Even though I had just played a platformer, I was in the mood to play something on my Wii U and decided to finally try out Runbow, which has been sitting on my Wii U since I bought it in the Nintendo Humble bundle a year ago. I probably had heard it mentioned recently since the version for New 3DS was released just a couple of weeks ago.
Anyway, I hadn't played the game at all, but I found it to be pretty enjoyable overall. The game's mechanics are unique and easy to understand: the background changes colors periodically, and when it does all the elements on the stage that are the same color (namely walls and platforms) effectively disappear. The game explores every variant of this premise in worthwhile ways, although even with the smart level design after a while there does get to be a sort of sameness to the proceedings. There's a single player adventure mode, and you can earn up to three medals in every stage, and there's also a difficult marathon mode where you have to beat many challenging stages in a row and you can't save. It seems half of the game's focus is on the multiplayer versus modes, of which I was only able to try them for a bit as it seems like finding people to play with online has become a crapshoot. I wasn't interested in them much anyway, but it might have been nice to have had more AI-enabled versions of these modes.
Although I wasn't a huge fan of the art design, in general the presentation is pretty good. There are two main characters (one male and one female), and you can unlock a host of costumes for them, and there are also a ton of indie guest characters, such as Rusty from Steamworld Dig. The music is really noteworthy, though, as it's energizing and dips into many genres, such as jazz and surf rock. The one design choice that I found really questionable was the taunts the game displays on the screens after you die (e.g. "You tried that already") which don't serve any purpose other than to be extremely irritating.
All in all this is worth a look for fans of platformers, although more story, characters, and unique settings and game mechanics on top of the core background color-changing mechanics would have helped me stay more engaged with it. I can see myself trying out the multiplayer with friends or finishing off a few more of the story missions, but this definitely isn't a game that I feel compelled to 100% complete or get the DLC of.
Run the rainbow with these Runbow links:
- Official website for the game
- The soundtrack is available on Bandcamp
- Review at NintendoLife
- Entry at Wikipedia