Brainbow

Brainbow looks like Tetris, and is in its layout like Tetris, but in the way the blocks interact it is completely different.
It is easy to pick up, hard to master, but then mastery does little for you.

This is a game that requires no knowledge of the workings, beyond the fact blocks interact with colors. Your goal is to create white blocks... I will explain in detail later.
It does not use the usual water color scheme I am used to, but the computer one - don't ask me how it works exactly, even after playing this game I have no idea exactly. I did pick up a few things to play this game better (and after reading the other review a little later on) which comes down to

To get to white use
1. blue on yellow (thanks calunio!)
2. red on baby blue
3. green on purple

Sadly, there is far too little control over anything, the range blocks interact is too wide to have any real impact as you will always get something somewhere.
The shape of blocks is almost always to ignore, as color is more important, and as shapes always fall down - so you rather fill gaps than anything else. You will never have holes in your building as you would have in Tetris.
It almost seems like the shape were imported only for that sake, and to have a little bit of more felt planning.

Starting out, however, I had no idea about these little tricks. Nor what colors do - the color spread is really, really, wide, so it is very difficult to even observe what interacts in what way. Half or more of the screen-color changes with every block.
So what I did was I just put blocks on visually different looking blocks. DONE.


First time!

My first score was 158k+ on lvl 19, with 20 apparantly being the maximum speed level.
This would be rank one on the gamepage screenshots shown, and it was literally my first attempt without any knowledge of the workings, or the color schemes used.
I simply filled in empty spaces, and avoided spaces of the same color. That is all I did.
This should not happen.

At the same time, getting to know what actually does what, helped only ever so little, as luck is a far bigger factor than anything else. And especially on the higher speed, this becomes apparant due to the inclusion of black blocks.

Usually, blocks affect each other wildly. You will have a mess of multicolored shades of yellow, blue, red, purple, green shaded out in all kinds of direction.
This means the following - you will always affect a plethora of them.
You will reach many blocks below and will always end up stacking some layers before you can work them away.
It also means that due to the blocks inbetween, and the shades of color. even if you put the right color in the right place, you will not necessarily eliminate anything - you may instead reach an almost white. You always take a lot of time to eliminate colors.

In short - you do something filling in holes, and avoid the exact same color in the exact same spot and you will automatically be on 90% of your powerlevel, or so it seems. In fact, using the "simple no-idea-what-I-am-doing-method seems to be more functional, as you will not have to think about where exactly to put your blocks, and will in turn be able to place them faster and more effectively.

You can only really think about it on slower levels, for the most part, but yes, there it does help you a little to know what you are doing.

This concept itself becomes very detrimental in the higher speedlevels, mainly 19 and 20, because you will not be able to reach the outer edges, or only barely so at all due to the falling speed. You cannot react to the colors used, and instead hope to fill holes. To reach outer edges I just kept pressing the direction before I could even see the block, because otherwise I would never have gotten it there.
The system builds on having a fair-sized tower at all times due to the slow execution of eliminating colors, and the overall effect only allowing the elimination of a handful of blocks at a time.
This comes down to luck. And you will soon die on this level if you have none.
You can get the same colors which will not only prevent you from eliminating blocks at the time - but also in the future, as they build a buffer between the ones you actually can eliminate, and where you can place the next block.

The other worse aspect of this - tying in with luck - is the inclusion of black blocks. Black blocks will first remain black and do nothing - 1 turn.
They will then take on a darker shade of the color you place next to it - 2 turns.
It will then further mix in with the colors of surroundings and be on the same, or maybe slightly lighter levels - 3 turns.
In other words, to eliminate black blocks, you will need 2-3 additional turns compared to other-colored blocks. You will also not be able to eliminate anything else with them during the first turn.
You may have guessed it, you do not have these turns in the higher speed levels. You simply lose if you receive black blocks, unless you have a lot of leeway in your stacking.

My highest score so far was 208k or similar on lvl 20. I found it difficult to lose before reaching a high level, with only one unlucky game getting me at with only 10k+ instead of 100-200k+. While playing this minigame may count as relaxing, I found it mindboggling, and just following a general color-lightness rather than doing any active thinking. I found myself tired and half-bored soon, and stopped playing. The slow, draining background music does not help, either.
It does occupy you and I suppose that is the main drive of minigames, so for that it works.
As a sidenote, you may pause the game with p, but if you are taken to the desktop due to a notice or similar, or if you change windows, it does not pause and will continue to put blocks down.
The game once froze for no apparant reason, after I encountered a glitch of blocks going down as if I was constantly pressing the down-key (which I wasn't, it was also lvl 3). I hoped to reset the controls with it, but had to restart instead.

I think this is a solid build, the interface is smooth and simple, you can make blocks go down faster, and it is very responsive. But it does nothing to keep you interested for more than a couple of plays, the color-spread is too wide to involve any planning - reducing the range alone would help. Reducing the many shades of white/color may as well.
Taking out black blocks on lvl 20 may make it possible to reach higher scores additionally to that.

As it is, skill does nothing for you in this game. And that is a shame. A minigame should be easy to pick up, but with the depths possible, this game should also be difficult to master. Having a good grasp for the area of affect, at which point exactly you can clear your blocks and more are really difficult to get a grasp of. There is a fun in planning ahead and doing the best under the time and block-restriction you have, but you simply can barely execute any of this.
Reducing the overall speed also may help to regain a sense of control and interactivity for you, rather than putting something somewhere and hoping for the best. This may need some thorough testing and tinkering to balance, however.

You can go play Tetris now, I suppose. I would very much hope for this to be tweaked to make it more fun long-term, as the idea behind it is unique and actually fun. Sadly, the execution is functional, but lacking.
(.. if only the color scheme was not so utterly foreign to me..)