Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City, designed by Naotaka Shimamoto and Yoshiaki Tomioka and published by Itten, is a dexterity game that builds on the minimalist charm of the original Tokyo Highway while adding a splash of colour, a bit more personality and a surprising amount of strategic nuance. It’s still about balancing sticks and placing cars, but now it’s added city planning and an increase in chaos. The result is a game that feels both familiar to returning players (like me) and yet still completely standalone for anyone new.
At its core, Rainbow City retains the central tension of the original: players construct elevated highways using cylindrical pillars and flat road segments (now with slightly tacky ends that will help them stay in place), trying to place cars on their roads by crossing over or under opponents’ highways. The rules for placement are tight, and cars can only be placed when you cross another player’s road for the first time. There’s an advanced scoring mode where other feats might also score, and even the different shaped vehicles (all fantastic) could be worth variable points.
On that note, the components are, as expected from Itten, absolutely gorgeous. The pastel-coloured cars are tiny but vibrant, the road segments are clean and satisfyingly tactile, and the cylindrical pillars are a good weight and size, whilst still being fiddly enough to make the game a challenge. Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City includes small buildings like an airport or stadium that can also score in the alternative mode.
These buildings don’t just add mechanical variety — they also give the table a sense that you’re in a much more real environment than in the original game. By the end of a game, your city looks like a chaotic but charming diorama, full of winding roads, colourful cars, and scattered landmarks.
Gameplay is as tense as the original, if not more so. Each turn requires careful hand placement, steady nerves, and a good eye for spatial relationships. One wrong flick of the wrist and your entire highway could collapse, costing you building pieces (if you knock opponents down) and forcing you to rebuild. However, unlike many dexterity games, Rainbow City doesn’t feel too punishing when everything topples down. Mistakes are part of the fun, and the game includes rules for rebuilding and recovering without derailing the experience. It’s competitive, yes, but it’s also forgiving — and that makes it ideal for mixed-age groups or casual play.
There is one caveat here, which is that on some occasions, especially later in the game, it’s entirely possible for a player to cause such a catastrophic knockdown that there’s no way the players can rebuild. The “give your opponents a building piece” is a small setback, but losing an entire city and then having to debate who would have won does feel a bit weak. I have tended to introduce Rhino Hero style house rules where a winner can always be determined depending on how many cars each player had placed and then who knocked the game over (i.e. if you were winning and caused a catastrophic knockdown, you would cede the victory to whoever is in second place).
It supports two to four players, and while it scales well, it’s arguably best at three or four. With more players, the city becomes more crowded, the colours more vibrant, and the opportunities for clever crossings more frequent. For two players, the game is still enjoyable, but the spatial puzzle is less dynamic and the visual excitement a bit less pronounced. That said, the game’s modular setup and flexible rules mean it’s easy to tweak for different player counts or skill levels.
One of the most interesting additions in Rainbow City is the concept of “urban planning” which I previously referred to as the alternative scoring mechanism. Players can earn bonus points by building near, through or onto specific landmarks, but doing so requires foresight and precision. You might need to angle your highway just right to bring an off ramp down to the airport, or stack your pillars to reach over a skyscraper without knocking it over. These objectives add a layer of long-term planning that complements the short-term tactical decisions, and they give players a reason to build creatively rather than just efficiently.
Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City is a thoughtful evolution of a beloved dexterity game. It’s still about balance and placement, but now it’s also about colour, competition, and city-building charm. The components are beautiful, the gameplay is tight, and the experience is consistently engaging. Whether you’re a fan of the original or a newcomer looking for something tactile and clever, this is a city worth constructing — one pastel pillar at a time.
Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City is available now, you can find out more information on its Kickstarter Page.
