About iptsi Hue
iptsi Hue is built on a well-known interference effect: reading is automatic, so when a colour name is printed in a different colour the two answers compete. The game shows you a colour word rendered in another colour, and the prompt above it asks for one or the other — sometimes the ink, sometimes the word. You have four buttons to choose from and a bar that drains while you think.
Alternating the prompt is what makes it more than a curiosity. If the question were always the same you would learn a strategy and stop reading; because it changes round to round, the only reliable approach is to actually read the prompt every time, which is exactly the effort the effect is designed to defeat.
How to play
- Read the prompt: it asks either for the ink colour or for the word.
- Tap the matching button. The buttons are coloured and labelled, so either answer is available.
- Correct answers score; a wrong answer or an empty time bar costs a life.
- Three lives lost ends the run.
How it was built
The word, the buttons and the timer are drawn at runtime on one canvas with no images and no loaded sound, so the game is a single HTML file that works offline and inside a sandboxed host such as YouTube Playables.
The four colours were chosen to stay distinguishable for the most common forms of colour blindness rather than to look good as a set. The buttons also carry their names in text, so the game is fully playable without relying on colour perception at all — the interference effect is a bonus for those who can see it, not a barrier for those who cannot.
Why it is free
iptsi builds these titles in-house and owns them outright, so there is nothing to license and nothing to attribute. They are here to be played, and to show the kind of game that suits the open web: no install, no account, no waiting, and no advertising on this page. Your best score is kept in your own browser.