Indie Wednesdays: Rainbow Rapture

I can’t think of a word that better suits Rainbow Rapture than inoffensive. At best, it’s a simple flash-like game to kill a few minutes with. At worst…It’s a simple flash-like game to kill a few minutes with. There doesn’t seem to be an effective middle ground, but that’s okay. It’s not a game anyone will get totally sucked into for a long time, but that doesn’t make it bad. It’s just basic, cute, inoffensive, and maybe, just maybe, worth a quick look.

Playing as Rainbow, a demented and humanity hating rainbow, your goal is to create as much mayhem as possible, from eating a multitude of people to obliterating oil trucks. Accompanied by the soothing tunes of a cutesy soundtrack, Rainbow pile drives over conveniently placed civilians who have gathered on or around hill tops. By strategically pressing the A button, you’ll be ramping off hills and smashing your rainbowy face into the ground all in the name of destruction. Hitting the ground too hard or inefficiently using the A button causes your rainbow too drain, and once it’s all gone, it’s game over.

Smashing vehicles grants you brief powerups such as speed boosts or enhanced people-eating-power (or PEP!). However, the powerups are so short lived, they feel totally insignificant and you’re probably better off skipping them than risking a hard crash into the ground.

Challenges are offered to the player, but they’re usually easy as hell and won’t take more than a few tries to master. Still, there’s an abundance of challenges available to keep the perfectionists busy for a while.

The main problem with the game is the way it handles the chaos. Everything feels like it was done in an oddly mild fashion. For example, the murder of thousands of people is met with what sounds to be a handful of children having a semi-excited conversation. Vehicle explosions are nothing more than an ephemeral pop, that of which is mostly drowned out  by the upbeat music. Don’t get me wrong, though; I’m certainly not complaining about the soundtrack. It’s got a unique, nursery rhyme-esque groove to it, giving the game a cute and happy feel, which is all the more twisted when you realize that you’re really just killing a couple thousand people.

Most important of all, Rainbow Rapture feels odd on the Xbox 360. It would fit right at home among games like Angry Birds and the sort on the Apple and Android app stores, mostly because it’s a game to play for a few minutes, not a large chunk of time. I’m happy that Kindling Games was able to get there game out there in the first place, it just feels out of place on its current platform.

It feels really weird, and almost unfair, to give Rainbow Rapture a regular score. It’s a pretty decent game for what it is, but it still has a hard time making it past that whole “inoffensive” mark. I’m not going to demand that everyone go out and play it, but for 80 Microsoft points, it’s quite the deal. Maybe go give it a try…I guess…

Mild Recommendation out of 10.

Go check out some of the Kindling Games other twisted creations at http://kindling-games.com/!