Free
About
One tile is a slightly different shade. Find it.
That's the whole game — and it goes deeper than you'd think. The gap shrinks
level after level until it's roughly 1 ΔE, the smallest colour difference a human
eye can detect at all. Most people tap out somewhere in the low twenties. That's
not a failure. That's your retina.
A 200-LEVEL JOURNEY
Start easy and climb through eight chapters. Each level is a handful of boards,
each subtler than the last, and you earn up to three stars for a clean run. Miss a
tile and the game shows you the one you should have found — so every mistake
teaches. Two hundred levels, from a gentle warm-up to the very edge of human
vision.
AND SIX MORE WAYS TO PLAY
• Classic — points for speed. Tap the odd tile in under a second and it's 1000.
• Daily — one board a day, identical for everyone on Earth. Compare and argue.
• Sprint — 60 seconds. Clear as many as you can. A miss costs you four.
• Endless — no safety net. The clock tightens with every level you clear.
• Sudden Death — three lives, no clock. Just your eye, taking its time.
• Zen — no clock, no lives. Pure practice. (Pro)
MADE WITH ACTUAL CARE
• Difficulty is measured in CIELAB ΔE — a perceptual unit — so level 12 is
exactly as hard on a deep blue as it is on a pale yellow. Colour games that
step raw RGB or HSL values quietly make some hues far harder than others. This
one doesn't.
• The odd tile always differs in lightness, never hue alone, so it stays
playable if you're colour blind.
• Every colour is checked to be inside the sRGB gamut before it's shown, so the
gap you're hunting is exactly the gap intended — never a clipped approximation.
• Global leaderboards through Game Center.
QUIETLY RESPECTFUL
• No ads. No accounts. No tracking. No analytics.
• Plays fully offline — leaderboard scores sync whenever you're next online.
Your eye is better than you think. Right up until it isn't.
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What's New in Shade Out
1.1
August 26, 2026
Board styles. Six ways to draw the grid. Three unlock with Journey stars, the rest come with Pro. Colours and spacing never change, so the puzzle stays exactly as hard — only the shapes do. Achievements and stats. Ten Game Center achievements, and a stats screen that tells you the finest colour gap you have ever actually resolved. Sharper sharing. Your score goes out as a rendered card, and every share is now a challenge a friend can take on directly. Polish. A new opening animation, quicker feedback on every tap, and better haptics all the way through. Fixed: "Next level" could hand you the same board twice.
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