Rain on Your Parade Is Full of Mischievous Fun

Schadenfreude. It’s a fun word. Go on—say it out loud. It’s the word used to describe the satisfaction felt at someone else’s misfortune, and it’s the word Unbound Creations uses to describe Rain on Your Parade. And right they are; it’s schadenfreude in the brightest and cutest way possible. The game is framed as a grandfather telling his grandchild a bedtime story about a cloud that wanted nothing more than to travel to a place where it could rain on anything it wanted. And so, the cloud chose Seattle.

Levels are based around ruining people’s day in one way or another—the first level is raining on a wedding. Most are set around the city or in nearby farms or forests, but there are some whimsical levels, based around the likes of Metal Gear Solid’s Shadow Moses Island, The Office, and the longest level in the game, a Zelda level that has a surprising amount of work put into it for a one-off gag. They make basically no sense in the context of the story, but if you don’t question it they’re a great time.

Unbound Creations

There are 50 levels in which to be mischievous, assisted not only by the power of rain, but also lightning, snow, and tornadoes. Each level has a handful of objectives, like soaking up acid to corrode vehicles, leaving a trail of oil to set the interior of a fireworks warehouse ablaze, or simply raining on a whole bunch of people. Schadenfreude. Much of the humor is genuinely funny, but there are other times it falls a bit flat—there are a lot of “timely” references that may not age well. Characters like the villainous Doctor Dryspell and the elder statesman of the sky Papa Clouds make frequent appearances to help or hinder you; the quirky cast is a great addition.

Rain on Your Parade isn’t a very difficult game—more something to sit back and have some fun with than a genuine challenge, though some optional objectives to get one hundred percent on a level take some thinking. There’s also a new “game plus” mode, where you have all your weather powers from the start and some levels have additional objectives to account for them.

There are a few levels that are real stinkers, in the vein of “score attack” where you have to compete (against yourself?) to get the highest score possible by chaining together destruction. Another, which involves painting with variously colored rain on a blank canvas, is a neat idea, but it seems like there could have been a genuine level in its place and the painter relegated to an extra feature.

Unbound Creations

The art style is lots of fun—buildings are blocky, humans look like they’re made out of yarn, and the cloud is a piece of cardboard suspended by some string, all straight out a children’s story.

This game reminds me of Katamari Damacy—outwardly colorful and cute, but when you get down to it, the gameplay is based around the main character being a menace to society. Fifty levels are nice bite-sized pieces, taking about fours hours to complete in total. Looking just at the screenshots, it’s the type of game that could easily be passed over in a sea of colorful indie games, which would be a shame. Rain on Your Parade is funny and absurd, and a great mix of puzzle and adventure you’ll thoroughly enjoy your time with.

Rain on Your Parade is available on PC, MacOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.