ChromaGun is a first-person puzzler about paint. Pixel Maniacs, an independent studio from Germany, built the whole game on one idea: color walls and robots, then watch the robots move. It came out in 2016 for PlayStation 4, Linux, PC, Mac, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The pitch is a joke about preschool color mixing, and the game knows it.
Trailer, via Pixel Maniacs.
A Paint-Shooting Weapon and Floating Spheres
You carry the ChromaGun, a paint-shooting weapon that fires red, blue and yellow. Walls and floating spherical robots called Worker Droids take the paint. The droids are attracted to walls of the same color and will move toward them.
That single rule is the whole game. Change a droid’s color, and steer it onto door-opening triggers, switches or electrified floor tiles. Mix two primary colors and you get green, purple or orange. Mix more than two and you get black, which the droids ignore. There are 26 levels in total, each with only one solution.
The game’s own pitch line puts it plainly:
Use it to solve the meticulously designed test chambers by painting the walls and droids.
The levels are short. A single mistake can make a puzzle unsolvable, and the only fix is a restart. That is a design choice, not an accident, and it defines how ChromaGun feels to play.
One Solution and a Restart
Here is where ChromaGun separates itself from the puzzle games it sits beside. You either see the solution or you start the chamber over. There is no undo in the moment, and the source describes exactly that structure.
The comparison worth drawing is inside the game, not against its neighbors.
| Color mix | Result | Droid behavior |
|---|---|---|
| One primary (red, blue, yellow) | Primary color | Attracted to matching walls |
| Two primaries | Green, purple or orange | Attracted to matching walls |
| More than two colors | Black | Not attracted |
That table is the argument. ChromaGun asks for a kind of attention that pays off only if you read the room before you act. Whether that reads as respect or as punishment depends on the player, but it is a real position, and Pixel Maniacs holds it.
The Worker Droids are the source of the headaches, and the game says so. They are also the best thing in it. A droid is a moving part you can recolor, redirect and, when the floor is electrified, sacrifice. The game calls that sacrifice merciless. It is also funny.
Eight Chapters Inside ChromaTec
ChromaGun runs eight chapters. The framing is a corporate test facility for ChromaTec, which has built military-grade color technology and wants you to try it. The gun is patent pending. The background narrative is dry and witty, and the comedy sits in the theme alongside the science fiction.
That tone does a lot of work. A puzzle game with 26 single-solution chambers and no undo could feel hostile. ChromaGun does not, because the ChromaTec framing keeps the whole thing light. The joke about remembering color mixing from preschool is the whole game in one line.
What it does not have is scale. Eight chapters of mind-melting puzzles is the entire offer. There is no reason to keep going except the next chamber. For some players that is enough. For others, the well runs dry before the chapters do.
Where the Difficulty Actually Lives
The hard part of ChromaGun is not the shooting. Aiming paint at a wall is easy. The hard part is the order of operations. You have to see the final state of the room before you touch anything, because the first droid you move changes what the second droid can do.
That is a specific and unfashionable skill, and this paper’s read is that it rewards patience over speed. The result is a game that asks you to think before you fire, which is either the point or the problem.
The first-person view helps. Standing inside the chamber, looking at the colors you have already laid down, makes the geometry legible. It also makes mistakes legible, which is why the restart stings.
The Number That Fits
ChromaGun scored 7.4 out of 10 across five outlets, and that number is about right. This is a sharp, confident, small game with one strong idea and no interest in padding it. The color-mixing rule is genuinely clever. The Worker Droids are a better puzzle tool than most games manage. The deadpan ChromaTec framing keeps the whole thing light.
The cost is real, though. Twenty-six levels with one solution each and no undo is a narrow target. Players who think in final states will love it. Players who learn by doing will bounce off it hard.
What matters here is that Pixel Maniacs picked a lane and stayed in it. ChromaGun is not trying to be a bigger game than it is. It is a first-person puzzler about paint, and it is very good at being exactly that.
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