Rainbow Hero

This is a review in-progress. I've only completed a quarter of the game so far. In Rainbow Hero you are a gnome who finds his village has had its happy colors stolen by your stereotypically (possible a bit crazy) evil wizard. He has to go on a puzzle-solving quest through a series of magical doors in the forest to find the lost colors. Gnome's special skill is to move platforms telekinetically over distances. The puzzles begin very basically with pushing blocks over buttons that reveal walkable tiles over the emptiness. There are also balls that when pushed will roll all the way to the opposing wall. The tele-transferrable platforms may have restricted directions to where to move. What I didn't see yet are the levels that have several gnomes moving in unison with the base gnome, so unfortunately I can't comment on those. Also I haven't seen the laser puzzles and disappearing tiles puzzles from the trailer yet, having beaten just one world. It appears there are likely to be levels with gnomes moving separately from each other, considering there's a key for changing the controlled character. The puzzles vary from pretty easy to really challenging. Thankfully it's often possible to skip a couple of levels if you just can't beat one and try some other level in the meanwhile. Controls feel somewhat stiff at times but there's a useful rewind key that lets you take the level back as much as you'd want or restart it if you'd like. Maybe a turbo button or a fast-mode would be useful, because when you know what you're doing, the platforms floating about can feel like a long time. Changing focused platform also feels unresponsive because before changing you have to wait for it to completely stop. Unfortunately the controls can't be reconfigured: you can play with a controller or (like I did) with a keyboard (and optionally a supplementary mouse). With keyboard you are limited to moving with the arrow keys, which I personally don't like using. There are not many video options either: you can just change "quality", but not e.g. resolution (which was fine though, seemingly defaulting to my native resolution). Graphics are cartoony and nice enough. While it looks like a kids' game especially considering the story, it's anyway a pretty solid puzzle game suitable for all ages. I paid some 5 € for it, getting it for a small sale (I don't remember the exact amount), for which I've been happy with even if I've only sunk couple of hours in so far. I'll update the review once I've played it a bit more.

I absolutely adored this game. A pure puzzle and logic game where you have to push, pull, and transport yourself and blocks across gaps, holes, etc. Some puzzles are trivial, but most required a bit of thinking, and some are downright demonic! Lovely way to spend time!

The two negative reviews (so far) are [u]not[/u] based on gameplay. This is a beautiful fun game. At times it seemed a bit easy - but never boring, because even the easiest levels were clever, and often I would have 5 or 6 false starts so that when I completed a level I felt I deserved a nice pat on the back. [b]Rainbow Hero[/b] Its a simple block-pushing puzzle game with every 20 levels introducing a new element. I enjoyed it a lot (often telling myself, "okay, just [i]one[/i] more level... then I'll go to bed") over the five days it took me to complete the whole thing. I am a lover of puzzle games, and in my opinion, this game is well worth the few dollars it cost.

This is a nice puzzle game with a variety of game mechanics. It should be rated much higher than it is.

Rainbow Hero is an interesting little puzzle game that is appropriate for all ages. A gray sorceror has stolen all the color from the land and you must solve puzzles to find and restore color to your valley. From simple to challenging puzzles, you will be entertained if you don't mind the art. It's fairly cute, but not really that important. Finishing the game isn't too bad as you don't have to solve every single puzzle, however, if you want the achievements, you will need to spend more time. How does this work? As you solve puzzles, either one or two more puzzles will unlock. Some of the puzzles are fairly easy, some are medium, and some will require quite a bit of time on your part. You can skip puzzles you don't like, and come back tok them later, if you wish. It's not completely linear and that was appreciated. Some puzzles I took one look at and decided that was going to be too much time for the casual mood I was in at that moment. But, definitely offers replayability if you had to skip something. Music is not original, but works with it and you can always play your own soundtrack as sound is not very important in the game. Graphics are just what they need to be for a game like this. The gameplay introduces new mechanics every couple levels, that range from easy to extremely hard. As previously stated, you can skip the harder ones. The mechanics are interesting enough to keep you entertained and you don't feel like you're just doing the same tasks over and over again. Overall: 9/10 - This is two dollars well spent. If you can get it in a bundle, cool, The value is there though for it's base price as it offers several hours of puzzling for you to enjoy.

This game is an absolute steal for $2. It has 100 logic puzzles with plenty of variety, though the basic goal remains the same throughout: get your character(s) to the exit. The gameplay is rather like sokoban. I found it mostly challenging and really satisfying to beat levels that gave me trouble. The graphics are moderately attractive, the highlight being the animated, colorful backgrounds. The music is somewhat repetitive, but I found it tolerable at lower sound settings. The game doesn't require you to beat all the levels to finish it, so if you have difficulty with some of them, you can still continue. I've finished about 80 of the levels, which took me about 7 hours. I'm probably going to go back and try to beat them all.

If you're in the market for solid logic puzzlers with cutesy hand-drawn graphics, then [u]Rainbow Hero[/u] is just the game for you! [u]Rainbow Hero[/u] features an even hundred levels and periodically introduces you to additional puzzle elements. You play as brave young gnome named Sam who has returned to his village to find all the colours have been taken away by an evil wizard from the Graylands! Sam must adventure his way across five colourful worlds, reclaiming the colours as he goes. Most of the puzzling elements revolve around sokoban-style gameplay but there are different elements as well such as light reflection, world rotation, and dual character management (moving two characters simultaneously). For the length of the game and the low price point, I was more than satisfied with the diversity of and use of the variety of puzzle elements. The introduction to these different puzzle elements also makes for some great pacing. On the note of pacing, I was very impressed with how this game lays out the puzzles and manages difficulty. Unlike many games where it feels like every new puzzle is getting more and more difficult to the point where it feels across just a few levels it feels like you spent over an hour looking at the screen, in [u]Rainbow Hero[/u] the difficulty is spread across the entire game. How is this done? There are five sub-worlds, if you will, for each of the five colours you must reclaim, and you essentially play them in order. The first levels of every world are easier where the last few are generally more difficult. That being said, I didn't find even the harder puzzles to be [i]that[/i] difficult, a lot of the seemingly harder puzzles are generally quite easy and just require a different perspective to beat them elogently as opposed to overthinking them and going with the more "straightforward" approach. All in all, the pacing in this game was great and that's important for a puzzle game of this nature. The last thing worth noting is the time reversal feature. This game wants to make you think through solving the puzzles, not punish you for making a wrong move that can't be undone. Thus you can rewind the game as far back as you need to go (it is worth noting you can quick restart as well, if need be). At the end of the day I can't not recommend this game for it's low price point and the amount of content it offers. My playthrough was just under 7 hours. I loved the (seemingly) hand-drawn graphics and just had a blast going through all one hundred levels. I never felt discouraged by any one puzzle being too difficult. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but if you've looked at the screenshots on the store page and were interested enough to make it this far to see my review, then I can confirm that it's a worthwhile purchase and a worthwhile time investment.

PROS: *100 hand-crafted puzzles, many of which are very clever *Forgiving rewind feature *Multiple mechanics to keep the gameplay varied *Generally, completing a puzzle unlocks two more, so the player can abandon puzzles that are too difficult and still make progress *Cheap even at full price NEUTRAL: *The story is standard "restore the world" fare and adds no real value to the game, but it also does no harm *The visuals get the job done, but nothing more CONS: *On the better graphics setting, the game crashed several times, but I found that switching to the poorer graphics eliminated the problem entirely *No difficulty scaling: each world felt about as difficult as the others except for the last chapter, which was very easy *Repetitive music *The game doesn't seem quite long enough for all of the mechanics that it introduces *A few later levels have time limitations that don't quite fit the established pace of the game or impact the gameplay, but this is minor *Walking speed is a bit slow GAME LENGTH: 7-12 hours. I completed every puzzle, earning every achievement, in around 9 hours. Be aware that no guides are available for this game. SCORE: 8/10 At the time of this review, the game was $2 at full price and on sale for $0.66. I wasn't expecting much for that price, but I found myself impressed. This is an excellent puzzler. The gameplay here consists of tile-based movement with movable blocks, rolling balls, buttons that stay active only when constantly pressed, reflecting light beams, ridable tiles that can also be moved remotely, switches that rotate the level, two characters who move at the same time, two characters between whom the player can switch at any time, cloud tiles that disappear after being tread, locked blocks and keys, turn or time limitations, and more. The puzzles are spread out across 5 areas with 20 puzzles each. Every world introduces new mechanics to keep the game fresh. For the player's convenience, there is a rewind feature that can be activated at any time by holding down the R key. Furthermore, completing any level usually unlocks a couple more at a time, so the player can skip puzzles that are too difficult. I found myself stumped for about an hour on one or two puzzles, but they generally only take a few minutes to complete. Even so, I found great satisfaction in figuring out most levels' "trick." My primary complaint with the game is that the difficulty is inconsistent. I was surprised at the difficulty of some of the first world's puzzles and worried that I would be unable to complete later levels (there was no guide at the time of this review), but it turned out that the difficulty remains the same for most of the game. There are usually one or two easy levels when a new mechanic is introduced, but otherwise there was no correlation between difficulty and one's progress through an area. The only exception for me was the final world, which I completed very quickly. (On the other hand, this could be a positive for players who don't want to waste time on easy puzzles leading up to the good ones.) The second biggest problem with the game is that some of the mechanics aren't explored to their full potential because they are so many and the levels are comparatively few. The time limitations on a handful of levels also feel a bit out of place in a game that is generally relaxing. Given the player's rewind ability, it's not clear that they add much difficulty anyway. Still, the variety of mechanics as well as the puzzle design suggest skill and creativity on the developer's part. I would very much like to see a sequel, though I am concerned that the price, number of reviews, and inactive forum indicate poor sales. For the excellence of puzzle design, variety of mechanics, rewind feature, price, and puzzle unlocking system, but also for the absence of difficulty scaling and some poorly explored mechanics, I give this game an 8 out of 10.

Nice little Game, but I can't recomend it for "Offline-Players" because you must be log in to play this Game. Dear Developer: I do change my Review, if you remove this issue.

Good game with nice aesthetics and game mechanics that keeps you engaged.