Already, since my last post about my current project, some online colleagues have remarked to me their curiosity, snide cynicism, and playful criticism regarding the grayscale palette.

On this topic, Wikipedia offers this (generous) assessment:

Today black-and-white media often has a “nostalgic", historic, or anachronistic feel to it. […] Some modern film directors will occasionally shoot movies in black-and-white because they believe it captures their vision better.

Okay, but I’ll defend myself by saying that it really bugs me when the directing hand behind a creative project uses “black and white” solely as a way of proclaiming artistic merit within their work. …and often, that’s the case with grayscale implementation. Damn “artists"… what with their licenses, and whatnot.

I’m not really a fan of using any type of overall color treatment to exclusively make a narrative point. Take sepia tone, for example - hasn’t its overuse negated the original device? Now, its narrative use is all but a cliché.

The reasons I’ve gone with grayscale (for two consecutive projects) are different:

- A lot of it has to do with this gentleman and his direct, daily influence on me.

- Concrete, newsprint, macadam, and metal all typically exists in tones of gray, and all four materials are present throughout the game. The palette, hopefully, serves to emphasize their presence.

- The game is somewhat mundane (There, I said it). Are your growing bad days dark gray, or is it just me?

Besides; from a very boring technical standpoint, using an exclusively “desaturated” color palette eliminates the risk of the color misrepresentation between computer monitors. As a result, you can be more precise with the way you choose to represent things, visually - and you can ultimately be more confident that people are seeing what you’re seeing.
EDIT: Also, file size. A 2D game made with a small number of display colors is substantially smaller in size than a conventional one.

One last thing on this topic - I briefly considered casting the whole game in subdued green tones, like American paper currency.

But on second thought…. Nah.