Paper Mario: Color Splash

Paper Mario: Color Splash is a 2016 role-playing video game. It was developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Wii U console. It is the fifth game in the Paper Mario series, within the larger Mario franchise. The story follows Mario and his new ally Huey saving Prism Island and rescuing Princess Peach from Bowser.

Color Splash uses parts of the action-adventure and role-playing (RPG) genres. Players control Mario as he goes through levels made to look like they are made out of craft materials. Mario completes these levels and retrieves each Big Paint Star through linear gameplay. Mario is equipped with a paint hammer. He uses it to solve coloring-themed puzzles and collect awards in levels. In turn-based combat phases, Mario uses cards that give him attacks and other abilities.

Starting with Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Nintendo wanted to differentiate the Paper Mario series from their other RPG Mario series, Mario & Luigi. The developers focused on puzzles and comedy. To make each game different from one another, they emphasized a main gimmick. Atsushi Isano, the director for Intelligent Systems, created the idea for the paint theme, which was developed to use the Wii U GamePad. A card-based battle system was implemented to use the GamePad touchscreen to sort, paint, and use cards. The artists focused on making the paper textures as realistic as possible.

Color Splash was announced in a Nintendo Direct in March 2016 and released worldwide in October 2016. When it was announced, people did not like that it continued the action-adventure and gimmick-based format that Sticker Star started. However, when the game was released, people said good things about its graphics, music, and improved dialogue. People did not like the combat system and its lack of RPG elements. The next game in the series was Paper Mario: The Origami King. That game released for the Nintendo Switch in 2020.

Gameplay
Paper Mario: Color Splash has parts of both the action-adventure and role-playing genres. This similar to the previous game in the series, Paper Mario: Sticker Star. The player controls a two-dimensional version of Mario using the Wii U GamePad. The game follows Mario as he explores a paper-craft world designed to look like craft materials. The player's goal is to get the missing six Big Paint Stars stolen by Bowser. Each Big Paint Star is in a different part of the world. Players travel through a world map containing several levels. The goal of each level is to get the Mini Paint Star at the end of the level. When the player gets a new Mini Paint Star, they get to go to new levels. Some levels contain multiple Mini Paint Stars.

In these levels, Mario can get items and coins, talk to non-player characters (NPC), and complete puzzles and platforming challenges. He can also talk to Huey, his ally, for help. Mario has a paint hammer, which can add color to colorless spots found throughout the world. Upon coloring in the spots, Mario gets items such as coins. The hammer uses Mario's supply of paint, which comes in red, blue, and yellow varieties. Mario can get more paint by hitting things with the hammer. The type of area the player is coloring in determines the color and amount of paint used. If the player gets "hammer scraps", they can increase the maximum amount of paint they can carry. Another ability, called the "cutout", lets Mario get to areas that he could not get to in any other way. To use the ability, the player traces a dotted line on the GamePad's touchscreen, causing part of the level to peel off.

While exploring, the player will enter a battle if they run into an enemy. Depending on how the player collided with the enemy, they will immediately either attack the enemy or be attacked by the enemy. The combat system in Color Splash is turn-based. The attacks that the player can use are represented by cards the player can either gets from levels and defeated enemies, or buy from shops with coins. Cards can be used to attack enemies. They can also be painted to make them stronger. Some are basic jump and hammer attacks, and some are "Thing" cards that resemble real-world objects, such as a fire extinguisher. The type of card determines the amount and color of paint it uses. It also determines how Mario attacks the enemy. The cards can also be used for defensive purposes, such as healing Mario or making him take less damage. Players choose, paint and sort cards with the GamePad's touchscreen. Enemy attacks will hurt Mario, and the player loses the game if Mario loses all of his health. If the player defeats all the enemies in the battle, the player returns to the stage and is given a variety of rewards.

Plot
Mario and Princess Peach get a letter from Prism Island. They discover that the letter is a Toad that was drained of its color and folded into a letter. They go to Prism Island to investigate. The three of them find the island's town empty, and notice colorless spots and objects. The fountain in the middle of the island is dry, and its famous Big Paint Stars are gone. A vault appears in the fountain, containing a paint can. After Mario tries to open it, the can is revealed to be Huey, the fountain's guardian. Huey explains the fountain is usually powered by six Big Paint Stars, which supply the island with infinite paint and color. Mario agrees to help Huey get the Big Paint Stars. While Mario explores the island, Peach is kidnapped by Bowser.

Mario travel through six areas and gets the Big Paint Stars while helping the local Toads. Mario also fights various enemies, including the Koopalings who serve as bosses. As Mario gets the Big Paint Stars, each one tells him about their memories of an attack on the town. Once Mario gets all six Big Paint Stars, they learn that Bowser attempted to dye his shell a rainbow color using the Prisma Fountain. However, he accidentally mixed all the colors together. This created black paint, a toxic substance that possessed him and transformed him into "Black Bowser". He proceeded to summon his army to steal the Big Paint Stars and drain the color from Prism Island. They also discover that Bowser was the one who sent them the color-drained Toad in order to get them to come to Prism Island.

With the Big Paint Stars, and later joined by Luigi, the group reaches Black Bowser's Castle. When they enter the castle, they find that Bowser is mass-producing black paint in a factory, planning to paint the world black. Mario and Huey then stop the factory from making the black paint. The duo defeat Black Bowser, rescue Peach, and destroy the factory and the castle. Peach, Mario, and Luigi escape, but Huey stays to stop the black paint and absorbs the castle. Huey flies into outer space, taking the black paint far away from Prism Island, and sacrificing himself in the process.

Development

Paper Mario: Color Splash was developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. Because people did not like the previous game, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Nintendo kept their complaints in mind during the development process. The focus of the Paper Mario series shifted toward the action-adventure genre with the introduction of Sticker Star, and Nintendo conceived the notion that the Mario & Luigi series would replace Paper Mario as the Mario franchise's RPG series. This was confirmed by co-producer Risa Tabata at E3 2016, in an interview with Kotakus Stephen Totilio. She also noted how the Paper Mario series will focus more on "puzzle-solving [and] humor" over its gameplay elements. In addition to the genre shift, some gameplay elements were changed because of things people did not like about the previous games. For example, they made the storyline more complicated by focusing on the relationship between Mario and his allies. The card system was also more complicated because of a larger inventory and a new hint system. The changes to the card system were made because people did not like how limited it was in Sticker Star.

Design and characters

Producer Kensuke Tanabe said that the idea of repainting the world was created by director of production Atsushi Ikuno in 2012. Ikuno was inspired by watching his children having fun while painting. Ikuno told Tanabe about the story, and Tanabe proposed the idea to Intelligent Systems, the developers who create games in the Paper Mario series. Tanabe said that a lot of trial and error was required before coloring with a hammer felt comfortable. Tabata said that because the Wii U was more powerful than previous Nintendo consoles like the Nintendo 3DS, the artists were able to make realistic in-game paper. A paper-like art style was achieved by using different textures of paper for different environments. Thing cards were created to create a funny visual distinction from the paper-like graphics.

The combat system was made to use the unique controls on the Wii U touchscreen. With a larger touchscreen, the developers could let the player control the battle system directly from the touchscreen. A system where the player could sort through cards on the gamepad and fling them onto the screen using the touchscreen was also made. Tabata also explained that the number of cards the player can have was limited to make players think strategically. They did not think about adding multiplayer or making the game work with Miiverse. The game did not use a normal RPG system but instead focused on puzzle-solving. Most of the upgrades for Mario focused on letting him have more paint at one time. Overall, combat was designed to be an additional obstacle rather than a major part of the game, according to Tanabe.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the lead designer of the Mario franchise, said that they should only use existing Mario characters in the game instead of making any new ones. Former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata suggested that this was to limit options to make the developers more creative. This led the team to create various Toads with different colors to represent their different personalities. According to Tabata, the character itself does not matter as long as their personality is clearly seen through what they say. Taro Kudo was the lead writer. Tabata said that Kudo was good at coming up with jokes and writing the story. Tabata also noted that during playtesting "there really were people who cried at the end". Instead of translating the game from Japanese to English to release it internationally, most of the jokes were rewritten so they would make more sense in English.

Release
Paper Mario: Color Splash was announced to be releasing in 2016 during a Nintendo Direct presentation on March 3, 2016. When Color Splash was revealed, fans said bad things about it. They did not like that it was similar to Sticker Star. Soon after the announcement of Color Splash, a petition on Change.org was created. The petition called for this game and the Nintendo 3DS game Metroid Prime: Federation Force to be cancelled. Kate Gray from TechRadar said that the game seemed more focused on collecting items than having an interesting story. When asked about Color Splash's genre at E3 2016, Tabata said that it was an action-adventure game and that Mario & Luigi would be the series for Mario role-playing games.

The game was released worldwide on October 7, 2016. It could be bought early on the Nintendo eShop on September 22, 2016. However, it was quickly discovered that Nintendo of America had accidentally made the full game available to play two weeks early. Nintendo later removed the option to buy the game early from the North American eShop, but people who already downloaded the game were able to keep their copies. Color Splash sold 20,894 copies in its first week of release in Japan, and 37,093 copies the following month. By the end of 2017, the total number of Japanese sales of the game was 86,000.

Reception

Reviews
Paper Mario: Color Splash received mostly good reviews according to Metacritic, getting a 76/100 score on the site. The game was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" in the 2017 Kids' Choice Awards, but lost to Just Dance 2017.

Many reviewers liked the game's dialogue and humor. Nintendo Lifes Conor McMahon said that the writing in this game was a lot better than the writing in Sticker Star. GamesRadar+ reviewer Alex Jones considered the writing one of the only good things about Color Splash. Terry Schwartz of IGN said that they really liked Huey. However, they said that the story was not as good as older Paper Mario games. The game's use of Toads had mixed reception. although Miguel Concepcion of GameSpot liked the Toads' humor and their different personalities, Dan Ryckert of Giant Bomb did not like how every character was a Toad, and said that their individual traits did not make them unique enough.

The game's graphics were also liked. Miguel Concepcion noted how the transition to HD graphics made the game look even better than Sticker Star. Jones also liked how Color Splash looked, comparing its graphics to the Wii U games Yoshi's Woolly World and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.

The use of the hammer and paint were mostly liked. Ryckert liked the paint mechanic and wanted to fully paint everything in each world. Although Concepcion thought that the early games were slow because Mario could not hold much paint, it stopped being a problem once Mario could hold more paint. Peole did not like the Cutout ability. Concepcion and Jones both said that it did not need to be in the game.

People did not like the game's combat, because it was too slow and unnecessary. Jones saw a risk-reward idea in the format alongside tactical puzzle-solving, but he thought combat was repetitive. He said that needing to sort and select cards for every battle became annoying, and he avoided enemies when possible. McMahon and VentureBeats Dennis Scimecaen thought that the battles were too easy and boring. Ryckert said that "just about everything in Color Splash is instantly likable", but felt that the combat made the game worse. Commenting on Thing cards, Jones and Scimecaen liked that they were a unique way of defeating enemies, but backtracking to find them was frustrating.

Retrospective
Much like Sticker Star, people said that Color Splash was worse than the first two games in the series, Paper Mario (2000) and The Thousand-Year Door (2004), because it was less of an RPG. Reeves and McCarthy said that losing some RPG mechanics made completing battles feel less rewarding, and that they liked to avoid battles. Schwartz believed that the game was much better than Sticker Star, but still worse than the old Paper Mario games.

Notes

References

Category:2016 video games
Category:Action-adventure games
Category:Paper Mario
Category:Single-player video games
Category:Wii U games