Rainbow Billy creators highlight the importance of diversity within gaming
ManaVoid Entertainment recently released its second game to the world, a cute, rainbow-coloured adventure game called Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan. The Rainbow Billy creators have since debuted a video about why it’s so important to highlight diversity and inclusion within gaming, as well as the industry as a whole.
In their Core Values featurette, the ManaVoid Entertainment team speak up about what message they wanted to send to players of Rainbow Billy.
“Every different creature you meet in the game, every NPC, even Billy themselves, are all people who are different from each other,” says Tiffani Trogi, 2D concept artist. “We were aiming for a broad spectrum of players so, artistically, we’re trying to create creatures and characters that appeal to different types of people. We just wanted a lot of diversity, a lot of inclusivity represented within our characters.”
Rainbow Billy features a non-binary protagonist in Billy, a small child who uses non-violent means like empathy and trust to reach out to people and let them know they aren’t alone. When Billy isn’t doing that though, they’re busy trying to bring colour back to a world of black and white, lost due to the doom and gloom of the horrid Leviathan.
As we mentioned in our review, Rainbow Billy may look childish but it handles some very real topics – something which the creators are well aware of.
“I believe that some of the subjects, like empathy, thinking about others, putting others before yourself, are things that are becoming more relevant and more important in today’s society,” says Saad Raouf, programmer. “I really like that the game tries to communicate these things to a probably younger audience.”
You can watch the ManaVoid team talk about Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan and the game’s core values below.
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