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Rocks in still water under a cherry branch in blossom, with pines on the shore and mist over the hills behind them.

See colour. Understand it. Master it.

Train your eye for colour.

IRO is a game about learning to see colour more precisely.

A colour appears. Estimate its hue, saturation and lightness, commit, and see how close you were.

Google Play App Store Coming soon
Try a round

Free on Android · iOS coming soon

The Book screen for Form on a tablet: its nine chapters, Dawn to Dusk, each a painted card with its name.
The journey screen: the current chapter, Persimmon, above the three Books (Form, Change and Stillness), with Stillness still locked.

How you play

Four simple steps

  1. A colour appears and stays visible.

  2. Choose its hue, saturation and lightness.

  3. Submit your numbers without seeing a preview of the colour they make.

  4. The game tells you which way each number has to move. The exact target comes at the end.

Try one

Match this colour.

Your best guess is the round's score, and in IRO it earns the round one, two or three stars. Once a guess has earned a star, Finish ends the round early and keeps it.

  1. Drag the sliders

    One each for hue, saturation and lightness.

  2. Press Commit

    Your colour appears beside the target, and the ring between them scores it from 0 to 100 by how close it looks.

  3. Follow the arrows

    On your next guess: ↑ higher, ↓ lower, more arrows the further off, ✓ exactly right. You have three guesses.

Try oneMatch this colour

Target
Your mix

Drag the sliders, then press Commit.

    Hue
    Saturation
    Lightness
    A single stone set in raked sand, the rings drawn around it.

    Your reading

    See how accurately you read each part of a colour, and where your guesses tend to drift.

    A bonsai pine holding to a rock above a pale shore.

    No fail state

    There are no lives, no energy and no countdown. Retry a round whenever you want.

    Red maple leaves on a bare branch, against a dark ground.

    Moments

    Some days, something small appears in the garden. Nothing tells you it's there.

    A koi turning through reeds in shallow water.

    Name a colour

    Call the round before your first guess to read a colour in one. Get it right, and you earn the right to name that colour.

    The journey

    Three books. Twenty-seven chapters.

    Nine chapters to a Book and twelve rounds to a chapter, 324 in all. Every chapter draws its colours from its own part of the circle, and the targets never get greyer just to make things harder.

    Book I, Form: Find the colour family.

    One colour in every round.

    Form walks the hue circle once, red round to red.

    Book II, Change: Look between familiar colours.

    Two colours in every round. Read the first; your values carry into the second.

    Change looks between neighbouring families, each chapter the edge two Form chapters share.

    Book III, Stillness: Notice the quieter differences.

    Three colours in every round. Your values carry through all three.

    Stillness studies quiet material, then returns to the whole circle.

    The daily ritual

    One colour a day.

    Every day, everyone gets the same colour to read. Complete it and that day's stone appears in your garden, one of seven for the week.

    Playing earns rest days, and a missed day spends one instead of ending your streak.

    A week laid out in a raked sand garden: four stones set in the sand for the days already done, a brush ring for today, and two empty hollows for the days still to come, under a pine on a rock and a red sun.
    1. Mon, done
    2. Tue, done
    3. Wed, done
    4. Thu, done
    5. Fri, today
    6. Sat, to come
    7. Sun, to come

    The daily challenge

    Eight koans.
    One a day.

    The day's second challenge: one colour, read under one changed rule. Each of the eight moves a different rule and leaves the rest alone. It's the same koan for everyone that day, you get one play at it, and nothing about it is scored.

    One Breath

    Gives you a single guess.

    Memory

    Shows the colour for three seconds, then takes it away.

    Two Truths

    Gives you one of the three numbers exactly and locks it. You read the other two.

    Silence

    Says nothing between guesses. The full reading shows once, at the end.

    Echo

    Leaves the colour up for one read, then hides it until the end.

    Precision

    Judges one of the three numbers more strictly. The same one for everyone.

    Blind Mix

    Hides the colour your numbers make until the end.

    Other Hand

    Moves the round to the dial, whatever your instrument is set to.

    The collection

    27 artifacts.

    One for every chapter you master. Earn three stars on all twelve rounds in a chapter and you complete its artifact: that chapter’s twelve colours as a disc, with a brush-drawn mark at its centre. These are the twenty-seven marks.

    Also in the game

    The rest of IRO

    The round is most of IRO. Around it are the things you keep, what it sounds like, and settings for how it looks.

    In the round

    • Read with sliders or the dial.
    • Retry below three stars, with a fresh colour.

    What you keep

    • Plates of your colours, named by you.
    • An atlas of what you’ve read.
    • Practice aimed where you read worst.

    How it sounds

    • 32 music tracks.
    • 30 sound effects.

    How it looks

    • Light and dark themes.
    • A high-contrast mode.

    In short

    IRO at a glance

    • 3 Books
    • 27 chapters
    • 324 rounds
    • 8 koans
    • 1 colour a day
    • No ads.
    • No subscription.
    • No account.
    • No tracking.
    • Works offline.
    • Your progress stays on your device.
    • Free on Android.
    • One-time purchase on iOS.

    Before launch

    Questions

    What will IRO cost?
    On Android, IRO is free. On iOS it will be a one-time purchase, and that price hasn't been set yet. Either way it's the same game, with no subscription, ads or in-app purchases.
    Can I play it in a browser?
    The round on this page is just that: one round, to try. IRO itself is planned for iOS and Android.
    When does it come out?
    There is no release date yet. IRO is planned for both iOS and Android.
    Do I need an internet connection?
    No. Once installed, IRO works offline.
    What does IRO collect?
    Nothing. There is no account, sign-in, sync or tracking. Your progress stays on your device. This website is a separate matter, and the privacy page covers it.
    I am colour blind. Can I play it?
    Partly. Nothing in the interface is said with colour alone: every state also carries a glyph, a star count or a word, and there's a high-contrast mode. The game itself is colour discrimination, though, so there's no display filter that would change what it asks of you.
    Is there a daily puzzle?
    Yes. Every day, everyone gets the same colour and the same koan.

    iOS and Android

    See colour. Understand it. Master it.

    Free on Android. On iOS, a one-time purchase, coming soon.

    Google Play App Store Coming soon