Low-degree functions without non-essential arguments

For the Hamming graph $H(n,q)$, where a $q$ is a constant prime power and $n$ grows, we construct perfect colorings without non-essential arguments such that $n$ depends exponentially on the off-diagonal part of the quotient matrix. In particular, we construct unbalanced Boolean ($q=2$) functions such that the number of essential arguments depends exponentially on the degree of the function.