Pixel Maniacs’ creative director Steve Crouse took to the PlayStation Blog recently to announce that the first-person puzzler, ChromaGun, will be making its way onto the PlayStation 4 starting August 22nd.

The new shooter-puzzle game is described as “Portal, but with colors”. It’s a first-person puzzler no doubt, and the object is to use the colorize ray gun to colorize droids and walls. Droids are attracted to the walls of the same color like magnets or like beta males to feminists. The ChromaGun can only shoot three distinct colors in the form of red, yellow and blue. You can also create new colors by mixing and matching colors after an object has already been painted.

Advancing in the game has nothing to do with portals, though. Crouse attempts to hammer home the point that in ChromaGun the object is to advance by adding and subtracting colors, mixing and matching the different visual attributes in order to progress. It’s still a thinking man’s game, but in a very different way from games like Portal, Q.U.B.E., or Magrunner, and much closer to titles like <i.Antichamber or Colortone.

If you’re unfamiliar with the aforementioned titles, they basically operate on a similar premise of focusing on matching up colors and attempting to utilize the environment to your advantage in order to progress through each level. It’s less reliant on mind-boggling physics and more akin to working through what Crouse describes as “algorithmic” puzzle-solving.

It’s games like this that definitely defy the standard trends of “kill everything in sight to progress”, but despite the prevalence of games like ChromaGun currently on the market or coming to the market, they’re oftentimes ignored by agenda-pushing ideologues like Jonathan McIntosh in order to maintain the prevailing (inaccurate) assessment that there aren’t enough non-violent games on the market.

Anyway, ChromaGun is due for release on the PlayStation 4 via the PlayStation Store on the PlayStation Network starting August 22nd next month.