The colors aren't necessary to play the game. It's a pencil and paper game that I played decades ago, so gray is the original state. 
A completed row or column is a completed row or column. The person who completes the row gets all of those points. The game is similar to Tic-Tac-Toe. Even if X or O were in different colors — or not — it's still the same.
Interesting! 
While I haven't upgraded to macOS 26, I am running the latest version of Safari. The game seems to work.
Are you blocking cookies? The game uses local storage to remember your settings. “Use Colors” is one of those settings.
- “chatty” is an on or off setting for enabling the speech.
- “colors” is the on or off setting for colored circles. Zero is gray.
- “sv” is the speech volume.
I think “sv” is also a sound volume setting that might be used with other Photics games, so I might have to revisit those values. I didn't realize that I might need a prefix for some values.
It's been some years since this game was updated. The game section of my website is still in the early stages. I'm waiting to see what happens with Hype 5, especially since Physics can be improved.
…and since this is a conversation about particles, I was recently thinking about redoing the particle effects, try to make it more efficient. But again, I've been saving that project for Hype 5.