Date played: December 24th
Platform: Wii U
I played through one level of Color Splash with my daughter this morning. We went through a new level where we had to climb a mountain to find the Mountain Sage. It begins hilariously, as the gatekeeper tells us we need a permit to climb, which we must get from the park ranger. This dude was funny... He was very depressed. His house was a drab-colored place of misery. It needed a bit of color! So of course, I painted the house for him. When I was done, he still wasn't quite out of his depression, he was missing his favorite chair.
A new mechanic was introduced, unfurling. When Mario hits a special block, he can then "unfurl" certain pieces of cardboard into more complex shapes, kind of like in the Lego games. This allowed me to unfurl a box into a beautiful chair for the park ranger Toad. He then agreed to give us the permit, and we climbed the mountain.
There was lots of combat here, and a few fun traversal segments where I had to use pipes to navigate to the end. We got a paint star, then replayed the level to find the second one. This led to the discovery that there Mountain Sage was nothing but a cardboard cutout where tourists take pictures. When we confronted the gate keeper with this information, we discovered that the Mountain Sage was the gate keeper all along! He lost his memory when a part of his head was erased, so when I painted it, he revealed that he was one of the Toads with a key on his head.
That meant we were only missing one key Toad to open the big gates at the Crimson Tower. We replayed the level where the other key Toad was and got him to the tower. We were finally able to open the door! Unfortunately, Bowser's acolytes had drained all the color from the tower with a big bucket, now being transported in an airship.
When the crew of the airship made liftoff, they made a mistake and forgot to raise the anchor, so Mario took advantage of that to climb up to the ship. We took over the ship, but then pressed a button, which started an auto-destruct sequence! We jumped off, but the explosion was enough to recolor the Crimson Tower.
Next, we started climbing the tower to get the Big Paint Star. This was clearly a much bigger dungeon than usual. As soon as we entered, we met Morton, one of the Bowser kids. He's one stupid motherfucker, that's for sure. He can't really talk, and all he wants is to stop Mario and get to the paint star. We moved through the tower, battling monsters along the way. There was a new enemy type, a set of Goombas that folds itself into an accordion shape, then climbs up and down stairs like a slinky toy. They are tougher than most enemies, so I've been using slightly more powerful cards in battle.
That's when we had to stop, but we're real close to reaching Morton and the Big Paint Star!
Platform: Wii U
I played through one level of Color Splash with my daughter this morning. We went through a new level where we had to climb a mountain to find the Mountain Sage. It begins hilariously, as the gatekeeper tells us we need a permit to climb, which we must get from the park ranger. This dude was funny... He was very depressed. His house was a drab-colored place of misery. It needed a bit of color! So of course, I painted the house for him. When I was done, he still wasn't quite out of his depression, he was missing his favorite chair.
A new mechanic was introduced, unfurling. When Mario hits a special block, he can then "unfurl" certain pieces of cardboard into more complex shapes, kind of like in the Lego games. This allowed me to unfurl a box into a beautiful chair for the park ranger Toad. He then agreed to give us the permit, and we climbed the mountain.
There was lots of combat here, and a few fun traversal segments where I had to use pipes to navigate to the end. We got a paint star, then replayed the level to find the second one. This led to the discovery that there Mountain Sage was nothing but a cardboard cutout where tourists take pictures. When we confronted the gate keeper with this information, we discovered that the Mountain Sage was the gate keeper all along! He lost his memory when a part of his head was erased, so when I painted it, he revealed that he was one of the Toads with a key on his head.
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| You can see the yellow mini-paint star at the end of this great level |
That meant we were only missing one key Toad to open the big gates at the Crimson Tower. We replayed the level where the other key Toad was and got him to the tower. We were finally able to open the door! Unfortunately, Bowser's acolytes had drained all the color from the tower with a big bucket, now being transported in an airship.
When the crew of the airship made liftoff, they made a mistake and forgot to raise the anchor, so Mario took advantage of that to climb up to the ship. We took over the ship, but then pressed a button, which started an auto-destruct sequence! We jumped off, but the explosion was enough to recolor the Crimson Tower.
Next, we started climbing the tower to get the Big Paint Star. This was clearly a much bigger dungeon than usual. As soon as we entered, we met Morton, one of the Bowser kids. He's one stupid motherfucker, that's for sure. He can't really talk, and all he wants is to stop Mario and get to the paint star. We moved through the tower, battling monsters along the way. There was a new enemy type, a set of Goombas that folds itself into an accordion shape, then climbs up and down stairs like a slinky toy. They are tougher than most enemies, so I've been using slightly more powerful cards in battle.
That's when we had to stop, but we're real close to reaching Morton and the Big Paint Star!
