Controlled Cumulus Chaos in ‘Rain on Your Parade’ – Game Review
By JD Osorio
There seems to be a new trend in games right now with a fundamental hook I absolutely love: wrecking humans. I loved doing it in Untitled Goose Game, creating chaos in unsuspecting lives as I quacked to my heart’s content. Other games, like Catlateral Damage, have players assume the point-of-view of the everyday house cat with the main objective to knock down as many items onto the floor as possible. So when I heard about Rain on Your Parade, self-described as “a slapstick comedy game where you play as a mischievous cloud determined to ruin everybody’s day,” I knew I had to play it.
Rain on Your Parade has players controlling Cloudy, a jerk cloud with the goal of making it to the magical, mystical land of Seattle (a lofty goal for any cloud.) Pretty straightforward on the surface, but the real fun is the varied paths of destruction which change from level to level. Unbound Creations, the developer behind the game, states that there are over 50 levels for players to reign chaos through. Some levels are really simple, like “Spooky Forest Road”, while others had a little more effort put into them (I’m fond of “It Came From the Sky!”) Each level has an objective (or two) that needs to be accomplished to advance, as well as optional missions to tackle. Complete enough objectives to unlock a new hat or accessory for Cloudy to wear.
No matter the individual levels’ depth, the game is dripping in pop culture references and tongue-in-cheek humor. There’s a cast of fun side characters, with everyone helping or being helped by Cloudy along the journey (well, almost everyone – sorry Buggy.)
During my initial play-through, I was surprised and delighted over and over. The gameplay is simple, as are the controls: move Cloudy around, and harness the power of the weather to wreak havoc. Despite the game’s name, Cloudy doesn’t just rain on people. Cloudy utterly destroys people. New weather powers get unlocked as players progress through the story, letting Cloudy summon weather across all the seasons. As new powers get unlocked, all-new levels of fun unfold. I had a lot of fun combining powers, like snow and lightning, to have humans get scared and then immediately slide across a snowy spot…straight off a cliff.
After playing through the main story, New Game+ is unlocked, and the game really shines. I enjoyed revisiting every level and trying new ways of ruining the day. The game also encourages creatively solving the puzzles, with new objectives that revolve around Cloudy’s upgraded arsenal. A level at the beach asks players to soak everyone…without using water. While being chased by the sun. Trying not to die. Fun!
One little nitpick about the NG+ objectives is that there’s no incentive to complete them (besides saying “I did it!”) I unlocked almost all of the cosmetics on my first play-through, so when the time came to replay the game from the start, there was nothing to unlock even as I beat the newly introduced tasks. I would’ve liked to see some extra unlockables for the efforts of going back through the levels. Still, there’s great fun to be had just replaying the levels without a reward.
As previously mentioned, there’s a wide variety of cosmetics to unlock for Cloudy for players to customize to their content. Customizing Cloudy is a fun side element of the game which will have completionists going through each level with a fine-tooth comb to get every accessory possible. An early cosmetic is shown off, and one of my personal favorites is Cloud Strife’s hair. In my personal opinion, the only way to play this game is as Cloudy Cloud.
If cosmetics aren’t your thing, Rain on Your Parade also offers the ability to customize Cloudy’s face with a drawing tool. Very fun, but it makes me wonder if the developers are familiar with an important statistic introduced in Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest: TTP, or “time to penis.” Look it up.
Ultimately, Rain on Your Parade’s simplicity and ease-of-play helps it stand out in very, very crowded gaming space. It is the perfect game to pick up and play for 15 to 20 minutes, crank through a few levels, and walk away feeling really satisfied with the destruction that Cloudy caused. On the other hand, I picked the game up and played for hours at a time. The variety in level design throws new curveballs at you, similarly to What the Golf?; a level may look straightforward, only to punch you in the face with a completely new twist.
Rain on Your Parade hits PC, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One on April 15th. On Xbox, Game Pass subscribers are able to preload the game now and play on launch day.
