Why aren’t you playing Runbow? – An Ubernerd Article

This year I continue to enjoy my usual first and third party video games with titles like: Pokémon, Zelda, Mario, Uncharted, and Batman: Arkham Knight. New to my radar however this year has been indie games. These include games like Shantae, Shovel Knight, Song of the Sea, Freedom Planet, and Mighty Switch Force just to name a few. I have found that I am just as excited for these games as I am for my usual Nintendo, Sony, EA, etc games. The main reason that I am enthusiastic is because these games remind me fondly of games that I used to play when I was a kid but give me a new experience. For example Freedom Planet reminds me of my long hours trying to master Sonic the Hedgehog but still has a learning curve all its own. I find myself now looking for indie games that fill that nostalgic need through social media and word of mouth. In that search for the next exciting indie game I came across a game that I had heard of for a while and decided to give it a chance. The game I found was called Runbow and it made exclusively for the WiiU. So if you have a WiiU my question is: Why aren’t you playing Runbow?

Runbow is made by a Canadian indie game company called 13AM Games and came out for the WiiU here in American on August 27, 2015 in the Nintendo E-Shop. The best way I can describe this game is that it’s a mash up of Super Smash Bros mixed with classic video game platforming. The biggest feature of Runbow is that unlike any other game on the WiiU you can play up to 9 players at a time which leads to all sorts of chaos on the screen. On top of that the biggest quirk of the game is that the backgrounds change color and if one platforms matches that color it will disappear, leaving you with either an advantage or a complication during your run. Runbow also features several satisfying modes such as King of the hill (plays like it sounds), an arena mode (for the Smash Bros lover in you), an online playable mode, two story modes Classic and the newest addition Satura’s Space Adventure, the very fun Color Master mode (one play tries to stop the others from getting to the end using the touchscreen controller), and the super hard and frustrating Bowhemoth mode. There is lots of stuff to do and unlock and the best part is that you can do it with friends or do it on your own. Although I will have to admit that this game is more fun with friends I did enjoy playing it on my own. One of the best parts of the game itself are the unlockable guest characters that are playable. Similar to Super Smash Bros. you can unlock some of the most popular indie game characters through doing various things. Some of the characters included are Shovel Knight from Shovel Knight, CommanderVideo from the Bit.Trip series, and Rusty from Steam World Dig.  Also included as DLC for the game are Lilac from Freedom Planet and Shantae from Shantae Half Genie Hero. There is another feature that I would be remiss if I also didn’t mention it and that would be the kill screens that you get every time you die. While playing a platformer I would usually get irritated playing the same level over and over again till finally conquer the level. Runbow would kind of calm me down with the kill screen because the game would make fun of you with comments like: “maybe you should play Oregon Trail” or “your other right” or “maybe the sun was in your eyes” These comments would actually make me laugh so much that I would forget that I am actually angry that I died for the hundredth time today.

So if you have a WiiU and you are looking to fill the time between now and when the Nintendo Switch comes out I would highly recommend purchasing a copy. The best part is that you can both go on the Nintendo E-Shop and purchase it digitally or you and buy the hard copy with all of the DLC included and a copy of the amazing soundtrack. Also next year Runbow is coming to the Nintendo 3DS so we’ll be able to Runbow on the go! For more information on Runbow go to http://www.13amgames.com/readytorunbow/ or check it out for yourself on YouTube.

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