The second I heard about Runbow, I had a feeling it’d be up my alley. It’s a rambunctious multiplayer game that involves up to nine players chaotically trying to race to the finish of a side-scrolling 2D level. In practice, it’s complete mayhem. Watching nine players trying to jockey for position on a 2D plane while jumping and punching each other is hard to parse, but once you can pick out which character you’re controlling and get a grasp for the controls, it becomes a beautiful gameplay cacophony.

Runbow, from Canadian developer 13AM Games, features many modes, though the most prominent one seems to be the Race mode. In this, players try to outlast other players and reach the goal first in a series of short platforming stages. Each stage is a series of platforms with spikes and pitfalls spelling doom for anyone who slips in. Making it harder are the shifting colors; as the background changes color, all platforms of that color disappear. It is chaos, made even crazier by the simplistic combat system. Players can punch or kick enemies using a variety of simple combos. Items are also littered around the level that can electrocute other opponents and even make you switch places with another player.

The one issue is that the jumping seemed a bit stiff. Other Nintendo World Report staffers seemed to attribute it to lag and the team at 13AM seemed to place the blame on wireless interference. Given it was in the middle of a crowded expo hall, the latter might be correct. While your at-home experience won’t feature as many wireless distractions as a show floor at PAX East, you’ll still be ideally using a whole bunch of wireless controllers, as Runbow can support up to nine, using everything from the Wii Remote and Pro Controllers to a Nunchuk by itself. It was pretty weird using a Wii Remote to control my character while another player used an attached Classic Controller to control theirs.

The most intriguing mode of Runbow is Color Master (or Colour Master since the developers are Canadian). It pits the GamePad player against up to eight others. The GamePad player uses a variety of abilities, such as changing the color or electrocuting them, to stop the others, who have to avoid the hazards and finish the race. After trying it out, it struck me as the kind of game that all parties involved need to put some time into to learn, as the GamePad player has a ridiculous advantage until every player understands how it works. It depends heavily on the non-GamePad team to work together to thwart the vile machinations of the evil Color Master.

Runbow has many other modes, including a combat-focused single-screen Arena mode and a single-screen King of the Hill one. It even has some single-player-focused content, such as the Bowhemoth, which is an absurdly hard platforming challenge. I imagine I’ll be focused on getting the friends required together to dabble in nine-player shenanigans, though. If you have the chance to do the same, Runbow is a game you should pay close attention to when it launches in the summer on Wii U.