Look, I’m all about fanciful flights and delightful characters doing fun things in order to accomplish a goal that seems otherworldly. If you were alive in the 80s in you lived through one of the Care-Bears movies, you know that whimsy and crushing depression can go hand in hand. The important part is for it to matter at the end of the day, in one form or another. Fiz and the Rainbow Planet, a colorful pixel platformer with some surprisingly competent design, has plenty of interesting aspects and some decent replay value. But the core tenet of it all doesn’t feel like it’s necessarily catering towards a child-friendly audience. Rather, there’s something just below the surface that feels…weird.

The setup is generic but acceptable enough. Fiz is a dragon, because why not, and suddenly there’s this risk that all the color of his Rainbow Planet will be sucked away. In order to prevent this, Fiz needs to find the other dragons who represent colors and elements, band together into a big group, and, eventually, go to the moon to fight against whatever is sucking up the color. If you’ve experienced a single children’s television show that was gearing youth up for dramatic storytelling (looking at you, Pirates of Dark Water), then you get the gist of what’s happening. Fiz and company can use their different powers to combat evil, provide friendship, and have some slightly awkward dialogue that doesn’t matter because grammar isn’t important when it comes to saving the world.

For players looking for a pleasant and simple retro experience, Fiz and the Rainbow Planet has a lot to enjoy. Each of the worlds has three stages, culminating in a boss fight that wraps up the level nicely. There isn’t a ton to explore in terms of ferreting out secret collectibles, but different paths within the 2D levels can lead to additional coins that can give you extra lives. Enemies have Mario rules applied to them, meaning you can bounce on their heads as well as use the different attacks Fiz and company provide. Players who are intrepid and want to get this whole thing over with as fast as possible can easily knock out the main story in under two hours, front to back, with minimal retries for some of the later stages, which do get tricky.

There are some pretty good design choices from the developer right from the very beginning. Fiz, being the main lead, is the most well-rounded of the characters you experience. He’s got a melee and ranged attack, can survive in almost all biomes, and has a good balance in his jump and movement speeds. Each dragon has their own strengths and weaknesses, including long-range attacks, double jumps, floating, power swimming, and a grappling hook-like attack and traversal that honestly was a pain in the butt the first time I tried it. Ergo, being able to circle back to Fiz to reset your expectations and have a more pleasant time was essential.

The level designs also incorporate some important concepts. As I mentioned with biomes, not everything is copasetic for all the characters. The fire dragon character and the earth dragon character cannot pop into the water levels as long as there’s so much as a puddle to touch. But the water dragon is no good in the poison lake levels; that’s the duty for yet another dragon. The levels often need the individual dragon’s supercharged attacks in order to be completed as well. The earth dragon can do this sort of ultra drilling maneuver, which is crucial for passing stone walls in an autoscrolling stage. The forest dragon has a bow and arrow that can hit triggers in the 3D wraparound stages. You get the picture.

Fiz and the Rainbow Planet is also shockingly clever in having characters work together. There are some places where thinking outside the box nets you bigger victories, like realizing you can use Fiz and Leafur together to knock some enemies out of the sky, even though the pink dragon’s talent might be best. Making fast calls on whether you should try to tunnel upwards or just double jump your way through some scattered platforms. Or, in a very infamous boss fight, lowering the water level to freeze a shark boss, then quickly (and carefully) burning away some protective vines to cause the boss to essentially defeat itself. I can’t lie, I felt pretty smug once I pieced that together and was successful in what was becoming an arduous battle.

Once you roll credits (and you will, with just a little patience),  you do have the option to do Extra Mode, where challenges are higher and a bit more story comes out. There are also a couple of minigames. The fishing minigame and the target shooting game are…fine. They’re not particularly fun, they’re not exceedingly engaging, and I can’t really see any benefit to getting better at them.  But it’s a good excuse to keep showing off the pixel art design on this game, which is good. There’s clearly a lot of love that went into the crafting of the sprites and the levels, as well as the animations, so making sure nothing ends up on the cutting room floor is probably a good thing. Then again, maybe cutting or altering a couple of things could have been better for the after-effect of the game.

For reasons that didn’t escape my notice but did escape my understanding, you have multiple monsters that eat you throughout the game. Alright, no problem, that’s kind of a thing when it comes to having more animalistic/monstrous baddies within a title. This is, after all, a fantasy game with wild mobs, so probably a couple of them will be hungry. But choices had to be made as to how the characters would then be attacked and the animations therein. In my mind, it probably was very simple to have the enemies swallow you and spit you back out, or just swallow you, and maybe you disappear, and that’s the end of a life. Either would have been fine and acceptable in terms of execution for the game.

But there’s this attention to detail when it comes to being swallowed by one monster in particular, in which you’re now inside a clear stomach, and it’s a bit…much.  For most players, they won’t think twice; they might comment that it’s cool or gross, and that’s the end of it. Yet someone put in a lot of effort and time to make it so you can get eaten, you can see yourself get eaten, and then you struggle and verbally protest to get released. That felt…odd. It’s so hard to specifically call out something as being intentional or incidental when you don’t know what the developer’s own thoughts or predilections can be. You’ve already got a title with anthropomorphic dragons as the main characters, and that clearly caters towards a certain audience. Could there be another audience in mind as well? Or have I spent too much time online?

Overall, with that one odd exception, Fiz and the Rainbow Planet is a great example of a snack video game that’ll be a fun jaunt for fans of pixel art and platformers. The cohesion is solid, I enjoyed how the characters interacted, and nothing particularly crazy happened with play or controls. Frankly, that’s fine, and the developer, Yoshi3110, should be proud of this creation. For someone out there, this’ll be a hidden gem they bring up every so often to showcase their eclectic game taste. For others, this might awaken something in them, and that’s going to be a whole journey. As for me, I’ll be shelving Fiz and getting back to my regular bread and butter. It was a good experience, but it simply wasn’t my taste.

 

Graphics: 7.0 Chunky pixels make for great retro designs for characters and levels. Some areas get a little muddy, but nothing that makes the game unplayable. A lot of detail is given to the portraits, sometimes a bit much.	Gameplay: 6.0 Interesting synergy between characters in order to complete goals and levels. Some abilities are overpowered, like being able to heal at any point. Environmental damage can be unforgiving: electric hazards COOK the water dragon.
Sound: 3.0 Exceedingly forgettable. While it wasn’t bad or offensive, I sat here, twenty minutes after playing, struggling to remember if it was chiptune, orchestral, or otherwise. I’m sure some work and love when into the soundscape, but I couldn’t hum a few bars with a gun to my head.	Fun Factor: 6.5 There are some creative ideas that kept me going, and the game was honestly landing much higher before the later stages made me feel weird. The last level/boss fight was well crafted. Extra mode has some spice to it so well done. It’s a perfect afternoon title, plain and simple.
Final Verdict: 6.0

Fiz and the Rainbow Planet is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Fiz and the Rainbow Planet was provided by the publisher.