Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan

Lore & Background

The game is set in the Land of Imagination, a colorful world filled with happy emotions. The Leviathan, angry at Billy's refusal to grow up, steals all the colors of the land. Billy escapes on a boat called the Friend-Ship with a fishing rod named Rodrigo and travels through the Land of Imagination, helping to recolor animal allies. The player seeks out three orbs necessary to defeat the Leviathan and fully recolor the land. After gaining all three orbs, Billy faces the Leviathan with the help of animal friends, recoloring the Leviathan, who apologizes. In the real world, Billy lays flowers at their mother's grave alongside their father, who has the Leviathan tattooed on his arm.

Gameplay is split between open-world exploration and symbol-matching combat. The player sails between islands surrounded by dark water, each island having emotions and animal allies to collect. Combat involves non-violent minigames representing empathetic conversations. Each enemy has symbol-based health, and the player selects allies with corresponding symbols in queues. The player's health is represented by morale. Once the enemy's health symbols are filled, the battle ends, with non-boss enemies joining the player's roster. Allies have skills activated if they are first in their queue, such as staying for an extra turn. The game features 60 animal allies, each with backstories involving unhealthy coping mechanisms. The player can feed them fish and give requested items to unlock backstories and level them up, granting additional symbols for battle.

The game was developed by Montreal-based ManaVoid Entertainment. It uses binaries such as black and white to symbolize diversity and inclusion. The team chose to make the protagonist Billy non-binary despite nobody on the development team being gender-diverse, and consulted with Annie Sansfacon, a professor on transgender children and their families, to accurately portray Billy.

Reader's Guide

Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan received mostly positive reviews according to Metacritic and strong reviews according to OpenCritic. Critics praised its colorful graphics and unique combat system, which replaces violence with symbol-matching minigames meant to represent empathetic conversations. However, the game was criticized for lacking consequences and oversimplifying the difficulty of mental illnesses, as well as for the repetitiveness of its elements. The game's significance lies in its deliberate approach to diversity and inclusion, using visual binaries like black and white to symbolize those themes, and featuring a non-binary child protagonist—a choice made by a development team that consulted an expert on transgender children. The game's 60 animal allies, each with backstories about unhealthy coping mechanisms, further emphasize its focus on emotional and mental health themes. A sequel, Rainbow Billy: The Book of Fears, is scheduled to be released in 2026.

Did You Know?

• The protagonist Rainbow Billy is a non-binary eight-year-old.
• The game's combat uses non-violent minigames representing empathetic conversations.
• The development team consulted professor Annie Sansfacon, an expert on transgender children and their families.