It's important for games to provide us with what we're missing, and as we head into the sad, grey, dreary winter months here in North America, a game like Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan can provide a much-needed blast of bright colors to get us through.
But it's not just color that Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan provides. As Manavoid Entertainment CEO Chris Chancey describes it, “Rainbow Billy is a hopepunk, universal coming-of-age story that explores relatable themes like empathy, compassion, inclusion, and self-identity."
In case you’ve never heard the term, “hopepunk” is basically the exact opposite of grimdark. Where Warhammer 40K imagines a world full of evil where humanity is doomed to eventually succumb to the awful void, hopepunk games restore your faith in the essential goodness of humanity and that everything is going to be okay.
In Rainbow Billy, you play the titular Rainbow Billy, a fisherman who is just out fishing when the evil Leviathan casts a spell to drain the World of Imagination's color. Billy then sets out with his magic fishing rod, Rodrigo, and his rainbow-powered fishing boat to restore color to the world in a completely non-violent and empathetic way.
Combat in Rainbow Billy is less about forcefully imposing your opinions and more about dialogue with a cantankerous creature. In the game, this appears as a sort of pong-style minigame where you have to hit specific symbols in the right order to make your arguments. Defeating the creature means it joins your team to help you save other creatures and restore the world's color.
There are 60 creatures to collect, which span the gamut from cats and dogs to walruses with captain's hats and anteaters with unicorn horns and long, fluffy tails. The art style is full of vibrant 2D cartoons prancing through a 3D world, with biomes ranging from cold tundras to jungled forests.
Puzzles, platforming, and creature collecting await in Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan, now available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.