10 Best Monochrome Video Games

As games become more advanced, there’s naturally been a greater inclination toward more vibrant, realistic graphics.

While there’s nothing wrong with a little more color in your life, though, it’s not necessarily required for a good game.

Some of the most impressive games are rendered predominantly in black and white, with a few adding an occasional proper color for punctuation purposes.

Monochrome visuals can give a game a very distinctive visual identity, showing how much they can do with designs and settings in spite of a lack of color.

Just to clarify, we’re only talking about games that are deliberately monochrome — games released on monochrome-only platforms like the Game Boy don’t count.

10 In Stars And Time

A Single Star In The Night

In Stars and Time is an interesting entry amongst other monochrome games because, unlike in those games, In Stars and Time is monochrome in-universe.

The town of Dormont, the interior of the House, and everything that surrounds it, is exclusively black and white.

This is normal and accepted for the characters who live in this world, to the point that they can’t even conceptualize what a non-monochrome shade looks like.

As for why that is, that’s a bit of a spoiler. Trust us, though, you’ll understand the vital importance of color (and lack thereof) by the end of this game.

9 MadWorld

Black, White, And Red All Over

2009’s MadWorld takes a few cues from various western and Japanese comics, particularly Frank Miller’s ultra-violent classic, Sin City.

This results in a game that only has four colors to its name: black, white, yellow, and red. All of the characters, environments, and in-universe effects are rendered in black and white.

Yellow is used for punctuative sound effects and UI elements, likely to make them easier to see. As for red, well… Red is used exactly what you think it’s used for.

It certainly makes the geysers of blood that gush out when Jack bisects someone with his chainsaw arm more distinct.

8 Slay The Princess

A Story Isn’t Always Black And White

A story involving a princess is typically a happy matter, something to be rendered in full, beautiful color.

Slay the Princess lets you know right away that this is not a traditional princess story by presenting itself in a scratchy, smudged monochrome.

This is a story of myriad branching choices, where the answer is never quite as simple as right or wrong, black or white.

The only time color is used is when dialogue occasionally turns red, often to let you know something really unpleasant is about to happen.

7 Cryptmaster

A Typewriter Dungeon

Cryptmaster has a few obvious inspirations and reasons that inform its black-and-white vibes.

Firstly, it’s a dungeon-crawler, one of the oldest genres of games from back in the days when color was at more of a premium.

Games like the original Rogue were rendered entirely in black and white ASCII art.

Secondly, the game’s primary theme is words and language, and there are few representatives of the realm of black and white, like a typewriter.

If the game is going to make you do a lot of typing anyway, it might as well have a typeface-like setting.

6 Gato Roboto

Cats See Color, Robots Don’t

Contrary to popular belief, your pets can see colors, albeit not quite in the same way that we do.

Despite that, Gato Roboto only has black and white visuals, and exceptionally simple visuals at that.

Maybe the cat’s robot has a monochrome view screen or something — it’s not really important.

The game is meant to be a minimalistic Metroidvania experience, from its controls to its story to its graphics, and black and white do a good job of conveying that.

5 West Of Loathing

All The Majesty Of Your Old Notebook

If you were ever bored in school, you probably spent some time doodling a little adventure in your notebook with your pencil.

That’s the kind of aesthetic you get from West of Loathing: a very silly, barely consistent world doodled in the margins of white scratch paper.

The only colors you see in this game are red and blue, which are exclusively used for things like health bars and certain UI elements.

Beyond that, it’s all squiggly black lines on a white world. Hey, we couldn’t all get colored pencils growing up.

4 Return Of The Obra Dinn

The Fuzzy Mosaic Of The Past

The games that were played on some of the earliest Macintosh computers were black and white by default because they literally couldn’t handle any more than that.

The distinctive graphical style those old monitors created has inspired various artistic pursuits in the modern day, including Return of the Obra Dinn.

Not only does the entire game have a monochrome palette, it’s all mildly fuzzy and distorted, almost like a mosaic.

It’s rather reminiscent of artwork of men at sea in the 1800s, with faces and proportions simplified in some places and exaggerated in others.

3 World Of Horror

Just Like Classic Horror Manga

Barring the occasional promotional color pages, most Japanese manga is drawn exclusively in black and white tones.

As we’ve seen from the likes of famed horror artist Junji Ito, you don’t need colored comics to convey various emotions.

As World of Horror seeks to pay homage to Ito’s works, it too is rendered exclusively in black and white (notwithstanding the game’s optional swappable color palettes).

Frankly, it’s kind of a relief this game doesn’t have color — if you had to see some of the horrible beasts and phenomena in full detail, it’d be too much to bear.

2 Toem

Beauty Through A Lens

You’d probably expect a game centered around photography to have a big emphasis on color.

Catching vibrant shades is one of the most important skills of a good photographer, after all.

However, despite its camera-heavy narrative and mechanics, Toem is black, white, and gray nearly all the way through.

Interestingly, though, the lack of color doesn’t diminish the game’s photo mechanics in the slightest.

It becomes less about color coordination and more about just taking pictures of things and people that make you smile.

It’s kind of liberating, in a way, being able to take photos of whatever catches your fancy without concern for the lighting.

1 Limbo

The Original Sad Child Platformer

2010’s Limbo is the progenitor of a certain sub genre of puzzle platformer games, often centering around helpless children lost in frightening worlds.

Naturally, there’s no better way to depict a child lost in a scary place than rendering everything in claustrophobic shadow.

There is very little light to be found in Limbo, and certainly no color to brighten things up.

There is merely more shadow, obfuscating the full appearance of the many terrifying beasts of the forest.

This is not a happy game, and its monochrome palette goes a long way toward regularly reminding you of that.