Eposic: Color One, A 3D VRML Puzzle Game

System Requirements: You need a VRML client/plugin to play this game. This game has been tested on Windows XP in Firefox 2, Netscape 7, and IE7 using the Cortona VRML client from ParallelGraphics. Your mileage may vary with other VRML clients, other browsers, or other OS's. (I recommend using Firefox for this game.)

Introduction: Color One is a puzzle game for which there has not yet been achieved a perfect score. This game is from the early days of when I had my first web site, back in 1998, as is stated in the copyright notice embedded in the game. This little game won second place in a weekly competition held by Silicon Graphics back in the day. I've updated the game to track the highest and lowest overall scores, so you can see how you compare to others that play the game.

Instructions: Use your VRML 2.0-compliant browser to play Color One. You can use the controls in the VRML client to move the scene so that you can click on all of the spheres. Try to find a good angle so that you can see all of the spheres simultaneously and click on any of them.

You earn a rank as you progress, depending on your score. There are three special ranks that end in an exclamation point. One of those special ranks is Doh!; your objective is to earn one of the other two special ranks. This is accomplished by continually clicking on the various colored spheres until you adjust the color scheme appropriately. Each time you click on a sphere, it and the six other spheres that share a coordinate with it in the 3x3x3 matrix of spheres change colors. The colors change according to the color progression shown under Color Direction. The direction of the progression may be changed by clicking on the arrows at either end of the progression. The current direction of the progression is marked by an asterisk below the corresponding arrow.

The color scheme of the spheres at any given time determines your score at that time. Each new game starts with a random scheme, and thus a random score. (You can start a new game at any time by clicking on New Game.)

Scoring is determined by a secret formula, but I will say that the name of the game was derived from knowing this formula. If you are a reasonably intelligent person, you can figure out the formula by observing how the color scheme changes affect the score each time you click on a sphere.

I must confess that I do not know a fool-proof method to establish the color scheme that gives the highest score, nor even if it is always possible to obtain the highest score from any given starting configuration. If you prove that a solution always exists (or doesn't always exist), I'd like to hear from you!