RAINBOW HIGH™: RUNWAY RUSH

My honest read on Rainbow High: Runway Rush is that it knows its audience precisely, and that audience is not me. It's a licensed kids' game built around six playable characters from the Rainbow High animated series - Ruby, Poppy, Sunny, Jade, Skyler, and Violet - each with a distinct specialty that gates specific minigames. Poppy handles rhythm action, others cover sewing, logic puzzles, and similar short-form tasks. The framing is a school art assignment themed around "Everything is Art," which you chase through corridors, classrooms, bedrooms, and the Rainbow Union common area. Expect something in the range of three to five hours to see credits. The minigame variety is the one area where the game earns a genuine compliment. Each task is mechanically distinct, brief enough to stay fresh, and matched to the character doing it. A sewing challenge asks you to keep a stitch inside a moving boundary; a coding-style puzzle routes a character to a goal. None of them are innovative, but they work as breathers between quest steps, and for the target age group (roughly seven and up) the difficulty curve sits at exactly the right level. The character-switching mechanic, triggered on the fly, is a small but smart touch that gives franchise fans a reason to play as their favourite. Here is where the goodwill runs out. The school environment is the game's biggest liability. The corridors repeat visually to the point where finding your next destination becomes genuinely frustrating, even for adults. There is a map, but it is buried deep enough that most players won't find it until they don't need it. The on-screen quest tracker gives directions inconsistently, alternating between useful waypoints and vague nudges. For young players who aren't yet comfortable reading spatial layouts in games, this creates real friction that works against the otherwise relaxed tone. The open school also feels static and underpopulated, which dulls the sense that Rainbow High is a place anyone would actually want to explore. Repetition is the other running complaint. The core loop - switch character, walk to location, complete minigame, collect rainbow diamonds, open a locker for a costume unlock - cycles predictably. Collectible hunters will find a scavenger hunt and outfit customisation to pad out the back end, but it doesn't fundamentally change the feel. This is a short, single-sitting game dressed in franchise clothing, and it does not pretend to be otherwise. If the Rainbow High series is already in your household and you have a child who will light up seeing Ruby or Poppy rendered in 3D, this delivers a functional, licensed experience at a budget-friendly price point. For everyone outside that bracket, the combination of repetitive fetch quests and a poorly signposted school environment makes it a hard sell regardless of how much the colours pop on screen.

Alex · Scout Team

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