Yes, you can print a game in black and white when its rules depend on colors, as long as the page names each color in words. The Bomb Appétit manual does: every color in a rule is written out in bold beside a small swatch, so a grey printout reads exactly like the screen.
Why a game printed in black and white can still name colors
A rule printed in black and white still works when the color is a word, not just a patch of ink. "Cut the last blue wire" reads the same in grey as in color. The bomb manual writes every color in words, so the swatch beside it is a helper rather than the rule itself.
The manual's code makes this a fixed design choice. Each color in a rule appears as a small round swatch followed by the color's name in bold lowercase, like red or yellow. Even if the swatch prints as a grey dot, the word beside it carries the meaning.
The bomb works the same way from the other side. The colors on module faces each carry a letter too, so a face never relies on color alone. That helps players who see colors differently as well as anyone holding a grey printout. Six colors appear across the modules: red, blue, yellow, green, white and black.
The rest of the manual's print layout supports grey printing. When you print, the page swaps its screen colors for black text and lines on white. Tables get solid black borders. Nothing in the layout depends on a tinted background to be readable. The Defuser can still say "the wire is blue", and the Expert finds the word "blue" on the page.
Which manual pages mention colors in a black and white print?
Four module pages carry colors as part of their rules: Wires, Wire Panels, Big Button and Color Echo. Each prints color names in bold beside a swatch. Tangled Wires also names red, blue and striped wires in plain words. Every other page reads with no color at all.
Here is what a black and white printout shows on each of the four color pages, and what to check before play:
- Wires. Wire colors are red, blue, yellow, white and black. The lists by wire count print each color as a word in its if-lines, such as a line about the last wire's color. Check that the bold color words are dark and readable in every list.
- Wire Panels. The wires are red, blue or black. The table's column headings are the three color words with swatches. Check that each heading prints clearly, since the whole table hangs on picking the right column.
- Big Button. The button can be red, blue, yellow, white or green, and a held button lights a colored strip. Both the rule list and the strip table print the colors as words. Check the strip table's left column, which is all color words.
- Color Echo. Four pads, red, blue, green and yellow. Its tables are almost entirely color words: the pad that flashes in the first column and the pad to press in the others. Check every cell, since a faint cell here costs a strike.
The rules inside these pages depend on the manual's rule seed, so a different seed gives different lines. The layout of colors as words stays the same on every seed. For how each module page is built, see how a module page in the manual is laid out, or the full guide to how the bomb game manual is organized.
Do color swatches need the background graphics setting?
No. The color words carry the rules, so the swatches are optional. The manual's stylesheet asks the browser to keep swatch colors when printing, but a browser may still drop them. Switch on the background option in your print window if you want the swatch dots guaranteed.
Browsers often leave background colors and images out of a printout to save ink. A page can ask for its colors to be kept using a CSS property called print-color-adjust, and the manual does this for its swatches. The MDN reference for print-color-adjust is clear that this is a request, not a promise: options the browser gives the user take priority, and each browser decides how to handle it.
That is where the print window's background option comes in. Microsoft's Print in Microsoft Edge page describes a Background graphics checkbox under More settings that includes the page background in the printout. Mozilla's Firefox printing help lists a similar switch, Print backgrounds, under its own More settings, and notes it is unavailable when the Simplified format is chosen. The guide to where the browser print settings are in each browser has a table for the rest of the window.
On a grey printer, the setting changes little. The swatches come out as grey dots either way, and the word beside each one does the work.
When a black and white printout is not enough: faint toner
A black and white printout fails when the toner runs low and the bold color words fade. A faded "red" next to a faded swatch is a guess, and a guess on Color Echo or Wire Panels is a strike. Check the four color pages first, and reprint any that look pale.
Faint print hits the color pages hardest because their tables are dense. A missing word in a Color Echo cell leaves an Expert unsure which pad to call. Ordinary text pages forgive a little fade because the sentence around a weak word fills the gap.
A quick test after printing:
- Hold the Color Echo page at arm's length and read every cell aloud.
- Do the same with the Wire Panels column headings.
- Look at the Big Button strip table.
- Skim the Wires lists for any color word that looks broken.
If any of those fail, reprint just those pages once the toner is replaced. The other pages can stay. A group keeping a manual for many nights can slip the color pages into sleeves; the guide to a game manual binder with tabs and sleeves suggests which pages earn one, and laminating game pages for a printed manual weighs the cost of a sleeve against a reprint. The standard manual is the place to print from.