i love rainworld, i love its tight mechanics, its soundtrack, its story, its a great game!
but god this game wants you to do homework, and after that barrier it IS rewarding but those first 5 or so hours nearly made me drop this game several times.
but god this game wants you to do homework, and after that barrier it IS rewarding but those first 5 or so hours nearly made me drop this game several times.
this is so hard
Most things about this game are amazing. I love how it plays so much and the expansion adds even more good stuff. Only gripes are with the food systems to progress and wishing the coop was implemented better. If this game had online coop where each person had their own screen, hoo boy it would be amazing.
Maybe I just don't "get it" but this really wasn't enjoyable to me and I had to quit after a few hours. It's insanely beautiful and incredibly unique but I felt like it gave absolutely no options to overcome it's incredibly punishing difficulty, things aren't really predictable enough to plan a route / approach around and the map is too big and confusing to remember locations between attempts.
Maybe I'll revisit it down the line and like it more then, I really want to, but right now it just feels too punishing to be enjoyable.
Maybe I'll revisit it down the line and like it more then, I really want to, but right now it just feels too punishing to be enjoyable.
it has been praised for its complex ecosystem. It's very clean, its scary, and I like it. It also makes you very frustrated, and sometimes stuck. However, at times controls don't feel the best, and for some that adds to the partial terror you feel from seeing an enemy.
Insane game
My favorite ever
My favorite ever
Gran juego, pero dificil de jugar, definitivamente me quiero viciar a este juego
This review contains spoilers
Imagine you’re a well off kid in the late 80s or early 90s. It’s Christmas, your parents have bought one of those new trinkets called video games, something called a NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), with a pack-in-game cartridge to boot. After waiting for them to get some scissors to cut open the custom cardboard box and set up those incomprehensible cable things (AV cables + AC adapter + RF adapter), you plug the D-pad, pick up the cartridge, blow some air into it (you heard it makes the game run better, it doesn’t), insert it on the slot and press the power button. The screen flares up and you decide to play some game called super mario bros (there's some other game in the menu called duck hunt but who cares?).
Now, assuming you would have never played a game before, nor heard about it, or just waited a couple of seconds in the menu to watch the demo, you’d have no idea of what to do. All you can see is some sort of landscape with a little man-thing in the left corner. So you press the directional buttons and he starts moving, nice. Then you start exploring your surroundings: you try going to the left but there's an invisible wall stopping you, so you go to the right and the screen starts sliding as you go along. That's until some weird brown creature exits from the right corner of the screen, it walks straight to you, but you have no idea what to make of it, so you ignore it. That is, until it touches and kills your little guy, who dramatically falls off from the screen. Two lives left. Damn.
So you start playing again with your newfound knowledge that the little brown thing means bad news. This time you start experimenting with the right side buttons (B & A). You press the left one (B) but it has no apparent effect, so you press the right button (A) and, blam, your little fella jumps. So you advance confidently to where the brown thing is, but instead of walking right into it, you just jump across it. Phew. Now that you can actually advance you see a couple of floating blocks with question marks, curious. You jump on the first block and a coin comes out with no apparent effect, then you go to the next one and a mushroom thing comes out. It trails to the right until falling from the platform’s edge and changing direction by hitting a pipe, coming right towards you. You try to jump but the block above you won’t budge, so the mushroom reaches you and… your guy grows bigger? Nice, so this other mushroom actually helps you, though you have no idea how being bigger does any good besides looking cooler. So you keep advancing to the green pipes: the first one is small enough that a quick button press will get you above it, but the next one is taller and requires a slightly longer press. Ok, so the little guy’s jump height varies depending on how long you press the button. Looking beyond, below the pipe there’s one of the brown guys, but the distance seems just right so you can reach the pipe on the other side by jumping. So you jump while pressing as long as you can, but it isn’t enough and you land exactly atop of the brown guy, ouch. But wait, instead of dying you squash him instantly. Nice! So you can remove enemies by jumping atop of them. So you climb the next pipe and glance to the right and yep, more brown guys, two this time. But you know how to deal with them, right? You jump but this time you slightly misscalculate and land before the enemy. He touches you, but instead of instantly dying, your character gets… smaller? Of course! The mushroom thing makes you bigger, which essentially gives you one more life. But wait, did you forget there were two guys? Why is it that the first guy hurt you while the other passed through harmlessly? You see your character flashing and realize that after being hurt the game gives you a window of opportunity where your character is invulnerable so you can get away from danger. The flashing effect decreases gradually so you can naturally grasp on how much time you have left to reach a safe spot.
Of course, this was a platonic play of mario 1-1. You might as well figure out you can jump from the get-go by experimenting with the buttons. Or ignore the mystery blocks. Or successfully evade the power-up mushroom thinking it’s an enemy. Or never discover you can kill enemies by jumping on them. Either way, what’s important is not that you uncover every basic game mechanic straight away, but that the game allows you to discover new ways to interact with the world without holding your hand. It doesn’t need to show you, but subtly guides you to learn naturally by experimenting with the level design. It set the standard for what good level design ought to be like.
It’s a great experience, tailored specifically to the player. Every block, power-up and enemy is implemented based on how the player will interact with it in a specific way. And the designers can be sure of how you are going to interact with the world: mario can only advance to the right screen (besides pipes and vines), which makes for a mostly linear, manageable experience. As the player gradually familiarizes themselves with the levels, the element of surprise is gone and the experience, though entertaining, turns predictable, which is why even relatively simple AI can learn to master a mario level: it just needs enough attempts to find the best combination of buttons to get across an unchanging obstacle course.
This player-focused design philosophy also affects the game’s mechanics. Mario’s universe is relativistic: everything revolves around the player. Though each level may be loaded with a predetermined code for the entire level, its elements stay inactive until the player comes close enough to interact with them. This can be best exemplified by the spawning (and despawning) of enemies. In super mario bros, enemies spawn in a fixed spot, which is only activated when the player reaches a certain distance from it (which happens slightly offscreen). They may be allowed to exist offscreen as long as they stay close enough to the player character, but the moment they stray too far they disappear entirely. However, since the player can’t progress through the left in super mario bros, this mechanic is usually imperceptible. It’s much more evident in future games, like super mario brothers 2 and super mario world, which allowed players to backtrack and respawn enemies by returning to the left side of the screen. In these cases the games would recognize which direction the player came from and turn the enemies against them, even if most basic mario enemies are unable to automatically turn around to face the player (you could say their life is predestined from the moment they spawn). This is not because the developers did not have the means to stop them from respawning: though enemies always respawn in super mario 2, the map’s items do not, while in super mario world the enemies do not respawn if directly killed by the player since they reward the players with coins once killed (mario 64 would change this by allowing them to respawn without giving rewards beyond the first kill). In some games, like most metroidvanias, this respawning mechanic is crucial to ensure players can replenish health or ammunition dropped by enemies, which usually respawn after re-entering a room. Though the mechanic sacrifices diegetic verisimilitude for gameplay, it feels as if most developers either realized that having enemies spontaneously respawn on-screen would be weird or perhaps unfair. Except for the devs of ninja gaiden, of course, which famously (AVGN is still famous, right?) had the spawn zone set in the corners of the screen (which also meant you could despawn enemies by aggressively outrunning them and letting the corner-of-doom do its job).
One side effect of this is that most mario enemies are basically moving traps. They will completely ignore mario and – unless killed – proceed in their way, until they eventually stumble into a wall, another enemy, fall from a ledge or (more likely) are despawned by going offscreen.
But imagine a different super mario bros, where the player is not the center of the universe. Discard the linear map; have a branching cluster of rooms, with many entries to different worlds, whose acessibility would only be limited by player skill. Imagine if as soon as you loaded up a world it would immediately come alive in its entirety. Where every enemy, from the starting point until bowser’s castle, was constantly existing, even way beyond the reach of the player character’s screen zone. Furthermore, assume every one of these enemies had agency and competed for available resources in the map with themselves. Assume every enemy had a specific identity which the game would keep track of, including their death. Imagine if every one of these enemies had a relationship with your character and could remember how you treated them previously. Sounds utterly insane, right? Contradictory, deranged, self-defeating game design. Only a madman could dream of it. Well, these madmen are called Joar Jakobsson and James Primate; theirs is one of the most amazing games to be released in recent years.
Rain World is one of the few games I “recently” played (what do you mean it has been SIX YEARS!?) which made me think of a “copernican” approach to game design. To turn design postulates and preconceptions on their heads. To be unwilling to compromise originality for a set standard. To challenge what a game ought to be and a player's role in it. Whereas previous platformers/metroidvanias were supposed to be centered on the player as a protagonist, as a means through which the world is experienced, rain world lets its own world take center stage while the player feels like one singular detail in a vast mosaic.
Let’s return to old-schools games. You remember how in these games the existence of npcs depended on the current position of the player character? That even though every spawn point was set, they were only activated as the main character approached them? How enemies would disappear from reality if you stayed away long enough? Well, in Rain World's world (made up of major "regions"), as soon as a region is reached, each of its denizens is spawned and starts acting. The game keeps track of each individual creature, its relationship with other creatures and with the player. You feel as if the world is larger than you, as if it exists independently from you. So that even if you were to be gone it would linger on.
Sounds way too good to be true, right? And in a kind of way it is: one single room in rain world is composed of many objects and particles, besides the creatures which are really moving ragdoll clusters of different body parts with a programmed behavior which is based on their senses. You combine all this with the knowledge that rain world's regions consist of tens of rooms and you start wondering how the game specs do not require a nasa computer.
Like any good magic trick, rain world's is accomplished through a sleight of hand: everything in the current region map exists in two states: abstract and realized. The realized state is the game as you know it: with ragdolls physics, complex path-finding and particle effects. But much like in old-school games, the current position of your character affects how the world around them is rendered. The current room you're in is "realized", as are the neighboring rooms and typically the neighboring room's neighborings rooms (though if you are playing with very low configurations then only your current room is realized). But if you stay too far away the world becomes "abstracted": the possible map paths are simplified and objects are not rendered, though their position is stored. For abstract creatures, the body is not rendered anymore, the pathfinding and AI is simplified, as are interactions between npcs which, instead of being the result of complex ai choices in a dynamic environment with physic effects, are instead based on probability. [1]
So I guess it was all a lie, smokes and mirrors right? Let's not get too carried away: though creatures are abstracted, they are still existing entities: they migrate, do things and interact. Their current agenda is still simulated, even if in a very simplified way: if a wounded lizard starts retreating to its den and has to cross abstract space to do so, it (probably) keeps its current objective and the game simulates the action (probably, because though abstract AI is similar to realized AI, its parameters differ slightly, which may alter creature behavior). All of which is different from an old-school game, where other entities just stop existing altogether if you're far away from them.
One result of the fact that creatures are constantly moving behind your back is that rain world's "deck" is always being reshuffled. A rain world region is similar to an old-school map in that both have predetermined spawn points for npcs spread across them. But whereas old-school entities are only doing things for brief moments of on-screen existence after spawning, rain world's critters are constantly migrating ever since you enter a region. This gives rain world an uncertainty factor; even a veteran player who knows the map like the back of their hand does not know the current locations of creatures or which of them are alive. The fact that the next rooms are “realized” with all the complex actors and effects playing out means you always feel like you’re approaching a situation in media res, as an independent space with independent actors already set in motion. This forces the player to play more cautiously as the world always feels greater than them and beyond their control.
I mentioned creatures spawn and respawn in rain world, but how does that differ from a typical slide scroller? We already know the “region” the player is currently in is simulated, even if mostly in “abstract” state, so the critters start moving as soon as you enter. The starting point from where they move from is a den, the creature’s lair, where it retreats to if it retrieves food, is injured or if raindrops start trickling down. These dens are set in specific spots of the map (except for certain creatures like vultures, which have an abstract unreachable lair), which spawn or respawn creatures. Now, rain world is not a true ecosystem simulator like Species or Bibites, so creatures don’t have a real life cycle, reproduction and the possibility of going extinct. What happens is if a den is vacant, each game cycle will have a chance of spawning a critter in it (which is meant to represent the critter finding this lair and inhabiting it). Depending on the den stats, the next possible critter may be the same subpescies of creature or a different one. If the spawned creature belongs to a different subspecies then there’s a slight chance that the same process happens again with different creature types. Most often this means in-game dens go through different kinds of lizards/centipedes/vultures in what is referred to as the “lineage system”. One of the consequences of this is that if the player kills too many normal enemies, they may trigger the spawn of tougher kinds of enemies through the lineage system.
Another thing rain world is famous for is its critters. In a typical pixel art game you have a cluster of pixels making up a shape, a “sprite”, which are attached to hit/hurt-boxes. These pixel sprites are set to change position and swap to different sprites to give the illusion of doing a continuous action, like walking or jumping. Rain World looks like a typical pixel art game, but its entities are less like mario pixel sprites and more like Gmod ragdolls. Creatures have bodies made of different parts with physical characteristics like length and weight. If a creature wants to get somewhere, it needs to move these parts to get there. Since “animation” is procedural, all sorts of unexpected things may happen naturally: a creature may get stuck, trip over or accidentally fall from a ledge. All of which gives the impression of a real being struggling to use its body instead of an automatic slide scroll.
What sets all these body parts in motion is the AI. First off, AI perceives the game world through its senses: eyesight and hearing (depending on the creature). Eyesight works like a cone-shaped ray that the creature projects from certain spots of their bodies (lizards only see wherever their head is pointed, whereas centipedes are able to see on both ends of their body). The length and accuracy depends on creature type, the environment around, the specific spot of their vision and the regarded object type. Generally the eyesight is better on the center of view while being worse in the periphery (which means every frame you’re in the eyesight radius, there’s a lower percentage chance of being perceived in the periphery compared to the center). Its radius is limited by the environment type: aquatic creatures can see well in the water whereas terrestrial ones have their line of sight broken by it. Another factor is the regarded object: moving around as the player makes you easier to notice, whereas crouching gives a lower chance of being perceived.
Once a creature perceives something it has to identify it: should I ignore it, eat it or run away from it? Also, how many other things are in the room with me? Are they a threat in some way? Are they a resource? Yet, the creature's intent must be comprehensible and clearly communicated to the player. This is what Joar defined as "trickability"; the AI needs to have a complex enough set of faculties to appear "dumb", to be foolable:
"Trickability - This is the thing - the problem that needs to be solved. The idea is that you want the AI to be smart enough so that the player can trick it and get satisfaction out of having outsmarted it. When it comes to Rain World AI, this is the holy grail I'm pursuing. Every amount of complexity on the AI's part should generally fall back on this; this is why the AI is complex. An NPC that just moves towards a target on visual contact isn't smart enough to be tricked. RW AI needs to be smart enough to come up with a simple plan and carry it through, so that you can have anticipated that simple plan and act accordingly." - Joar [2]
This makes for dynamic gameplay as every interaction is the result of a plethora of factors. You can distract an oblivious lizard by throwing a rock and leading it to investigate the noise, but a lizard that has previously seen the player will try to reach their spot regardless of minor distractions. But if a vulture swoops down, it will try to hide in the nearest hole. Then, if it grabs you, it will try to take your body to its den, but it might be attacked by another lizard intending to do so same thing, or be harassed by a “neutral” animal, like a squidcada or scavenger, that views it as a possible threat, all of which might just give you a window of opportunity to escape from its jaws.
Every rain world creature is also an individual. In some cases it’s evident: many creature types have unique cosmetic features so that you can tell individuals apart. These individuals have a relationship value with you. Though initial value might define them as neutral or hostile, your interaction can alter their behavior: start killing scavengers and they will send death squads to take you down; feed a lizard enough and it will stop regarding you as prey and fight for your life. Besides the individual relationship, there’s also an universal one for species, so if you act nice towards one member of a species, it will slightly improve your standing with all of them (which fits more social animals like squidcadas or scavengers than lizards but I digress).
Remember when we were talking about super marios bros? Remember how it is tailored specifically to the player, how it’s meant to intuitively teach the player, which is made possible because mario’s world is very predictable? But if rain world undermines that predictability, then the brakes are off, fairness is thrown out of the window. You might die of a stray spear because a scavenger missed a lizard from the other side of the room. You might die because you crossed a pipe and there was a lizard waiting for you on the other side. Eventually, you accept it as part of life, just like a wild animal might die from lightning or a stray cat be run over by a car. What you can do is minimize risks, be cautious, don’t expose yourself. Act like a survivor.
This also applies to level design: old-school level design is made to adjust to the player. Every platform is placed to either help you or give you a specific challenge. But rain world levels are made to feel uncomfortable or inadequate somehow. There are all kinds of narrow structures or labyrinthic passages. You feel as an intruder who must adjust to the present circumstances instead of having each tile designed for your personal use.
This inadequacy also extends to the level's aesthetics. Though almost all levels are set in post-industrial ruins, their exact purpose is left beyond the player's comprehension:
"first and foremost is that we wanted to create a world as seen through the eyes of something slightly below human intelligence. the slugcat is smart enough to recognize that there is probably some purpose to the structures around it, but not comprehend their meaning. same with the use of "language", letters and characters, etc. the idea is to create a kind of dreamlike atmosphere where the player projects meaning into the structures they see, creating their own expectations about what they might be for and where they might lead, and we play with resolving those expectations quite a bit in the region / world map layout.
similarly, we wanted any specifics about the previous cultures of rain world to remain vague. the player might assume "human" by default, but thats not necessarily the case and we dont want to feed into that reading too much. whats important is that they were there, they built these structures, and now theyre gone.
also important is that the slugcat operates among the in-between spaces of these industrial ruins, like a rat in the subway or a squirrel on a rooftop. you'll sometimes see those overtly designed I.M. Pei vistas, where the structures seem to line up in some grand plan, but most of the time its a ditch filled with garbage and a pipe sticking out, or the crumbling basement of a building. so even if it werent some fantasy alien world we were working in, i think we'd still keep the overtly human signifiers to a minimum." - James Primate [3]
"Yep, we have thought about more recognizable architecture, but we gravitated away from it. For a few reasons, the main one definitely being that one James mentioned. If you can recognize too much in the environment ("That there's a fire post", "that there is a roof drain pipe") the environment wouldn't feel alien anymore. As the creature you play is supposed to not really grasp what's going on in the world around it, the player should be in on that impression. We are going for a thing that's more abstract or expressionistic - what's displayed on the screen is supposed to serve an emotional narrative, and that emotional tone has "not quite understanding what's going on" as a very important center piece." - Joar [4]
Another important game mechanic is "karma". There are ten different karma levels. You can increase your current level by surviving a “cycle” or lose a level in case of death. Crossing each region requires going through a "karma gate" (imo, one of the most immersion breaking features), which blocks you if your karma is too low.
If you read the game’s lore (or already have since this is spoiler tagged), you can see karma is tied to its history: every living being is stuck in the state of samsara, a cycle of eternal rebirth, much like the player. Though ancient monks could reach moksha/nirvana through asceticism (the hard way), the slightly less ancient industrial civilization discovered the world’s “core” to be made up of a sort of anti-matter substance known as “void fluid”, which can be used to ascend automatically (as long as your karma level isnt too bad) and is how you can achieve the game’s legit ending.
Now, a game having its respawning mechanic as a diegetic lore feature (e.g. cosmology of kyoto, planescape torment, dark souls, undertale) is nice but hardly original these days. Rain world’s lore is interesting trivia that may be discovered or ignored at the player’s discretion. Which begs the question: was this major mechanic implemented because of the lore or was the lore at least partly built around it (partly, since you could have samsara without karma levels/gates). Let's hear the devs:
"The karma system is the solution to a problem we noticed when connecting the entire world. It shows that what was driving player motivation wasn't survival, but exploration - the treat you're looking for is seeing new environments and new creatures (which is natural as humans are curious). This is all good, but it incentivised a pretty destructive play style. Instead of trying to survive, you would throw yourself out into the world as far and quick as you could over and over, not caring if you survived as long as you had the chance to reach new areas. The key problem here was the not caring if you survived part - that is very contrary to the mood we wanted to create, which should be all about survival. We're making a survival platformer after all, and want to create the feeling of being an animal in an eco system - which should be all about staying alive. Also as James said, players could move very quickly through the world just blazing through the carefully crafted environments and situations. Basically, a way too high movement to survival ratio.
Another problem was that any cycle that you didn't manage to reach a new shelter felt like a complete waste. I actually had one person on a convention floor, that had after much effort managed to make it back to the starting shelter with enough food, ask me "what did I gain from that?"
We needed to skew the main incentive away from movement and towards survival, making survival the main objective and movement the secondary. The solution we came up with was gating movement with survival - if you don't survive, you don't get to see new areas. A nice side effect of this is an automatic smoothing of the difficulty curve - you're only let into the next region when you're able to handle the one you're in, making sure that you don't randomly end up on too deep waters without any way of making it back." - Joar [5]
The karma system usually succeeds in this role. The fact that I could not only lose my life, but my karma level, meant I would act even more cautious in the ecosystem. In a sort of way, it made me value my “life” somewhat like a real animal would, even if not to the same degree. Gatekeeping new players from certain regions is also a good idea (no one wants to go from outskirts to drainage system in their first playthrough). But all that happens when the karma system is at its best; sometimes it acts as a double-edged sword, forcing you to spend entire cycles “karma grinding” and stalling the sense of freedom you get by exploring the world at your own rhythm.
Another of rain world’s forte is the music. Besides some genuine bangers in the soundtrack (bio-engineering, kayava), it’s also worth of note for being procedural in its own way: the game’s threat music will adapt depending of the danger level you’re in, so the proximity or greater number of predators will add a greater number of instruments to the score. All of this is meant to immerse the player in the slugcat’s perception of reality:
"When I first saw rain world, i had a very very clear concept. for me, a huge strength of the game is your emotional connection to this lone, cute white little creature in this crazy death filled environment, and i wanted the aural experience to amplify that. sound effects would essentially be extensions of the emotion and instinct of the character; a subtle "fly sense" when prey is nearby, an unsettling feeling when lizards are close, an impending sense of dread when the rains begin to come. Even much of the music was to be an extension of the character: the beating of the heart, blood pumping through veins, hunger in stomach, etc." - James Primate [6]
Video games are often described as a means of escapism, with the player's goal being to run away from a bitter/boring reality to a more exciting fantasy. But I feel that most tell very unconvincing lies, their cracks are too easily seen. Whenever I load rain world the feeling is different: everything seems to move regardless of my presence, the world presents itself in its grand indifference to my pettiness. And although I know its tricks I am still encaptured by the mirage.
"In the end I think my goal is to create the illusion that these things are alive. I'm fairly certain that I share this goal with most people making games, as it's an important factor in immersion. Working with behaviour to create that illusion is a path I think is worthy of experimentation - and rain world is my take on such an experiment." - Joar [7]
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[1] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.1860
[2] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.1880
[3] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1213832#msg1213832
[4] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1213832#msg1213832
[5] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1232162#msg1232162
[6] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.720
[7] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg947694#msg947694
Now, assuming you would have never played a game before, nor heard about it, or just waited a couple of seconds in the menu to watch the demo, you’d have no idea of what to do. All you can see is some sort of landscape with a little man-thing in the left corner. So you press the directional buttons and he starts moving, nice. Then you start exploring your surroundings: you try going to the left but there's an invisible wall stopping you, so you go to the right and the screen starts sliding as you go along. That's until some weird brown creature exits from the right corner of the screen, it walks straight to you, but you have no idea what to make of it, so you ignore it. That is, until it touches and kills your little guy, who dramatically falls off from the screen. Two lives left. Damn.
So you start playing again with your newfound knowledge that the little brown thing means bad news. This time you start experimenting with the right side buttons (B & A). You press the left one (B) but it has no apparent effect, so you press the right button (A) and, blam, your little fella jumps. So you advance confidently to where the brown thing is, but instead of walking right into it, you just jump across it. Phew. Now that you can actually advance you see a couple of floating blocks with question marks, curious. You jump on the first block and a coin comes out with no apparent effect, then you go to the next one and a mushroom thing comes out. It trails to the right until falling from the platform’s edge and changing direction by hitting a pipe, coming right towards you. You try to jump but the block above you won’t budge, so the mushroom reaches you and… your guy grows bigger? Nice, so this other mushroom actually helps you, though you have no idea how being bigger does any good besides looking cooler. So you keep advancing to the green pipes: the first one is small enough that a quick button press will get you above it, but the next one is taller and requires a slightly longer press. Ok, so the little guy’s jump height varies depending on how long you press the button. Looking beyond, below the pipe there’s one of the brown guys, but the distance seems just right so you can reach the pipe on the other side by jumping. So you jump while pressing as long as you can, but it isn’t enough and you land exactly atop of the brown guy, ouch. But wait, instead of dying you squash him instantly. Nice! So you can remove enemies by jumping atop of them. So you climb the next pipe and glance to the right and yep, more brown guys, two this time. But you know how to deal with them, right? You jump but this time you slightly misscalculate and land before the enemy. He touches you, but instead of instantly dying, your character gets… smaller? Of course! The mushroom thing makes you bigger, which essentially gives you one more life. But wait, did you forget there were two guys? Why is it that the first guy hurt you while the other passed through harmlessly? You see your character flashing and realize that after being hurt the game gives you a window of opportunity where your character is invulnerable so you can get away from danger. The flashing effect decreases gradually so you can naturally grasp on how much time you have left to reach a safe spot.
Of course, this was a platonic play of mario 1-1. You might as well figure out you can jump from the get-go by experimenting with the buttons. Or ignore the mystery blocks. Or successfully evade the power-up mushroom thinking it’s an enemy. Or never discover you can kill enemies by jumping on them. Either way, what’s important is not that you uncover every basic game mechanic straight away, but that the game allows you to discover new ways to interact with the world without holding your hand. It doesn’t need to show you, but subtly guides you to learn naturally by experimenting with the level design. It set the standard for what good level design ought to be like.
It’s a great experience, tailored specifically to the player. Every block, power-up and enemy is implemented based on how the player will interact with it in a specific way. And the designers can be sure of how you are going to interact with the world: mario can only advance to the right screen (besides pipes and vines), which makes for a mostly linear, manageable experience. As the player gradually familiarizes themselves with the levels, the element of surprise is gone and the experience, though entertaining, turns predictable, which is why even relatively simple AI can learn to master a mario level: it just needs enough attempts to find the best combination of buttons to get across an unchanging obstacle course.
This player-focused design philosophy also affects the game’s mechanics. Mario’s universe is relativistic: everything revolves around the player. Though each level may be loaded with a predetermined code for the entire level, its elements stay inactive until the player comes close enough to interact with them. This can be best exemplified by the spawning (and despawning) of enemies. In super mario bros, enemies spawn in a fixed spot, which is only activated when the player reaches a certain distance from it (which happens slightly offscreen). They may be allowed to exist offscreen as long as they stay close enough to the player character, but the moment they stray too far they disappear entirely. However, since the player can’t progress through the left in super mario bros, this mechanic is usually imperceptible. It’s much more evident in future games, like super mario brothers 2 and super mario world, which allowed players to backtrack and respawn enemies by returning to the left side of the screen. In these cases the games would recognize which direction the player came from and turn the enemies against them, even if most basic mario enemies are unable to automatically turn around to face the player (you could say their life is predestined from the moment they spawn). This is not because the developers did not have the means to stop them from respawning: though enemies always respawn in super mario 2, the map’s items do not, while in super mario world the enemies do not respawn if directly killed by the player since they reward the players with coins once killed (mario 64 would change this by allowing them to respawn without giving rewards beyond the first kill). In some games, like most metroidvanias, this respawning mechanic is crucial to ensure players can replenish health or ammunition dropped by enemies, which usually respawn after re-entering a room. Though the mechanic sacrifices diegetic verisimilitude for gameplay, it feels as if most developers either realized that having enemies spontaneously respawn on-screen would be weird or perhaps unfair. Except for the devs of ninja gaiden, of course, which famously (AVGN is still famous, right?) had the spawn zone set in the corners of the screen (which also meant you could despawn enemies by aggressively outrunning them and letting the corner-of-doom do its job).
One side effect of this is that most mario enemies are basically moving traps. They will completely ignore mario and – unless killed – proceed in their way, until they eventually stumble into a wall, another enemy, fall from a ledge or (more likely) are despawned by going offscreen.
But imagine a different super mario bros, where the player is not the center of the universe. Discard the linear map; have a branching cluster of rooms, with many entries to different worlds, whose acessibility would only be limited by player skill. Imagine if as soon as you loaded up a world it would immediately come alive in its entirety. Where every enemy, from the starting point until bowser’s castle, was constantly existing, even way beyond the reach of the player character’s screen zone. Furthermore, assume every one of these enemies had agency and competed for available resources in the map with themselves. Assume every enemy had a specific identity which the game would keep track of, including their death. Imagine if every one of these enemies had a relationship with your character and could remember how you treated them previously. Sounds utterly insane, right? Contradictory, deranged, self-defeating game design. Only a madman could dream of it. Well, these madmen are called Joar Jakobsson and James Primate; theirs is one of the most amazing games to be released in recent years.
Rain World is one of the few games I “recently” played (what do you mean it has been SIX YEARS!?) which made me think of a “copernican” approach to game design. To turn design postulates and preconceptions on their heads. To be unwilling to compromise originality for a set standard. To challenge what a game ought to be and a player's role in it. Whereas previous platformers/metroidvanias were supposed to be centered on the player as a protagonist, as a means through which the world is experienced, rain world lets its own world take center stage while the player feels like one singular detail in a vast mosaic.
Let’s return to old-schools games. You remember how in these games the existence of npcs depended on the current position of the player character? That even though every spawn point was set, they were only activated as the main character approached them? How enemies would disappear from reality if you stayed away long enough? Well, in Rain World's world (made up of major "regions"), as soon as a region is reached, each of its denizens is spawned and starts acting. The game keeps track of each individual creature, its relationship with other creatures and with the player. You feel as if the world is larger than you, as if it exists independently from you. So that even if you were to be gone it would linger on.
Sounds way too good to be true, right? And in a kind of way it is: one single room in rain world is composed of many objects and particles, besides the creatures which are really moving ragdoll clusters of different body parts with a programmed behavior which is based on their senses. You combine all this with the knowledge that rain world's regions consist of tens of rooms and you start wondering how the game specs do not require a nasa computer.
Like any good magic trick, rain world's is accomplished through a sleight of hand: everything in the current region map exists in two states: abstract and realized. The realized state is the game as you know it: with ragdolls physics, complex path-finding and particle effects. But much like in old-school games, the current position of your character affects how the world around them is rendered. The current room you're in is "realized", as are the neighboring rooms and typically the neighboring room's neighborings rooms (though if you are playing with very low configurations then only your current room is realized). But if you stay too far away the world becomes "abstracted": the possible map paths are simplified and objects are not rendered, though their position is stored. For abstract creatures, the body is not rendered anymore, the pathfinding and AI is simplified, as are interactions between npcs which, instead of being the result of complex ai choices in a dynamic environment with physic effects, are instead based on probability. [1]
So I guess it was all a lie, smokes and mirrors right? Let's not get too carried away: though creatures are abstracted, they are still existing entities: they migrate, do things and interact. Their current agenda is still simulated, even if in a very simplified way: if a wounded lizard starts retreating to its den and has to cross abstract space to do so, it (probably) keeps its current objective and the game simulates the action (probably, because though abstract AI is similar to realized AI, its parameters differ slightly, which may alter creature behavior). All of which is different from an old-school game, where other entities just stop existing altogether if you're far away from them.
One result of the fact that creatures are constantly moving behind your back is that rain world's "deck" is always being reshuffled. A rain world region is similar to an old-school map in that both have predetermined spawn points for npcs spread across them. But whereas old-school entities are only doing things for brief moments of on-screen existence after spawning, rain world's critters are constantly migrating ever since you enter a region. This gives rain world an uncertainty factor; even a veteran player who knows the map like the back of their hand does not know the current locations of creatures or which of them are alive. The fact that the next rooms are “realized” with all the complex actors and effects playing out means you always feel like you’re approaching a situation in media res, as an independent space with independent actors already set in motion. This forces the player to play more cautiously as the world always feels greater than them and beyond their control.
I mentioned creatures spawn and respawn in rain world, but how does that differ from a typical slide scroller? We already know the “region” the player is currently in is simulated, even if mostly in “abstract” state, so the critters start moving as soon as you enter. The starting point from where they move from is a den, the creature’s lair, where it retreats to if it retrieves food, is injured or if raindrops start trickling down. These dens are set in specific spots of the map (except for certain creatures like vultures, which have an abstract unreachable lair), which spawn or respawn creatures. Now, rain world is not a true ecosystem simulator like Species or Bibites, so creatures don’t have a real life cycle, reproduction and the possibility of going extinct. What happens is if a den is vacant, each game cycle will have a chance of spawning a critter in it (which is meant to represent the critter finding this lair and inhabiting it). Depending on the den stats, the next possible critter may be the same subpescies of creature or a different one. If the spawned creature belongs to a different subspecies then there’s a slight chance that the same process happens again with different creature types. Most often this means in-game dens go through different kinds of lizards/centipedes/vultures in what is referred to as the “lineage system”. One of the consequences of this is that if the player kills too many normal enemies, they may trigger the spawn of tougher kinds of enemies through the lineage system.
Another thing rain world is famous for is its critters. In a typical pixel art game you have a cluster of pixels making up a shape, a “sprite”, which are attached to hit/hurt-boxes. These pixel sprites are set to change position and swap to different sprites to give the illusion of doing a continuous action, like walking or jumping. Rain World looks like a typical pixel art game, but its entities are less like mario pixel sprites and more like Gmod ragdolls. Creatures have bodies made of different parts with physical characteristics like length and weight. If a creature wants to get somewhere, it needs to move these parts to get there. Since “animation” is procedural, all sorts of unexpected things may happen naturally: a creature may get stuck, trip over or accidentally fall from a ledge. All of which gives the impression of a real being struggling to use its body instead of an automatic slide scroll.
What sets all these body parts in motion is the AI. First off, AI perceives the game world through its senses: eyesight and hearing (depending on the creature). Eyesight works like a cone-shaped ray that the creature projects from certain spots of their bodies (lizards only see wherever their head is pointed, whereas centipedes are able to see on both ends of their body). The length and accuracy depends on creature type, the environment around, the specific spot of their vision and the regarded object type. Generally the eyesight is better on the center of view while being worse in the periphery (which means every frame you’re in the eyesight radius, there’s a lower percentage chance of being perceived in the periphery compared to the center). Its radius is limited by the environment type: aquatic creatures can see well in the water whereas terrestrial ones have their line of sight broken by it. Another factor is the regarded object: moving around as the player makes you easier to notice, whereas crouching gives a lower chance of being perceived.
Once a creature perceives something it has to identify it: should I ignore it, eat it or run away from it? Also, how many other things are in the room with me? Are they a threat in some way? Are they a resource? Yet, the creature's intent must be comprehensible and clearly communicated to the player. This is what Joar defined as "trickability"; the AI needs to have a complex enough set of faculties to appear "dumb", to be foolable:
"Trickability - This is the thing - the problem that needs to be solved. The idea is that you want the AI to be smart enough so that the player can trick it and get satisfaction out of having outsmarted it. When it comes to Rain World AI, this is the holy grail I'm pursuing. Every amount of complexity on the AI's part should generally fall back on this; this is why the AI is complex. An NPC that just moves towards a target on visual contact isn't smart enough to be tricked. RW AI needs to be smart enough to come up with a simple plan and carry it through, so that you can have anticipated that simple plan and act accordingly." - Joar [2]
This makes for dynamic gameplay as every interaction is the result of a plethora of factors. You can distract an oblivious lizard by throwing a rock and leading it to investigate the noise, but a lizard that has previously seen the player will try to reach their spot regardless of minor distractions. But if a vulture swoops down, it will try to hide in the nearest hole. Then, if it grabs you, it will try to take your body to its den, but it might be attacked by another lizard intending to do so same thing, or be harassed by a “neutral” animal, like a squidcada or scavenger, that views it as a possible threat, all of which might just give you a window of opportunity to escape from its jaws.
Every rain world creature is also an individual. In some cases it’s evident: many creature types have unique cosmetic features so that you can tell individuals apart. These individuals have a relationship value with you. Though initial value might define them as neutral or hostile, your interaction can alter their behavior: start killing scavengers and they will send death squads to take you down; feed a lizard enough and it will stop regarding you as prey and fight for your life. Besides the individual relationship, there’s also an universal one for species, so if you act nice towards one member of a species, it will slightly improve your standing with all of them (which fits more social animals like squidcadas or scavengers than lizards but I digress).
Remember when we were talking about super marios bros? Remember how it is tailored specifically to the player, how it’s meant to intuitively teach the player, which is made possible because mario’s world is very predictable? But if rain world undermines that predictability, then the brakes are off, fairness is thrown out of the window. You might die of a stray spear because a scavenger missed a lizard from the other side of the room. You might die because you crossed a pipe and there was a lizard waiting for you on the other side. Eventually, you accept it as part of life, just like a wild animal might die from lightning or a stray cat be run over by a car. What you can do is minimize risks, be cautious, don’t expose yourself. Act like a survivor.
This also applies to level design: old-school level design is made to adjust to the player. Every platform is placed to either help you or give you a specific challenge. But rain world levels are made to feel uncomfortable or inadequate somehow. There are all kinds of narrow structures or labyrinthic passages. You feel as an intruder who must adjust to the present circumstances instead of having each tile designed for your personal use.
This inadequacy also extends to the level's aesthetics. Though almost all levels are set in post-industrial ruins, their exact purpose is left beyond the player's comprehension:
"first and foremost is that we wanted to create a world as seen through the eyes of something slightly below human intelligence. the slugcat is smart enough to recognize that there is probably some purpose to the structures around it, but not comprehend their meaning. same with the use of "language", letters and characters, etc. the idea is to create a kind of dreamlike atmosphere where the player projects meaning into the structures they see, creating their own expectations about what they might be for and where they might lead, and we play with resolving those expectations quite a bit in the region / world map layout.
similarly, we wanted any specifics about the previous cultures of rain world to remain vague. the player might assume "human" by default, but thats not necessarily the case and we dont want to feed into that reading too much. whats important is that they were there, they built these structures, and now theyre gone.
also important is that the slugcat operates among the in-between spaces of these industrial ruins, like a rat in the subway or a squirrel on a rooftop. you'll sometimes see those overtly designed I.M. Pei vistas, where the structures seem to line up in some grand plan, but most of the time its a ditch filled with garbage and a pipe sticking out, or the crumbling basement of a building. so even if it werent some fantasy alien world we were working in, i think we'd still keep the overtly human signifiers to a minimum." - James Primate [3]
"Yep, we have thought about more recognizable architecture, but we gravitated away from it. For a few reasons, the main one definitely being that one James mentioned. If you can recognize too much in the environment ("That there's a fire post", "that there is a roof drain pipe") the environment wouldn't feel alien anymore. As the creature you play is supposed to not really grasp what's going on in the world around it, the player should be in on that impression. We are going for a thing that's more abstract or expressionistic - what's displayed on the screen is supposed to serve an emotional narrative, and that emotional tone has "not quite understanding what's going on" as a very important center piece." - Joar [4]
Another important game mechanic is "karma". There are ten different karma levels. You can increase your current level by surviving a “cycle” or lose a level in case of death. Crossing each region requires going through a "karma gate" (imo, one of the most immersion breaking features), which blocks you if your karma is too low.
If you read the game’s lore (or already have since this is spoiler tagged), you can see karma is tied to its history: every living being is stuck in the state of samsara, a cycle of eternal rebirth, much like the player. Though ancient monks could reach moksha/nirvana through asceticism (the hard way), the slightly less ancient industrial civilization discovered the world’s “core” to be made up of a sort of anti-matter substance known as “void fluid”, which can be used to ascend automatically (as long as your karma level isnt too bad) and is how you can achieve the game’s legit ending.
Now, a game having its respawning mechanic as a diegetic lore feature (e.g. cosmology of kyoto, planescape torment, dark souls, undertale) is nice but hardly original these days. Rain world’s lore is interesting trivia that may be discovered or ignored at the player’s discretion. Which begs the question: was this major mechanic implemented because of the lore or was the lore at least partly built around it (partly, since you could have samsara without karma levels/gates). Let's hear the devs:
"The karma system is the solution to a problem we noticed when connecting the entire world. It shows that what was driving player motivation wasn't survival, but exploration - the treat you're looking for is seeing new environments and new creatures (which is natural as humans are curious). This is all good, but it incentivised a pretty destructive play style. Instead of trying to survive, you would throw yourself out into the world as far and quick as you could over and over, not caring if you survived as long as you had the chance to reach new areas. The key problem here was the not caring if you survived part - that is very contrary to the mood we wanted to create, which should be all about survival. We're making a survival platformer after all, and want to create the feeling of being an animal in an eco system - which should be all about staying alive. Also as James said, players could move very quickly through the world just blazing through the carefully crafted environments and situations. Basically, a way too high movement to survival ratio.
Another problem was that any cycle that you didn't manage to reach a new shelter felt like a complete waste. I actually had one person on a convention floor, that had after much effort managed to make it back to the starting shelter with enough food, ask me "what did I gain from that?"
We needed to skew the main incentive away from movement and towards survival, making survival the main objective and movement the secondary. The solution we came up with was gating movement with survival - if you don't survive, you don't get to see new areas. A nice side effect of this is an automatic smoothing of the difficulty curve - you're only let into the next region when you're able to handle the one you're in, making sure that you don't randomly end up on too deep waters without any way of making it back." - Joar [5]
The karma system usually succeeds in this role. The fact that I could not only lose my life, but my karma level, meant I would act even more cautious in the ecosystem. In a sort of way, it made me value my “life” somewhat like a real animal would, even if not to the same degree. Gatekeeping new players from certain regions is also a good idea (no one wants to go from outskirts to drainage system in their first playthrough). But all that happens when the karma system is at its best; sometimes it acts as a double-edged sword, forcing you to spend entire cycles “karma grinding” and stalling the sense of freedom you get by exploring the world at your own rhythm.
Another of rain world’s forte is the music. Besides some genuine bangers in the soundtrack (bio-engineering, kayava), it’s also worth of note for being procedural in its own way: the game’s threat music will adapt depending of the danger level you’re in, so the proximity or greater number of predators will add a greater number of instruments to the score. All of this is meant to immerse the player in the slugcat’s perception of reality:
"When I first saw rain world, i had a very very clear concept. for me, a huge strength of the game is your emotional connection to this lone, cute white little creature in this crazy death filled environment, and i wanted the aural experience to amplify that. sound effects would essentially be extensions of the emotion and instinct of the character; a subtle "fly sense" when prey is nearby, an unsettling feeling when lizards are close, an impending sense of dread when the rains begin to come. Even much of the music was to be an extension of the character: the beating of the heart, blood pumping through veins, hunger in stomach, etc." - James Primate [6]
Video games are often described as a means of escapism, with the player's goal being to run away from a bitter/boring reality to a more exciting fantasy. But I feel that most tell very unconvincing lies, their cracks are too easily seen. Whenever I load rain world the feeling is different: everything seems to move regardless of my presence, the world presents itself in its grand indifference to my pettiness. And although I know its tricks I am still encaptured by the mirage.
"In the end I think my goal is to create the illusion that these things are alive. I'm fairly certain that I share this goal with most people making games, as it's an important factor in immersion. Working with behaviour to create that illusion is a path I think is worthy of experimentation - and rain world is my take on such an experiment." - Joar [7]
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[1] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.1860
[2] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.1880
[3] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1213832#msg1213832
[4] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1213832#msg1213832
[5] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1232162#msg1232162
[6] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.720
[7] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg947694#msg947694
EU ODEIO O DIGGO EU ODEIO O RALUCA EU ODEIO O JEAN L EU ODEIO O YANNI EU ODEIO O
I want to return to this game once I'm happier kek
Absurdamente lindo, exploração maravilhosa e imersiva, constantemente me deixando com o sentimento de tensão, sem dúvidas uma experiência única.
I wanted to like this game with it's beautiful, haunting locations and unique spin on the survival genre. But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't shake the feeling the game just didn't want me to play it. It lures you in with it's aesthetics and wonderful sense of place, only to proceed to kick you whilst your down with an unforgiving and messy gameplay loop.
Play it, hate it, stop playing.
Then go back and play it again and love it.
Then go back and play it again and love it.
lo necesitaba gracias
The best game if i speak about graphics.
I havent finished this game but its still a really good experience (they are kicking my ass so f*cking hard)
I havent finished this game but its still a really good experience (they are kicking my ass so f*cking hard)
There seems to be a lot in this game to uncover and I'm sure it's rewarding, but as someone who's gotten credits, many aspects of this games– including some hefty flaws– revealed themselves to me. It's a very granular and dynamic but I was constantly fighting against the weird limitations that the Rain World inflicts on players like Slugcat being unable to aim upward to throw things. It's weirdly gamey in a world that is so naturalistic. The other big problem is that the random nature of each day sometimes spawned in obstacles that were very hard to surpass and in a game like this you would utilize the game's interactive mechanics to MacGyver up a solution but weaknesses and tricks were not often discovered.
This might be a me problem because honestly, I didn't think too deeply into this game very often. I only had a few moments where I took a step back and tried to get to know this world better so that I could traverse and survive it easier. Now, maybe I put in as much effort as the game expected me to (after all, I did finish it), but I feel like there are whole layers to be explored yet in this game.
Despite my issues, I had a pretty good time. This is an involving world and I love how little the game tells you of your objective and relies on players' natural curiosity to guide them. Not many games do that and this one succeeds. I like a lot of the surreal and mysterious elements too.
I will likely play this again and hopefully I am able to uncover Rain World's deepest secrets, if it has any.
This might be a me problem because honestly, I didn't think too deeply into this game very often. I only had a few moments where I took a step back and tried to get to know this world better so that I could traverse and survive it easier. Now, maybe I put in as much effort as the game expected me to (after all, I did finish it), but I feel like there are whole layers to be explored yet in this game.
Despite my issues, I had a pretty good time. This is an involving world and I love how little the game tells you of your objective and relies on players' natural curiosity to guide them. Not many games do that and this one succeeds. I like a lot of the surreal and mysterious elements too.
I will likely play this again and hopefully I am able to uncover Rain World's deepest secrets, if it has any.
I was completely ready to rank this as my favorite game only a few hours in, but after beating it, Rain World has solidified itself even more as such. If you’re at all interested in the game, stop reading and play it. It is absolutely best experienced blind, since much of its satisfaction comes from figuring out the things the game doesn’t tell you.
Rain World strives to be unique in every sense of the word. Each facet of the game oozes with originality and passion, to the gameplay, narrative, art direction, setting, music, world building... all of which blends together to create a frankly masterful work of art. It isn't common that games who try to be one-of-a-kind are, well, good, but Rain World is a different case. Sure, if you pick apart each individual gameplay quirk and inspect it under a microscope, it wouldn't seem that great. This is because, as a whole, the game is designed to be a representation of nature; a living ecosystem. It isn't fair. It doesn't hold your hand. It holds no quarter. It wasn't made to be marketable or streamlined, and instead tailors an experience unlike any other. You do not belong in this world, and it's made abundantly clear. This is accomplished by finely tuning every aspect to accentuate the ludonarrative harmony the developers were aiming to achieve, and makes for one of the most immersive worlds one could ever experience in this medium.
To start things off, you are given a short and cute intro cinematic, then plopped into the game as a creature called a slugcat. Weak and hunted by everything, you must rely on a keen eye, cunning tactics, patience, and perseverance above all else to survive in the harsh environment that is threatened to be drowned by the torrential rain. Steady amounts of food must be acquired, deadly predators must be avoided, and shelter must be found to survive just one cycle among many as you explore the regions. Death is punishing, as it delays your progression into new areas, forcing you to play well and learn your environment, as well as avoiding those who'd see the slugcat fit as a meal. Knowing how easily it is to have progress snatched away at a moment’s notice, every victory becomes immensely satisfying.
The first immediate thing that becomes apparent is the movement. It is simple on the surface, with 4 movement keys and 3 interactive buttons - jump, grab, and throw. Slugcat feels slow and clumsy to control at first, which adds to the feeling of vulnerability. However, therein exists a plethora of completely unexplained techniques and mechanics that, while not essential to master, will aid massively. Learning how to lodge spears into the ground/walls, wall jump, backflip, roll, slide, leap, and combine any of these is satisfying in both practice and application. Schmoving around the environment has never felt so rewarding, and that is due to how fundamentally limiting it is.
Said environment is extremely varied in how it's structured and designed to be interesting to navigate around in. I'll touch on the visuals later, but the way the world connects together reminds me of my enjoyment of my first Dark Souls playthrough, and makes me excited to play it again after writing this. Rain World's... world isn't static, either. The world goes on around you even when you aren't present to see it, and creatures will not be in the same spots they were last time, making for circumstances that will never mirror a previous instance. Heights are terrifying, the open sky is terrifying, tunnel mazes are terrifying, large stretches of water are terrifying. Come to think of it, it’s harsher than the aforementioned game, which I didn’t think was possible until playing this.
Creatures and predators are animated and programmed in such a way that they are always unpredictable and always scary. One example among many is the Lizards: they are aggressive and kill slugcat in one bite (like most creatures), but they are large, and will stumble as you evade them, getting visually frustrated when you get out of reach. They may potentially fight amongst themselves, providing an opportunity to sneak past. Depending on their color, they employ various hunting tactics for those they deem prey; not just the slugcat. Lizards are not at the top of the food chain though, and will flee when more dangerous predators make an appearance, shifting its focus away from the slugcat to one of self-preservation. The world's inconsistent nature, as well as the creature variety and their innate unpredictability, keeps you on your toes and creates for a consistently engaging experience.
All in all, slugcat is given equally as much world significance as every single other creature in the game. It's an ecosystem that happens around slugcat, not because of it. Just as you scour for food, each creature does as well. When the rain is imminently close to falling, animals will all but ignore you while they’re fleeing themselves. It cannot be understated how much this affects the core of Rain World's gameplay, and sets it apart from everything else.
The visuals cannot be properly described through a review, since you'd just have to see for yourself, but let me tell you they're some of the most gorgeous I've witnessed. It's pixel art at its absolute finest, and I have nothing but respect for the artist who painstakingly crafted it. It's detailed beyond belief, and the lighting system just makes everything pop out even more. Superstructures and destroyed worlds, especially if they’re combined as such, tend to elicit powerful feelings from me, so there is some bias, but I think it’s undeniable how damn the game looks. Handfuls of times I'd catch myself stopping and admiring many of the environments and vistas, two of which are my favorite in any game. They're very high up; those who know, know.
Perfectly complementing the regions’ visuals is the music. MAN, what a soundtrack this game has. It’s light on, but not devoid of, music you’d bop your head to, but there’s an emphasis on atmospheric ones. The latter usually play when transitioning between regions, or in dead-end areas, and when it does… it’s so easy to get instantaneously pulled in, is how I’d describe it. Immersed. Engrossed. Some other synonym. It’s giving me goosebumps just remembering some of the key moments and areas where their sole function is to provide immaculate vibes. On that note, something I don’t see discussed often is the amount of spots in each region that are functionally useless in normal gameplay, yet simply serve to flesh out the world. Prime environmental storytelling.
I cannot touch on the narrative and overall worldbuilding in a detailed manner because I’m frankly not super versed in the Buddhism it takes after. I will say though, the method of which Rain World slowly reveals its themes is stellar. Not a single line of dialogue; nothing is explicitly told… in the first half, at least. It’s all told through worldbuilding. You’ll have to really go out of your way to find more details. By the end, I was so friggin hooked that I’m fairly certain it has changed my brain chemistry and how I perceive life. Gazing upon the ending screens, emotions boiled over and had me crying tears of relief and joy. My life in this world flashed before my eyes as I reflected on the harrowing journey that I had endured. It was finally conquered. A truly ethereal experience this game pans out to be. I love it so much.
If there’s one thing I regret after playing Rain World is if I’ll be able to enjoy other games as much. My standards for what a game should strive to be have been raised even higher than they once were. It isn’t for everyone, though, as much as I wish every person could experience it in its entirety. It’s frustrating and obtuse as all hell - sometimes genuinely unfair - and it’ll heavily depend on whether or not that’s a good thing. For me at least, its unflinching, uncompromising resolve to portray living as a prey animal in a decrepit world’s ecosystem is what elevates it far and beyond what I’ve already played, and likely what I will ever play.
Rain World strives to be unique in every sense of the word. Each facet of the game oozes with originality and passion, to the gameplay, narrative, art direction, setting, music, world building... all of which blends together to create a frankly masterful work of art. It isn't common that games who try to be one-of-a-kind are, well, good, but Rain World is a different case. Sure, if you pick apart each individual gameplay quirk and inspect it under a microscope, it wouldn't seem that great. This is because, as a whole, the game is designed to be a representation of nature; a living ecosystem. It isn't fair. It doesn't hold your hand. It holds no quarter. It wasn't made to be marketable or streamlined, and instead tailors an experience unlike any other. You do not belong in this world, and it's made abundantly clear. This is accomplished by finely tuning every aspect to accentuate the ludonarrative harmony the developers were aiming to achieve, and makes for one of the most immersive worlds one could ever experience in this medium.
To start things off, you are given a short and cute intro cinematic, then plopped into the game as a creature called a slugcat. Weak and hunted by everything, you must rely on a keen eye, cunning tactics, patience, and perseverance above all else to survive in the harsh environment that is threatened to be drowned by the torrential rain. Steady amounts of food must be acquired, deadly predators must be avoided, and shelter must be found to survive just one cycle among many as you explore the regions. Death is punishing, as it delays your progression into new areas, forcing you to play well and learn your environment, as well as avoiding those who'd see the slugcat fit as a meal. Knowing how easily it is to have progress snatched away at a moment’s notice, every victory becomes immensely satisfying.
The first immediate thing that becomes apparent is the movement. It is simple on the surface, with 4 movement keys and 3 interactive buttons - jump, grab, and throw. Slugcat feels slow and clumsy to control at first, which adds to the feeling of vulnerability. However, therein exists a plethora of completely unexplained techniques and mechanics that, while not essential to master, will aid massively. Learning how to lodge spears into the ground/walls, wall jump, backflip, roll, slide, leap, and combine any of these is satisfying in both practice and application. Schmoving around the environment has never felt so rewarding, and that is due to how fundamentally limiting it is.
Said environment is extremely varied in how it's structured and designed to be interesting to navigate around in. I'll touch on the visuals later, but the way the world connects together reminds me of my enjoyment of my first Dark Souls playthrough, and makes me excited to play it again after writing this. Rain World's... world isn't static, either. The world goes on around you even when you aren't present to see it, and creatures will not be in the same spots they were last time, making for circumstances that will never mirror a previous instance. Heights are terrifying, the open sky is terrifying, tunnel mazes are terrifying, large stretches of water are terrifying. Come to think of it, it’s harsher than the aforementioned game, which I didn’t think was possible until playing this.
Creatures and predators are animated and programmed in such a way that they are always unpredictable and always scary. One example among many is the Lizards: they are aggressive and kill slugcat in one bite (like most creatures), but they are large, and will stumble as you evade them, getting visually frustrated when you get out of reach. They may potentially fight amongst themselves, providing an opportunity to sneak past. Depending on their color, they employ various hunting tactics for those they deem prey; not just the slugcat. Lizards are not at the top of the food chain though, and will flee when more dangerous predators make an appearance, shifting its focus away from the slugcat to one of self-preservation. The world's inconsistent nature, as well as the creature variety and their innate unpredictability, keeps you on your toes and creates for a consistently engaging experience.
All in all, slugcat is given equally as much world significance as every single other creature in the game. It's an ecosystem that happens around slugcat, not because of it. Just as you scour for food, each creature does as well. When the rain is imminently close to falling, animals will all but ignore you while they’re fleeing themselves. It cannot be understated how much this affects the core of Rain World's gameplay, and sets it apart from everything else.
The visuals cannot be properly described through a review, since you'd just have to see for yourself, but let me tell you they're some of the most gorgeous I've witnessed. It's pixel art at its absolute finest, and I have nothing but respect for the artist who painstakingly crafted it. It's detailed beyond belief, and the lighting system just makes everything pop out even more. Superstructures and destroyed worlds, especially if they’re combined as such, tend to elicit powerful feelings from me, so there is some bias, but I think it’s undeniable how damn the game looks. Handfuls of times I'd catch myself stopping and admiring many of the environments and vistas, two of which are my favorite in any game. They're very high up; those who know, know.
Perfectly complementing the regions’ visuals is the music. MAN, what a soundtrack this game has. It’s light on, but not devoid of, music you’d bop your head to, but there’s an emphasis on atmospheric ones. The latter usually play when transitioning between regions, or in dead-end areas, and when it does… it’s so easy to get instantaneously pulled in, is how I’d describe it. Immersed. Engrossed. Some other synonym. It’s giving me goosebumps just remembering some of the key moments and areas where their sole function is to provide immaculate vibes. On that note, something I don’t see discussed often is the amount of spots in each region that are functionally useless in normal gameplay, yet simply serve to flesh out the world. Prime environmental storytelling.
I cannot touch on the narrative and overall worldbuilding in a detailed manner because I’m frankly not super versed in the Buddhism it takes after. I will say though, the method of which Rain World slowly reveals its themes is stellar. Not a single line of dialogue; nothing is explicitly told… in the first half, at least. It’s all told through worldbuilding. You’ll have to really go out of your way to find more details. By the end, I was so friggin hooked that I’m fairly certain it has changed my brain chemistry and how I perceive life. Gazing upon the ending screens, emotions boiled over and had me crying tears of relief and joy. My life in this world flashed before my eyes as I reflected on the harrowing journey that I had endured. It was finally conquered. A truly ethereal experience this game pans out to be. I love it so much.
If there’s one thing I regret after playing Rain World is if I’ll be able to enjoy other games as much. My standards for what a game should strive to be have been raised even higher than they once were. It isn’t for everyone, though, as much as I wish every person could experience it in its entirety. It’s frustrating and obtuse as all hell - sometimes genuinely unfair - and it’ll heavily depend on whether or not that’s a good thing. For me at least, its unflinching, uncompromising resolve to portray living as a prey animal in a decrepit world’s ecosystem is what elevates it far and beyond what I’ve already played, and likely what I will ever play.
Looking up a wiki for this game before finishing it might be one of the biggest regrets I've had in my entire life.
This might be one of the hardest games I've actually bothered to beat, and while all of the difficulty is intentional and adds to what the game is trying to convey, which I really respect it for… it is a damn unforgiving experience, and I think one frustrating to the point of ruining a lot of its own atmosphere for me. I have a lot of respect for it, but I couldn't say if I actually think it was worth playing.
This game was fantastic its something I want to eventually finish, but I'm not sure if I'll ever be good enough to
Rain world is a game where you must fight to survive in a harsh and difficult post apocalyptic world where everything is out to kill you. In the beginning you just get thrown into this world without any explanation and you must figure out how to get food and avoid being food wich is hard because youre at the bottom of the food chain. The game does an excelent job at making this place feel like a lived in ecosystem but because of that youre going to die, a lot. The game is and always will be niche because of brutally hard this game is. it does not pull punches. If you decide to take things slow you will soon realize that after 10 or so minutes it will rain like pure hell upon your fragile body. You will die in the rain and will die by the proceeding flood caused by the rain if you do not find shelter soon. exploring all the different environments is a joy even if youre going to die from all the scary monsters there. Rainworld is a harsh game and if youre thinking of playing it you should know that you ARE going to die and get frustrated at some point and at that point youll probably give up on it as have i on several occasions but if you stick through it you will find a very special videogame.
Insanely Difficult but once you got some play time it becomes one of the best games to ever be made
the best game ever that i hate playing
very fun
This game does some amazing shit but then gets waaaaayyyy too hard and frustrating but I almost want to recommend it just for that first bit
maaan im sorry i hate the cycle system, feels like im actively being punished for not getting good luck and for dying. if my progress wasnt actively being halted by the cycle system, i probably would have kept playing. i dont like feeling like i made 0 progress after a couple hours just because my luck was awful lol
haha funny slugcat
The most unique game I've ever played
An incredibly fascinating game that's worth playing just to see the care put into the animal ecosystem. No other game will put you in the eyes of the "bottom of the food chain" animal and make you cower from every moving thing. It reminds me of the Metroid Dread horror sections but fully fledged and the thrill is very enduring. That only hurdle for me is the game is not great at showing you where to go or what to do. Even movement options are waiting to be discovered in non intuitive ways. The guide character is often unclear or spazzes around creating confusion on progression. Still a great play with always lively art style/animation.
easily the most cohesive game I've ever played, by far. no other game feels as tightly wound together in every single aspect as this one. endlessly inspiring and uniquely challenging. please play it to see the extent of what I mean, and don't give up easily.