Rainbow

In Rainbow, you direct light from the villainous D.D.'s Rainbow Ray through tricky levels in an effort to bring unwanted happiness and excitement to the inhabitants of a gray and mundane island.

While Rainbow's control mechanics are simple, crafty levels and puzzling hazards will test your reflexes and reasoning. Badges for keeping a finger on the screen, conserving frequency bands, and getting collectible stars add to the challenge.

Features, in cliché bullet-point style:

steer rainbows through 30+ levels
puzzling obstacles
clean, minimal art style
badges for added challenge
plot, including nearly seven* lines of dialog
level editor

(* actually six)

Rainbow was released for iOS (via Apple's App Store) and Android (via Google Play) on January 15th, 2014. A desktop version may or may not materialize -- multi-touch makes this game more fun.

Screenshots

Video

Reviews/Awards

#1 in Innovation, Ludum Dare #25
"Cute, original, and challenging, TCHOW Rainbow is definitely worth a look" / Bronze Award, Pocket Gamer
"特别的画面，不一般的玩法就是这么一款有些治愈效果的益智游戏。" / 8.1 {优秀}, iapps.im.

Troubleshooting

If you are having problems with the iOS or Android versions of Rainbow, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Common questions:

How do I reset my progress? Hold down the show-badges button (lower left in the world view), then hold down the button that appears in the lower right.

What do these badges mean? From left to right: hold down your finger, get all the stars, don't crash too many frequency bands.

History

Rainbow began life as a HTML5/javascript/webgl game (my first ever foray into Javascript+WebGL, in fact) made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare #25 ("You Are The Villain"). It was rated first place in the Innovation category and tied for 10th place in the Overall category. It has since been completely reimplemented in C++ and expanded with new mechanics.

However, if you'd like a taste of the core gameplay, you can still try the (old) prototype version online or download the (old) prototype version.

I also wrote a series of posts about the creation of said prototype. The first is here.