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  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  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. Some levels contain multiple Mini Paint Stars. Upon coloring in the spots, Mario gets items such as coins. Cards can be used to attack enemies. They can also be painted to make them stronger.

### Design and characters
. 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. According to Tabata, the character itself does not matter as long as their personality is clearly seen through what they say. 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. 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. 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.

Many reviewers liked the game's dialogue and humor. *Nintendo Life*s 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 *VentureBeat*s 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