The world was a different place in 2016. Drake was still cool, and “Hotline Bling” was everywhere. Star Wars: The Force Awakens had a lot of us convinced that Disney buying Star Wars could be a good thing. Minimum wage in the U.S.A. was… well, it was the same as it is today. But you get the idea.
Perhaps less high profile compared to those other things but still equally notable depending on who you ask, the original ChromaGun was released on September 13th. Clearly inspired by both games in thePortalseries before them, ChromaGun tried to add some new flavor to the first-person, gun-based puzzle formula by incorporating various paint colors fired from your weapon to solve room-based brain busters.
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With a mostly positive but not particularly world-storming reception (we gave it an 8), it was a slight surprise to learn that the series was coming back nearly ten years later in 2025 with ChromaGun 2: Dye Hard. But as a fan ofgood puzzle games, I was still definitely intrigued.
Last month, at the PM Studios booth at the LVL UP Expo in Las Vegas, I was able to go hands-on for a preview of the upcoming title ahead of its launch. While I still don’t have any information to report about a potential release date beyond sometime in 2025, I came away looking forward to the full version.
Let’s talk about it.
Clearly Inspired, But Still Its Own Thing
I don’t typically like to make such reductive one-to-one comparisons between two video games. Yeah, sometimes influences are worn on their sleeves, and it’s not hard to relate a new title to something pre-existing.
ChromaGun 2reallywill make you think of Portalimmediately, though. Despite this,it also doesn’t take long to realize that this title takes the foundation laid down by Portal and switches the formula up just enough to create something that still feels new and exciting.
I played a section that very much goes room to room in what feels like a testing facility/office building. The game doesn’t waste any time at all giving you your “weapon,” which is where ChromaGun clearly starts to differentiate itself from other similar feeling games.
You have a high-tech paint gun that can eventually swap between an array of colors. Colors are used to shoot at paintable panels on the walls, spheres in the middle of the room, etc. As you sling your paint around, matching colors will magnetize between one another, which allows you to shift the spheres across the room onto pressure panels or into “goals”, for lack of a better word, to unlock the next room.
It’s a gameplay style that will definitely feel familiar, and yet still original enough to keep you invested to the point of wanting to see just how far your paint gun can take you.
If the “Dye Hard” pun in the title wasn’t already a clue, there’s a sense of humor in the dialogue here too, this time coming from a particularly snarky man sitting at a reception desk as you enter into the game. I’m not sure if he’s watching you on security monitors secretly, or just has a knack for knowing what you’re up to, but he’ll always have a sarcastic, humorous, chastising quip as you continue to reach areas further into the facility that you’re not really authorized to access.
The game also just looks sharp and runs smoothly, which feels extra nice to have a Portal-like in the modern day that plays like a premium, well-made product.
A Nice Level Of Complexity
The bare bones of ChromaGun 2 seem like a fun idea already, but where I’m personally really getting excited about it is in the level of extra complexity it seems to have in the design and thought-process needed to solve its puzzles.
Sure, it’s a simple concept to grasp. Paint your sphere red, and it’ll be drawn onto a red panel across the room. But you also have to start thinking back to grade-school art class in order to keep making things work.
Say you have an orange panel you need to match to a sphere. Well, red and yellow make orange, so you’ll have to shoot the sphere with each color to turn it into the proper shade. Simple enough, but the way this idea continues to get layered into the gameplaytakes things up a notch at a pretty quick pace.
Eventually, you start to have a lot of different things to think about and keep track of in ChromaGun 2. At least to me personally, it became more of a mental exercise overall compared to other games.
Where Portal dives into ideas like momentum and really puts a premium on sheer experimentation to learn the mechanics, ChromaGun 2 feels like it starts to expect more from your gray matter more thoroughly in a deeper thinking way.
Obstacles, barriers, switches, changes in elevation, multiple colors to mix, angles to consider, and more become layers to each challenge that will force you to really lock-in if you want to keep making progress.
To be very clear, I’m not trying to imply that I believe from this preview that ChromaGun 2 is primed to surprise Portal and its beloved sequel. That’san insanely high bar.
But what Iamsaying is that I truly am excited to see just how far Pixel Maniacs are able to push their ideas in this game. The potential is clearly there. Now, we just need to wait and see what the final version of the game has in store.
Keep a lookout for this one, and checkout theplayable demo of ChromaGun 2: Dye Hard on Steamif you want to test your painting skills yourself.
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