challenges your intellect like a puzzle game, it will also test your reflexes, as you'll often have to change colors in mid-jump to make sure you land on a platform instead of a bunch of spikes. There's even a special mode for those who are colorblind, which assigns icons to items of the same color. But while Hue doesn't always explain its basic controls well, it kind of assumes you've played this kind of game before and will know which button will make you jump. It's clever and inventive in a way that will challenge your mind as well as your reflexes.