Rainbow Jail and Misplaced Theme

Rainbow Jail is a great set of game mechanics, a mix of block-breaking and block-moving puzzles, placed in the wrong structure. Breaking the multicolored blocks arranged on each top down screen cause all the blocks of the same color to break if they are exposed or touching. To prevent breaking blocks that would reveal enemies, some blocks can be rearranged to cover up the exposed blocks that one must keep intact.

It is a very clever angle on old puzzle styles, but the structure that the puzzles are placed in isn’t. It is exploratory, which is normally a good thing, but that nature acts more like an impediment to more screens of puzzles to solve. The things that can be found through exploration are largely unnecessary as well. It seemingly has this structure to comply with a game making competition’s theme of “escape”.

Rainbow Jail shows that some games don’t need themes—a set of abstract mechanics applied well can carry a game alone.

[Play Rainbow Jail]