‘ChromaGun 2: Dye Hard’ Had Me Feeling Like Bob Ross Trapped Inside of ‘Portal’, and It’s So Much Fun

Steam Next Fest hasn’t even officially begun yet, but we may have a contender for the game with the best name. ChromaGun 2: Dye Hard is a Portal-esque puzzle platformer that trades time and space manipulation for color theory. After diving in and getting my feet wet, I can say that ChromaGun 2 meaningfully builds upon the first game in many ways, while still feeling just different enough from its inspiration to not feel like a copycat.

‘Chromagun 2: Dye Hard’ Has Some Genuinely Great Puzzles and an Excellent Atmosphere to Boot

At first glance, it’s easy to write off ChromaGun 2: Dye Hard as something that leans too heavily on its Portal inspirations. But after diving into the demo, the aesthetic similarities are where things end. ChromaGun 2 starts fairly innocuously. I’m given a yellow ChromaGun and told to solve some simple puzzles. Easy enough, right? I just needed to do a bit of exploring before things got much more complicated.

After going off the beaten trail, I found exactly what I was looking for; the mythical tri-color ChromaGun. Rather than just using one color, I could mix and match to my heart’s content. And this is where puzzles started to go from pretty easy to “Wait, why can’t I remember basic color theory?” Each puzzle room has several “splatable” walls. Which I could use in combination with the Worker Droids to solve puzzles. And later puzzles in the demo had me scratching my head, genuinely trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.

As with most puzzle games, once I figured out the solution? I was about ready to bash my head into a desk. The most obvious answer was right in front of me the whole time. But like any good puzzle game, would ChromaGun 2 be fun if it held my hand? Absolutely not, which is why I’m glad that it had me scrambling at times. While this demo only covered bits and pieces of the final game, I’m already eager to jump in for more. There’s a lot of potential here. And from what’s already on display, we may have a new cult classic in the making.