Colour Mix

Colour Mix is a colours game for children aged four to ten, set in a sunny painter's studio run by a teal octopus in a red beret with a brush in each raised arm. A round is ten quick exercises and nothing has to be read: every instruction is a picture, and the first time a new kind of exercise turns up, a cartoon hand shows how it works before handing over. Three big buttons on the title screen, 4+, 6+ and 8+, pick the age, and each has its own colours, mixes and pace.

Find the paint pot that matches the big splotch, or spot all the red things among six toys. Pour two pots into the mixing bowl to make the colour on the easel: the bowl shows the real mix, so red and yellow turn orange, blue and yellow turn green and red and blue turn purple. From 6+ a pot of white joins the shelf for pink and sky blue, and rainbows need their stripes put back in order; at 8+ all three primaries make brown, paints are sorted into a warm jar and a cool jar, and a drawn colour wheel asks which colour sits opposite. Shades are sorted from light to dark, and sixteen paint-by-number pictures, from a smiling sun to a rocket and the octopus itself, are filled in by picking a numbered pot and tapping the shapes.

Nothing can be lost. A wrong pot just wobbles, and after two tries the right one starts to glow. Every colour also carries its own shape, a circle for red, a square for blue, a triangle for yellow and the same shape hollow when white is mixed in, so colour-blind children can play every exercise. Finished rounds earn stars, fill a learned meter for each age and add a painted animal to the sticker book, and a daily round brings a golden sticker of the day. It is a gentle workout for a young brain, or a calm ten minutes to relax with a music-box tune.