How well do you remember a color?
A color shows for two seconds, then it is gone. Find it again among five shades. The gap gets smaller, the wait gets longer.
About the game.
How does a round work?
A color fills the card for two seconds. A short mosaic wipes the afterimage, then the card stays gray while you keep the color in mind. Five shades come in a row: one is the color you saw. The shades are in order (lighter to darker, duller to more vivid, or a turn of hue), and the one you saw can be anywhere in the row.
How is the score computed?
Ten colors, ten points each. The right shade scores 10. Any other shade scores 10 minus twice its distance to the color seen, never below zero. The gap between the shades shrinks as the game goes on, from ΔE 6 to ΔE 1.5, and the wait before the shades grows from one to four seconds.
What is survival mode?
Three lives. After each right answer the gap between the shades gets smaller; a wrong answer costs a life. Your result is the smallest gap you still found: your color memory, in ΔE. Below ΔE 1, most people cannot tell two colors apart even side by side.
What do the ΔE and the Lab value mean?
ΔE 2000 (CIEDE2000) is the color difference printers measure between a color and its target: the smaller, the closer. The Lab value is the color seen in CIELAB, under D50, the light printers use. After each answer you also see which way your memory drifted: lighter, darker, duller, more vivid or another hue.
Which colors are in the game?
Seventy-six reference colors, not brand colors: twelve hues around the color circle, each at three lightnesses, soft and strong, and four grays. Each game draws ten of them. Played by many people, they show which colors we remember well and which ones drift.
Can I play with friends?
Yes. Play with friends puts two to four players on one screen: each looks at the color, waits and picks in turn while the others look away, then the answer shows for everyone. Playing apart, finish a solo game and send the challenge link: your friend gets the same ten colors and the same shades, with your score to beat.
Why is this game on the ColorLoop site?
Nobody holds an exact color in memory: it drifts within seconds. On press, the approved color has to stay the printed color all run long, so printers measure instead of remembering. ColorLoop presets the ink keys on sheetfed offset, then corrects after each measured sheet.
Are all the players on the leaderboard real?
Not all of them. The board also shows a few ColorLoop house players, from easy to strong, so there is always a score to beat while it fills up with players. They come and go from time to time, and their scores are only shown, never saved.