Light vs. darkness
In Absence of Color, fighting means bringing light back. Black stands for evil (no light), white for good (full light). Every hit fills in some of an enemy’s missing light. Once it is completely white, it is purified and defeated.
Enemies
Every enemy has a color. The light it lacks to reach white is its health, and that is what you fill in. The complementary colors of light apply here, not those of a paint box: red against cyan, green against magenta, blue against yellow. So you beat a red enemy with green and blue.
| Enemy | missing light | effective |
|---|---|---|
| black | all of it | red, green and blue |
| gray | about half | red, green and blue |
| dark red | half its red, all green and blue | red, green and blue |
| red | green and blue | only green and blue |
| yellow | blue | only blue |
Dark enemies take a lot of hits but are hurt by every color. Strongly colored enemies are specialists: you need the matching color against them.
Weapons and armor
Weapons and armor have a color and a strength. The strength is split over the channels of the color. A white weapon hits all three channels equally and works against anything, but wastes the share an enemy does not need. A cyan weapon puts all its strength into green and blue and is therefore faster against red.
Armor protects against its own color: red armor blocks red attacks best. No armor makes you fully invulnerable. Against pure black enemies, which hit all channels equally, only the armor’s strength counts, not its color.
Your Light
The hero has a Light bar, and it is the hero’s life. Every hit costs Light, and at zero the fight is lost. As Light drops, the character darkens, down to black. On every hit it briefly flashes in the attacker’s color.
Missing channels
A channel you have not won back yet does not exist in combat. With only red back, a black enemy needs only red light, and its attacks hit only red. With every new channel, all enemies gain that channel and become tougher. So that you never get stuck, every new channel gives you at least one weapon of that color.
This page describes the prototype. Whatever changes on the way to the finished game will be added here.
AI notice: Written with AI (Claude) from the game's design documents. This English version is an AI translation of the German original.