Humans are notoriously bad at remembering specific shades of color, a trait that forms the basis for the popular browser game Dialed. Created by Geoff and Sam Teehan, the game presents players with a Pantone swatch and tasks them with recreating it from memory using sliders for hue, saturation, and brightness. The closer the recreation, the higher the score out of 10.
Dialed launched in February and has since garnered millions of plays. Its success is attributed to a simple and accessible formula: perceive a stimulus, then recreate it from memory with minimal input. "We're stripping out everything else that's unnecessary. There are no instructions, there are no sign-ups or logins. There's no onboarding. There's no app to download. You just click a link, and you're playing," Geoff Teehan explained to Fast Company. Each challenge involves matching five colors, with gentle in-game text offering either mild mockery for missed attempts or sardonic congratulations for close matches.
For those interested in further testing their color perception, What's My JND offers a similar experience. This desktop browser game challenges players to identify subtle differences between colors and click on the precise border separating them. While early levels might seem straightforward, the game progressively introduces hues that become increasingly difficult to distinguish, mirroring the inherent challenges of human color memory.