Rainbow Reactor: Fusion | Review

Rainbow Reactor: Fusion Review | Clock in to the Rainbow Reactor, a fast-moving VR adventure that fuses story-driven exploration with frantic color-matching gameplay. Explore a sprawling, forgotten factory that produced the cleanest energy around (probably…) Once operated by the eccentric Alfred Luzian von Hoffenhasselbrock, the Reactor is filled with clues, secrets and grumpy robots! Can you clean up this mess, solve the mystery of Alfred’s disappearance and bring the color back to the Rainbow Reactor?

Developer: Tunermaxx
Console Played On: Oculus Quest
Time Taken: 6 Hours +
Difficulty: Easy
Number Of Players: 1

Wait… Rainbow Reactor? I’ve heard of that game! If this looks familiar, there’s a good reason! Rainbow Reactor: Fusion is the sequel to a popular VR game of the same name (Rainbow Reactor) from a few years back.

This time, the developers have added a whole story mode. With more story comes more mystery and more exploration to be had. It fleshes out the Rainbow Reactor world, and frankly I am here for it!

Adventure Meets Colour-Matching Meets Escape Game

Rainbow Reactor: Fusion is what you get if you combine the traditional “match three” mini-game popularised on mobile, with a creepy old abandoned factory with a dark past, hidden objects and things to discover and unlock, with a sassy robot. It’s a mix of so many genres I don’t even know where to begin on this… But this is after all an escape room reviews site, so we’ll stick to what we know best: good old fashioned puzzle and mystery!

Despite throwing a lot of genres into the mix and hoping for the best, I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed playing Rainbow Reactor: Fusion. Each of the different genres complemented each other well, and were paced out so nicely throughout the game to provide some variety. for sure, it didn’t need to be VR, but it was made all the better for it with some very fun exploration sequences!

So what is the escape room aspect of this game…

Escape the Factory

You play the distant relative of the eccentric Alfred Luzian von Hoffenhasselbrock who has come to the Rainbow Reactor after the factory has fallen into disrepair. Since the factory powers the whole district, it’s up to you to get it up and running again. You wouldn’t want a huge energy crisis on your hands, would you?

So not technically escape from the factory… It’s more like:

• Break into the factory
• Build up trust with the resident AI Dottie by completing tasks for her
• Clean up the factory
• Restore it’s power
• Save the World
• Then… escape from the factory

If this sounds pretty wacky then that’s because it is! The whole atmosphere of the game felt like a cross between Jazzpunk and Portal 2. There’s something so fun about returning to an abandoned site with nothing but a floating robot to help you figure out exactly what the heck is going on. This is Rainbow Reactor: Fusion. Now with added mini-games!

Light on Puzzles, Big on Fun

To solve the mystery, you have to jump through hoops. Scattered around the factory you’ll find a number of fuses, collect three of each and you can power on a number of Kiosks hidden around the site. These show you snippets of videos which slowly unravel the who, what, when, where and why. Other puzzles you’ll encounter involve elaborate systems of pipes and valves. After all, one of your primary goals is to get the factory working again – but don’t expect any instruction manuals, you’ll have to figure it out yourself!

I particularly enjoyed these moments spent exploring the factory and tweaking dials, following pipes, and trying to figure out what particular objects did. True, Rainbow Reactor: Fusion is light on puzzles – but it is big on fun.

If you’re not actually into all that puzzle stuff anyway, you can jump straight into arcade most and just play the match three mini-game, which consists of scooping up balls of paint and carefully throwing them into large, hexagonal grids in front of you to match colours and make them disappear.

As mentioned, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. After watching the trailers I was a little bit dubious about having a popular mobile idle game loop one of the core gameplay mechanics – but Rainbow Reactor: Fusion really owns it and makes it it’s own. Inbetween solving hardcore puzzles in other VR games, I found myself drawn back into that old abandoned factory to play a couple of matches in arcade mode and see if I could beat my high score!

The Verdict

Overall, surprisingly fun! It may not appeal to your average escape room player – unless you’re also the type of player to enjoy an idle game or two on your phone inbetween escaping from rooms. But if you’re looking for more of an all-rounder game for your Oculus, one that gives you puzzles and had a party mode for your next game night, you could do a lot worse!

Be sure to give yourself plenty of space via the room scale boundary, and definitely keep the volume up loud when you play – you’ll not want to miss the catchy music!

Check out the developer, Tunermaxx’s page here.

Ratings