Kitty Rainbow

Genre: Platformer / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Kitty Rainbow is an Arcade-style Platformer released in 2020 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023, and has players taking the role of an anthropomorphic cat using rainbows to take out enemies and climb up a vertical series of platforms. If this premise sounds familiar to you, that’s because this game is a pretty blatant copycat of the classic Bubble Bobble sequel, Rainbow Islands. However, as I often say, it’s okay to be a copycat as long as you’re a good copycat, so the question is whether this is a good copycat.

To be fair, the core gameplay in Kitty Rainbow is similar, but not exactly the same as Taito’s game. You create rainbows that can be used as temporary platforms or attack enemies, and you can also collapse them to fall on top of enemies. However, where Rainbow Islands did so by having you jump on them without holding the jump button, Kitty Rainbow seems to have you do so by… jumping underneath them? It doesn’t quite make sense, and doesn’t work as well mechanically.

Another change for the worse here is the way the camera moves with your character, which can cut off one side of the level when you’re over toward the other side. This is particularly disastrous when you walk through a teleport from one side to the other, only to walk straight into an enemy, ending your run.

Ah yes, on that point, Kitty Rainbow has players collecting power-ups at the end of each level during a run, and players can even opt to play randomized levels, making this something of a Roguelike game. However, most power-ups don’t feel all that substantial, nor do the randomized levels.

However, I skipped possibly the worst design choice here – tying the jump button to only the up input on the D-Pad and giving players no ability to change the button assignments in the options. This choice single-handedly makes this game control far worse than it needed to.

When it comes to the presentation, Kitty Rainbow does look appropriately colorful, with 2D visuals that, while not visually appealing, mostly work. I say “mostly” because some enemies blend in with the levels and power-ups, making it easy to miss one, get hit, and ruin your run. I suppose there is a silver lining to this cloud in that the house/techno-style soundtrack, while not especially suited to the gameplay, is still decent.

In the end, while I do give Kitty Rainbow for trying things different with its Roguelike-esque elements, this copycat of Rainbow Islands controls poorly, has mechanics that are poorly-crafted or poorly-conceived, and presentation elements that cause problems too. I’m not sure there was much demand for a game directly copying from Rainbow Islands of all things, but even if there was, this game would still disappoint those who demanded it.

tl;dr – Kitty Rainbow is an Arcade-style Platformer that is clearly copying the gameplay of the classic game Rainbow Islands, but it does so extremely poorly, with bad controls, some poorly-conceived gameplay elements, and a presentation that can make important gameplay elements harder to see. Even fans of Rainbow Islands probably shouldn’t bother with this.

Grade: D+

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