Yes, I have fallen prey to the hypnosis of color-by-number apps. While I realize there are probably several options along this vein, I’m going to be talking about the one I use, aptly titled Pixel Art.
The basic concept seems fairly self-explanatory — an image is divided into squares, numbered by color, and you fill it in accordingly. You don’t have to use the colors in order, or all of one color at once… in fact, it’s often easiest to start with the highest numbers, as they tend to be the least prevalent. When you select a color on the number bar, it shows how much of that color you’ve completed so far, and marks all pixels of that color with a dark grey to set them apart from the blank white of other unfilled cells. You can choose between tapping these individually to color them, or dragging your finger across several, which is quicker but risks hitting other numbers, too. If that happens the pixel will remain a paler version of that color (number still visible) until you hit it with the correct one. The page of the palette before colors 1-10 has two “Boosters”: the Color Wand, which colors multiple neighboring cells of the same color with one tap, and Color Splash, which colors everything in a set radius with one tap, regardless of color. Honestly, though, I don’t really see the point in those.
There are a couple different menus, all comprehensively organized. First there’s the main one, at the bottom of the page, sorted into Library, Daily, My Works, and Create. Yes, there’s an option to create art for this — don’t ask me how that works, I’ve never done it. Daily is fairly self-explanatory: there’s a new image there every day, like an all-year advent calendar of coloring. My Works has a second menu near the top, split into, again, “My Works,” which shows everything you’ve colored at least one pixel on, and “In Progress,” which shows only the images you haven’t completed yet. As you can imagine, In Progress is super useful for when you’ve got multiple pictures going on at once, especially the more detailed ones that can take a while to complete.
The most complicated tab is Library, which has a 4-tab menu of its own. First off, Event. Currently, there’s a “Desert World” event going on. What the event is changes regularly, but they each have thematically appropriate art, and the more of those you complete by the end of the event, the more rewards you get, including Bonus images, which is the third tab from the left — pretty much, the more event art you complete, the more bonus ones you collect. The tab between those is New, which is also fairly self-explanatory. New art appears at the top of the page, and the more you scroll down, the older the stuff you’re looking at. It’s worth noting that a lot of times, these are added in clusters, hence why my screenshot has four images pertaining to Japan all completed around the same time.
The fourth and final tab in Library is Books, which, like how In Progress acts as a filter for My Works, is effectively a subset of New. These are collections of 8 images each, bound together by a category, be it Landscapes, Comfortable Clothes, or even just “Orange Color.” You unlock each next row of the collection as you work, going through seven easier images and ending on a full one. I won’t say photorealistic, necessarily, because sometimes full pictures are intricate patterns instead, but rather than being a cutout of some concept within a given space, full images take up the entire square.
Both books and individual art are sometimes locked, and while you can buy premium, you can also just watch an ad to unlock them.
