Rainbow Ruffle Free
by Eric March on November 1, 2008 at 5:30 pm
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App Name: Rainbow Ruffle Free
Developer: Powerhouse Games
Category: Logic & Puzzle Games
At first glance I looked at this and immediately thought, okay, another train track path type game ala Derailed or Candy Train (which are based on a much older original whose name I forget and may or may not predate a similar well-known game, Pipe Dream. You youngsters might be more familiar with this style of game as the hacking minigame from Bioshock). I was a little surprised to find that while it is rather similar, the objective is not.
In Rainbow Ruffle, the object is to rotate rainbow pieces on the board so that ultimately they form a complete loop. As you rotate your pieces, more pieces are showing up, giving you more path options to create larger or more numerous loops. Points are based on the size of the loop, and you must score a certain number of points in order to advance to the next level. The game is over when the screen fills up with unused pieces.
It’s an interesting idea and it plays out pretty well here. There are lots of bright, colourful, cheery graphics here, and the sound is nice. The game does suffer from a pretty low frame rate though — I would probably be pretty close to the mark if I pegged it at 8FPS. Whatever it is, it’s low enough to be a bit of a distraction, and effect gameplay to a small degree as well. Furthermore, the tiles are pretty small which makes them a bit difficult to tap on accurately; I found myself rotating adjacent tiles to the one I wanted too often — and I don’t have particularly large digits. This is the sort of game that’s probably better played with a Pogo stylus or similar.
Overall it’s a nice game with good graphics and sound, but I can’t help but feel that there’s a lot of room for optimization here to beef up the nasty frame rate and improve the overall gameplay experience.
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