作者：Anjin Anhut

这是本系列文章的第二部分。在上个部分中，我阐述了某些术语和准则，第二部分便由此构建而得。下面，让我们看看如何利用颜色情境和显著颜色。（请点击此处阅读第一部分：显著颜色和颜色情境)

Game & Swatch(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

图标颜色

使用显著颜色来让你的角色易于辨认。就像在公司Logo和企业标志中一样，显著颜色的简单结合很容易被人记住而且能够迅速领会。回到角色只用几个像素来构建的年代，显著颜色是让精灵可辨且可识别的必要手段（游戏邦注：如马里奥和路奇）。现在这些技术限制已经不复存在，但是AAA游戏角色仍然需要依靠显著颜色来最大化品牌认知价值。

显著颜色(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

解决谜题

玩家会将有着同样显著颜色的物品和元素联系起来，甚至能够将显著颜色按次序排列。这是玩家从婴儿时期便学会的技能，因而根本不需要做过多的解释。这有助于立即创造出可理解的游戏可玩性情境。

解谜(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

独立和从属

从桌游到运动、公司和国家再到政治活动参与方以及早期的部落时代，颜色标签都被用来标志群组的从属关系。清晰且一致的颜色语言能够帮助玩家区分好友和敌人。对于玩家而言，知道自身的显著游戏颜色能够在任何游戏中体会到竞争感，即便游戏可玩性的核心并非冲突。《新超级马里奥兄弟》中使用的是经典的红蓝绿黄组合。Wii允许每个玩家在屏幕上支持某种颜色，由此来识别来自其他团队和派系中的玩家的身份，就像玩家在桌游和运动游戏中的做法一样。

独立和从属1(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

独立和从属2(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

颜色信息和惯例

玩家能够理解之前习得的颜色的通俗含义。你可以从现实生活中取材，使用目标用户所普遍熟悉的惯例。出于此目的，你需要提供必要的背景。单单红色便有许多含义，所以只有合适的背景才能够引发合适的理解。在西方文化中，容器标有红色十字表明这是医疗补给，交通灯显示为红色意味着停止，机器上闪烁红灯标志着危险或故障，红色的滴状物指代血。点着红灯的屋子可能是娱乐会所或相馆的黑屋。所以你需要根据目标玩家的文化和常识来提供背景。当然，你也可以为显著颜色设立自己的含义，但是如果你想要这么做的话，就要让显著颜色的含义保持一致，同时给予玩家时间和指导（游戏邦注：有时甚至需要口头解释）来习得这些含义。

颜色信息和惯例(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

关注点

当玩家识别出某种显著颜色时，他总是能够更加重视和集中注意力。这可以用来引导玩家对某些元素的注意力和关注点。这也是为何众多BOSS使用显著颜色的原因。

关注点(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

触感

颜色情境可以非常有效地暗示触感。人脑会将某些颜色同某些感觉联系起来。这其中的基础便是个人记忆和条件作用。红色和橙色让人有温暖的感觉，蓝色代表着寒冷。在颜色理论中，我们甚至会谈论到使用相同系统来标识冷热物体的颜色温度和红外视角。白色和淡灰色很像清晨的薄雾，代表清新的感觉。颜色的明亮程度也可以表达出温度。

你也可以使用显著颜色来表达触感。比如，红色和蓝色的水箱分别代表盛装热水和冷水。你可以使用通常用来表达沸腾的热水和冰凉的冷水的红色和蓝色来呈现痛苦和轻松的想法。

触感(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

环境

在决定环境是否充满敌意的过程中，颜色情境发挥着重要的作用。在人类的进化过程中，形成了在富饶的区域中觉得更加安全的感觉，也就是充斥着深绿（游戏邦注：代表植物）、深蓝（游戏邦注：代表水源）抑或两者兼有。如果加入红色、紫色、橙色或粉色等暖色，你会觉得身处在很安逸的环境中。那些不富饶和充满生气的环境通常使用的是黑色、灰色、棕色和淡绿色，比如沙漠、被灼烧过的土地、死亡丛林和枯萎的植物等。在这种情况下，红色就会增加威胁、热量和危险的感觉。你要记住的是，我们的祖先在选择居住环境时会选择的颜色情境会让人觉得比较舒适。

环境(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

单色顺序

正因为古老照片、电影、绘画和低技术印刷的特点，以单色来演绎某种顺序会让玩家以置身于顺序之外的眼光来看待。玩家觉得自己正在观看某种描绘顺序的媒体。这种做法通常被电影和漫画用来展现阐述，有时还会用额外的电影颗粒、闪烁或褪色的旧报纸效果来提供支持。我角色有点奇怪，很少有游戏让我们体验这种感觉。当然，单颜色情境也可以用来展示独特边缘或基础情感基调的顺序。

单色(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

活泼快乐

孩子的服饰、幼儿园、绘图工具、糖果以及大量玩具中鲜艳、充满生气和丰富的颜色是让《超级马里奥》系列游戏能够迅速风行的原因。你不是在《死亡空间》中充满敌意的灰棕环境中战斗，也并非在《古墓丽影》郁郁葱葱的丛林中探索，你身处的是充满玩具色彩的蘑菇王国。活泼快乐这种孩子般的感觉能够被众多带有显著颜色的可识别物品所引发，所以我们会觉得自己在同许多有趣的东西互动。

活泼快乐的颜色(from howtonotsuckatgamedesign)

总结

我觉得，需要做的观察和技巧还有很多。许多颜色影响我们情感的技巧经常被使用而且能够为人所理解。这个话题的内容可以写出一整本书。但是我希望，你能够从这篇文章中获得某些灵感。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年1月16日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Game And Swatch – Color Theory For Game Designers Part 2

Anjin Anhut

This is a follow-up to part one. I established some terminology and principles in part one, building up to this article. So read it. No, honestly, do it. Let’s check out a few of thousand ways to use color situations and distinct colors to your advantage.
Iconic Colors

Use a limited selection of distinct colors to make your characters recognizable. Just as it is with company logos, corporate identities, simple combinations of distinct colors are easy to remember and quickly to grasp. Back in the days where few pixels needed to flesh out a character, clear distinct colors were necessary to make sprites readable and recognizable (think Mario and Luigi). Nowadays those technical limitations don’t exists. But AAA characters still maximize their own and their franchise’s value of brand recognition by betting on distinct colors. Marketing win.

Puzzle Solving

The player connects objects and elements colored in the same distinct color and is even able to bring distinct colors in order. This he learned from baby age on and later needs no explanation anymore. This helps create instantly understandable gameplay situations.

Separation And Affiliation

From boardgames, over sports, companies and nations to political parties and back to the days of tribes and caves, color labels are used to mark group affiliation. A clear and consistent color language helps the player separate friend from foe. For a player to know his own distinct game color gives any game a sense of competition, even when the gameplay is not centered around conflict. The classic red blue green yellow combo used in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, allows every player to identify with a color on screen and recognize the other players to be from a different party/team/faction, just like he learned when playing board games and sports.

Color Information And Conventions

The player can understand previously learned conventional meanings of colors. You can take from real life, by using the commonly known conventions of your target audience. For that you need to provide the necessary context. Red in and out of itself can have many meanings, so the right context is needed to trigger the correct interpretation. In western cultures, a red cross on any sort of container = medical supplies, a red traffic light = stop, a red light blinking on a machine = danger or malfunction or a red drop = blood. A red lit room can be a bordello or a photograph’s dark room. So check on the culture and common knowledge of your target gamer and provide context. You can of course establish your own meanings for distinct colors, but if you want to do this you have to be consistent with your distinct colors and give the player time and guidance (maybe even verbal explanations) to learn.

Focus

When the player recognizes a distinct color, he will always give it more importance and attention over the overall color situation. This can be used to direct the attention and focus of the player towards certain elements. This is why so many bosses have distinct color weak spots.

Tactile Sensations

Color situations are a very effective way to suggest tactile sensations. The human brain is wired to attribute certain feelings and even the taste of things to certain colors. This is mostly based on memory and conditioning. Reds and oranges are associated with warmth and heat, while blues suggest coldness. This can simply be backtracked to the sensations of fire and water. In color theory we even talk of color temperature and infrared view uses the same system to mark warm and cold objects. Whites and light grays, like early morning fog, suggest freshness. Another way to suggest temperature is warm brightness, referencing sunlight.

You can also convey tactile sensation by using distinct colors. A water tab for example is marked with red and blue for hot and cold water. You can use red and blue, commonly used to indicate burning hot and cooling cold water, to indicate a similar ideas of pain and relief on screen.

Environments

Color situations play an important role in determining if an environment is hostile or friendly. Humans are evolutionary primed to feel most secure in fertile areas, which are indicated by strong greens (plant life), strong blues (water) or both. Now adding hints of red, purple, orange or pink, anything warm and you have a very comforting color scheme for your environment. Not so fertile and life friendly environments, like deserts, burned areas, rock, dead wood, rust, rotten plant life come in a mix of blacks, grays, browns, and pale greens. Red adds an idea of threat, heat and danger here. Just keep in mind, what overall color situations our ancestors where searching for or avoiding, when picking a place to stay.

Monochromatic Sequences

Due to the qualities of vintage photography, old film, drawings and low-tech print, placing a sequence in monochromatic colors makes the player look at the sequence from the outside. Instead of being in the sequence, the player feels like looking at some sort of media depicting the sequence. This is often used in movies and comics to illustrate a flashback or exposition sequence, sometimes supported by additional film grain, flickering, washed out areas or fake old paper effects. I’m kind of confused, that there are so little games letting us play monochromatic flashbacks, regarding that black-and-white and sepia are so commonly understood. Monochromatic color situations can of course also be used to give a sequence a unique edge or baseline emotional tone.

Playfulness

The bright, vibrant and oh so random colorfulness of children’s clothing, kindergartens, kid’s drawing utensils, candy and heaps of toys are one of the many things that make Super Mario games instantly appear to be fun. While you fight in the hostile gray-brown environments of Dead Space, explore in the lush green jungles of Tomb Raider, you play in the toy-colored mushroom kingdom. The key here is not to just spread around colors, so that they blob together into one homogenic mix. Playfulness, this childlike feeling, gets triggered by a lot of recognizable objects with distinct colors, so we get the appearance of many fun or tasty things to interact with.

Conclusion Part Two

Like I said, there are a 1001 more observations to make and tricks to note. The many more ways in which colors affect us emotionally, are conventionally used or culturally understood. One could write a whole book about this subject (and some probably already have). But I hope, that you can extract some inspiration from this write down. If you can, you should check part three, where I share some cool tools and tricks to work with color on a game concept level. (Source: howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com)