Free puzzler 10 People 10 Colors is basically Lemmings with a colour wheel

(Image credit: Tom Sykes)

Lemmings makes a low-key comeback in the smart 10 People 10 Colors, a similarly side-on puzzle game where you have to shepherd a bunch of people to an exit door. As in DMA Design's classic series, the people move of their own accord, but you can cajole them towards the door by changing the background colour using a Paint Shop-style colour wheel.

How does changing the background affect the various barriers and platforms in each stage? Because each has a colour, and when the background is light blue, for example, any object that's also light blue will disappear. The same goes for people, who can tactically vanish from the world as you go about your puzzling business. It's a clever spin on the Lemmings formula.

The difficulty ramp is smooth, introducing you to the concept with baby steps, while frequently adding new wrinkles in the form of, for instance, physics-enabled platforms that will punt your multi-coloured folk clear across the screen. You'll be greeted by a wall of Japanese after following this link, but you don't need to be able to read anything, and everything is done with a left click in this elegant, clever puzzle game. (Thanks, Alpha Beta Gamer.)

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

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