Swatches Color Game

Place cards, stack tokens, and be the first to complete a ring of eight around any tile on the colorful board. Challenge the computer, or a friend live over Game Center.

SWATCHES: THE COLOR STRATEGY GAME Swatches started as a handful of vibrant free paint chips from a hardware store. That was ten years ago. What began as an artist's experiment, what if color matching itself were the game, has since become a fully realized strategy board game with a physical and now digital form.

HOW TO PLAY The board is composed of a hundred tiles in fifty exact colors, each color appearing exactly twice. The palette was chosen deliberately: colors spaced as far apart from each other visually as possible while remaining vivid and beautiful. Each card in your hand carries its CMYK values alongside its name, because this game was always as much about design as it was about play.

The goal is to be the first to create a ring of eight: surround any single tile with eight of your own tokens. Your turn has three steps. Play a card from your hand, move your stacked tokens like chess kings across the board, then draw a new card. Token stacks allow for deeper strategic play, as they can move, capture, and block opposing tokens. Five different wild cards in the deck let you remove, replace, and swap, creating quick turnabouts in any match. Color matching is central to the gameplay. Laying down a matching color card on a tile is not always easy, and when you choose incorrectly, your opponents are watching.

TWO WAYS TO PLAY Face the computer at four difficulty levels, from relaxed to ruthless, choosing two, three, or four players. Or play a friend live over Game Center using a private four-digit code, or quick match with an online stranger. A fixed set of emoji reactions lets you communicate mid-match with a single tap, customizable to suit your style.

MADE BY AN ARTIST The physical edition of Swatches was designed to be a work of art as much as a game. The board, a grid of one hundred color tiles, hangs on the wall like a painting when not in play. "I have always wanted to make this game widely available, but the precision printing required for color matching is not something conventional game manufacturing could easily achieve. Each card must match its tile color exactly. This app exists because it was the only way to make the game accessible without compromising the quality of the handmade art editions."

In Swatches, every color value is exact. The 3D board sits on an endless table. The token sound effects were recorded from the real board game. A narrated tutorial teaches the full game in ten short lessons.

WHAT'S AHEAD This is version one, my first app, built to bring Swatches to as many people as possible. Future versions will expand to iPhone and potentially Vision Pro, with stronger computer opponents, expanded emoji sets, and the ability to play against two or even three other people simultaneously. If you enjoy it, I hope you will follow the game's journey as I work toward bringing the physical edition to life through a Kickstarter campaign. The game is free. I hope you and your family enjoy playing it.

ACCESSIBILITY Players who have difficulty distinguishing colors can turn on the Labels Overlay during play, which prints each color's name directly on the board and assists with color matching when playing a card. Swatches is a game everyone can play.