Rainbowball 2: Brutal Unicorns

About the game

Rainbowball 2 is a futuristic sport with the manners of a bar fight. Two teams of five unicorns share a long, scrolling pitch with a goal at each end and a single ball between them. You control one unicorn at a time, run the ball down the field and shoot, or you tackle whoever has it. Shots have height: a hard one clears the studs on the ground and sails over heads, and the nasty parts of the game are all in how the ground and the other players push back.

Points come from three places. A goal is worth ten, putting an opponent in the ambulance is worth ten as well, and every star you have lit along the side rails adds one more to both. Seven stars run down each side, and they are contested: hit one that the other team lit and it becomes yours. Own all seven on one side and the pitch goes full spectrum for twenty seconds, with your rails free and twice as long-lived.

The rails are what give the game its name. A rainbow rail is a curved wall that belongs to nobody: the ball banks off it at a steep angle and rides it at a shallow one, and a ball that rides a whole rail splits into two scoring ghosts at the far end. Rails cost a quarter of the rail meter at the bottom of the screen, which fills as you play rough.

Between matches you visit the desk, where you spend points on each unicorn's three stats: STR (shot power), SPD (running speed) and TKL (tackling and resisting tackles). A trained unicorn looks trained, with a gilded horn, gilded hooves or a band on the flank. Every unicorn also has an energy bar, and one that runs out is carried off on a stretcher, which gives a point to the other side and keeps the unicorn out of the next match.

A season is four divisions of three matches each. Win two of three to go up, or play the division again. The last match is always against DEATH RAINBOWS, a team that lays rails wherever it runs. Arenas are generated from a number, so each one has its own name, colours, length, goal width and hazards: electrified studs, sliding studs, ice, night matches and, in the top division, sky pitches with no side walls. Raimon Ràfols made it for js13kGames 2026, where the whole game had to fit in 13 KB, with no image, sound or font files: the unicorns, the font and both soundtracks are generated by code.

Playing it here

Click Play, then click the game or press a key to wake it up. Pick your options on the title screen with Space, and the first kickoff shows a card with the controls. A match lasts about ninety seconds and the clock is at the top. Your achievements are kept in this browser, and the game does not need anything from the internet.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Hit the stars early. Stars are worth a point to each of your goals and tackles, so lighting several before the first goal makes every later score bigger, and stealing the other side's stars swings the match twice.

Do not waste the rail meter. A rail fired under a shot lifts it even higher, and a ball that rides a rail all the way to its far end splits into two scoring ghosts, so aim rails along the path to the goal.

Rotate your squad. Rough play fills the rail meter but drains energy. A tired unicorn that gets carried off costs a point and misses the next match.

Credits and licence

Rainbowball 2: Brutal Unicorns was created by Raimon Ràfols. It is released under the Apache License 2.0; the licence text is linked from this page.