Rain on Your Parade Review

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Fast Facts

Rain on Your Parade

Developer: Unbound Creations
Publisher: Unbound Creations
Website: http://unboundcreations.com/games/rain-on-your-parade/
Genre: Action, Adventure, Arcade, Puzzler, Sandbox
Platform: Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S (Also available on PC and Nintendo Switch)
Age Rating: PEGI 7
Release Date: 15/04/2021
Price: £11.99

A code was provided for review purposes.

Introduction

Rain on Your Parade is the weather-based equivalent of Untitled Goose Game. You play as a mischievous cloud – aptly named “Cloudy” – whose goal is to annoy anyone and everyone who happens to be standing under them. If you think raining on people is a little dull, when you add in thunder, snow, and copious amounts of acid, petrol, fire, and even a little “Tactical Espionage Action” then Rain on Your Parade brings a whole new meaning to “cloud-based gaming”. Due to this being a joint review between two reviewers (Georgina & Rob) the different text colour will highlight whose thoughts are whose (Rob=Red, Georgina=Black).

You can choose to play using Cloudy’s default look, or else customise him with a new face and cosmetic items earned through the completion of the 50+ levels. Each level you complete has a piece of attire associated with it that you can earn by completing all of the associated challenges. If you’re a completionist, you best buckle in, as some of these challenges – particularly in New Game+ – are pretty tricky. You’ll need to be wearing a thinking cap of your own for some of those puzzles.

Gameplay

Rain on Your Parade features a simple style of gameplay overall, seeing you roam around the environment whilst performing different numbers of challenges per level. These challenges range from “classic” cloud-based action, such as wrecking a wedding by raining all over the attendees, to the more elaborate like starring in a wacky version of The Office. What’s more interesting is that Cloudy also has a slight murderous side, as you’ll often be tasked with throwing people off of cliff tops, or even burning down a warehouse.

There is an overarching narrative to Cloudy’s adventures, told by a grandfather to both their young grandson and the player. As it turns out, Cloudy not only has chaos to cause, but also the evil Dr. Dryspell to thwart, who wants to stop rainfall for good. As such, some of the levels take on a more serious note, with Cloudy having to escape dangerous lasers, cannons and city-destroying robots. It’s up to Cloudy to save the day and preserve cloud-kind forever – so no pressure. In some cases, you’ll need to be quite creative in how to approach these boss levels, as the paths forward are not always obvious, and there are dangers round every corner.

Controls & Layout

Controlling Cloudy is simple, with directional inputs controlling movement, and A B X Y controlling rain, thunder, snow and wind respectively. This makes Rain on Your Parade a simple game to pick up and play, as there are no complex controls to remember. It also makes the game highly accessible, and easy for players of all ages to grasp. The biggest challenges when it comes to Cloudy are precision when using abilities, as well as the slow movement speed. The two together can often be a recipe for disaster in the high-stakes levels; particularly in some of the New Game+ challenges where you must not get hit, it feels almost impossible to complete them. This does pose a problem for any achievement hunters out there who may want to 100% the game, so beware.

There were two aspects of the UI and layout in Rain on Your Parade that posed problems during gameplay. The first was the positioning of the “exit” and “retry” buttons in the post-level screen, and the camera orientation during levels. The “exit” button being on the left and the “retry” button on the right felt very unintuitive and uncomfortable. I found myself hitting “retry” instead of moving on by virtue of the button being on the right, which is where I’d expect the “next” or “exit” button to be. Similar frustration was caused by the camera angles and positioning in levels, which made their completion difficult at times. I didn’t feel able to see what I needed to, and Cloudy often obscured obstacles I needed visibility on. Switching the buttons around, as well as being able to move the camera myself, would have done a lot to improve the experience.

Xbox Series X Thoughts

My experience of Rain on Your Parade was on the Xbox Series X. While the title isn’t ‘Series X|S Enhanced’ it still performed at a relatively stable pace. The only real issue that I experienced was the odd bit of screen tear here and there. However, this was only noticeable during the more hectic scenes.

Conclusion

On the whole, Rain on Your Parade is a fun, quirky little game which can be enjoyed either in short bursts or longer stints as desired. It has variety both in terms of its levels and gameplay mechanics, and its bright graphics and bouncy music mean it’s certainly got charm. Even if some of the jokes are cringeworthy, and don’t quite land, there’s also humour there to suit everyone. However, the slow movement of Cloudy, the repetitive nature of some levels, the confusing UI and obstructive camera angles may leave you frustrated. If you’re wanting to give it a try, and intend to play on Xbox or PC, you can find the game on Game Pass.

You can purchase Rain on Your Parade for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S on the Xbox Store (UK).