How to play ToonTone Guess
ToonTone Guess is a free browser color perception game. You see a national animal, drag HSB sliders until your color matches, and get scored on perceptual accuracy. This page covers the full rules, the scoring formula, and tips to push your average above 90.
The full loop
- 1
Open ToonTone Guess
Go to toontone-guess.com/tune. No signup, no download, no plugin. Runs in any modern browser.
- 2
A national animal appears
Each round shows one national animal — country flag, name, and a cartoon illustration. You study its fur, feathers, or scales. What color is it, really?
- 3
Drag HSB sliders
You don't type hex codes. Adjust Hue, Saturation, and Brightness until the swatch on the right matches what you see. The hex value updates live as you drag.
- 4
Submit your guess
Press the submit button. ToonTone Guess compares your guess to the target in CIELAB color space using ΔE (CIE76). The closer you got, the higher your score — 0 to 100.
- 5
Play 5 rounds, then share
Each run is 5 rounds. Your total goes to localStorage and shows up in the daily ToonTone streak. Hit share to post a card with your score and the day's animals.
The scoring formula
ToonTone Guess scores each round 0–100 based on perceptual color distance (ΔE in CIELAB). The score curve is a piecewise linear map — small ΔE gets nearly-full marks, large ΔE drops sharply:
A full 5-round run caps at 500. Designers and colorists typically climb to a 400+ average within a week of casual play.
5 tips to score higher
- Set hue first. If your guess feels in the wrong color family, fix hue before chasing saturation or brightness. Most wrong guesses come from being one family off, not one shade off.
- Saturation shapes the mood. Two colors can have the same hue and look wildly different. If your guess is "almost right but feels wrong", saturation is usually the culprit.
- Brightness seals the match. The eye is more sensitive to brightness than to hue or saturation. Lock brightness last, and trust it.
- Calibrate your screen. Turn off night mode and any color filters before playing. iOS True Tone and Android adaptive color shift what you see by 10–20 ΔE points — that alone is a 15-point score swing.
- Treat ΔE as a hint, not a verdict. After submitting, look at the original color, not your score. The number tells you the math; your eye tells you what to fix next.