At Emerald City Comic Con ’26 (ECCC), I had the priviledge of demoing a new variant of Color Space. The game has been such a hit that I’ve decided to make these the official rules going forward.
You can read about my experience at ECCC here.
I also put together this FAQ style article to help you understand the changes and what it all means.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, you can obtain a pdf for print of the Color Space 2.0 rules for free by clicking the button below.
I’m an oldhead with the 1.x version, can I play the new Color Space with my now antique set?
Yes! You only need to download the new rules pdf from here (they’re free): https://mutantpizza.net/download-rulebooks/
What did you change?
In a nutshell, the gameplay is streamlined, the theme is better utilized, and there’s even more dynamic asynchronous gameplay — one player pushes things around, and now another player pull things.
If you’re looking for a longer answer, read the two questions below or download the rules pdf for free from here (did I mention, it’s free?): https://mutantpizza.net/download-rulebooks/
What was the point of this? Furthermore, what’s the point of, like, anything, man…you know?
To answer the first question, I had some straightforward design goals for this:
- Streamline gameplay: Color Space 1.x had some quirks and edge cases that lead to clunky experiences, and I wanted to change that
- Extend thematic elements: It seemed like the only thematic element of Color Space 1.x was building bases with cubes, when there was much more about the color-making theme that I could embrace
- Deepen asymmetric play: One thing that bothered me, personally, as the designer, was that the both players did some version of the same power move, pushing things around; what if one player pushed and the other pulled? Now that would make for an interesting experience and alter the way both players had to consider the game — adding an air of dissonance to the tension. I wanted to explore that with reckless abandon.
- Use all of the existing assets from Color Space 1.x, not forcing people to buy new pieces or leaving any current pieces out of the game.
As for the second question: There is no point. The universe is a furnace of chaos, uncaring and devoid of what we think of as ‘purpose.’ But isn’t that the point? See what I did there? Hah! Just a little existentialist humor for you. Anyway…
Why have you done this to us?
Why did I even do decide to tinker with Color Space, a game that as of autumn of last year was buttoned up, manufactured, and being actively sold? Simple: I felt like it.
Color Space always has a special place in my heart, it’s the first game I designed. I have a long history with the game. I spent months working on it, then put it away, then picked it back up, then put it away again, then picked it back up and spent several more months to finish it. Each time I put it down, it was a vastly different game from when I picked it up that round. No, seriously!
First, it was called “A Colorful Game” and used only cards. You’d select a secondary color to play as. (Yes, you played as a color.) You’d lay primary cards out on a grid then move them around to generate secondary colors, laying those cards on top of the prmary ones. A game was over when all possible secondary colors could be generated, and a player won by having the most of their color on the grid. It was kind of like tic-tac-toe (which is a “solved game,” by the way).
Then it became a game where players points chose cards and moved primary colored tiles to generate secondary colored roads between them, then scored for the string of correctly colored roads on the card. Sort of a combination of Hive and Ticket to Ride.
Then, I got rid of the cards and it was only hexes, and players had a list of secondary colored road combinations they could make, and they’d then get to collect a small number of the road segments. The goal was to be the first to gain five road segments of all three secondary colors.
Finally, it was Color Space, an asymmetric game of cat and mouse, instead of roads, it was cubes and bases and ships and black holes.
Now, it’s still that game, but with some slight adjustments to the gameplay to meet my design goals (as stated above). I believe that now, I’ve finally made the best version of Color Space I could possibly make. Barring any small things I might need to fix like undiscovered typos in the rules, I can put this game — my firstborn child, now all grown up — to rest at last. And by that, I mean continue to make it and sell it but not mess with the core game anymore.
The moral of this story, at least for me, is that game design is not set in stone. It evolves with the designer. It’s okay to improve “finished” games.
Mutant Pizza 