Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan is a role-play adventure where you save the world from colourless darkness. Unusually, battles are won through listening and conversation rather than traditional attacks. It combines the excitement and strategy of Paper Mario with a clever focus on personality foibles, empathy and growth in a deeply insightful game that doesn't feel educational (but is).
Item 1 of 3
Play involves running and jumping around to explore the world, find treasure, hop from island to island in your boat and fish for eclectic items to help power up your friends. When you encounter one of the 60 colourless creatures, a battle ensues to help set them free from their blinkered view of themselves, other people and the world. You build a team of whimsical creatures by helping them come to terms with who they are and the personalities they have put on to cope with the world: anger, fear, pride, strength and even manliness.
Along with the listening and talking aspects of these encounters, you call on your team of friends to send over shapes that match what you know about this new creature's personality. This pattern matching is joined by simple Rock Band (rhythm), Arkanoid (bat and ball) and Asteroids (dodge the discs) challenges to get each set of shapes to hit their target.
It's child-friendly but has surprisingly deep writing. The conversations that ensue during each battle are crucial to how things play out but are also engaging (and painfully honest) therapy sessions. Although there is whimsy aplenty, it avoids feeling overly woke by not easily ducking emotions and not quickly moving beyond personality hang-ups.
As the developer puts it, "Rainbow Billy tells a universal coming-of-age story about dealing with changes in the world and accepting ourselves and the others around us. Sometimes it only takes a conversation, empathy, and a new point of view to make a world of a difference."
