Game Teaches Hexadecimal Colors

Here in the U.S., we’ve recently wrapped up partying for three (or more) days to celebrate our independence and yesterday it was back to the daily grind. So, I figure by today we’ve earned ourselves a little break again and I thought, “Why not talk about little time waster I found recently?” This week, I’m all about testing my knowledge of hexadecimal colors. And by that, I mean I’m trying to actually learn hexadecimal colors, and I’m using that as an excuse to play “Hex Invaders.”

This online game—produced by 352 Inc.—was created for both young and experienced designers learning to create websites and work with CSS. Looking a bit like the arcade classic “Space Invaders,” this version identifies alien threats based on their hex colors. Three aliens appear at the top of the screen, along with a simple hex code. Your mission is to shoot at the alien that is sporting that color. Easy, right? I found I did okay for about the first four rounds and after that the more advanced red, green, and blue values in the hex code started to trip me up. There is a short tutorial at the beginning, explaining that a value of “0” will contain none of that color and that “f” will contain 100% of that color. My problem came with everything in-between those values and I eventually died on Level 6. What I realized is that I rely too much on online hex code generators when I need to specify a hex color, so I’m off to brush up on that. But first, just a couple more rounds of Hex Invaders. Pew Pew Pew!