Anarchic Fox on 3/2/2023 at 23:35

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I am in love with this game. I haven't felt this way about a game since Dark Souls. Time to proselytize.

Rain World is a survival game with physics-based platforming, set in a richly simulated post-civilization ecosystem. You play as a "slugcat," basically a sentient tool-using pine marten in the middle of the food chain. Each cycle gives you a short period of time (about ten to fifteen minutes) to forage and explore before the crushing rain starts to pour. You start and end cycles in shelters evenly spaced across the automapped levels, whose maps are retained even after death. Hibernation requires three (on easy) or four (on normal) food items. Your basic food sources are hanging fruit and delicious bats, whose location you can roughly sense on the automap. There are many more food sources, each requiring some deduction or intuition on your part. A plethora of predators stand in your way, whose behavior is finely simulated. You can at times feel the frustration or anger of a thwarted predator. The lizards feel suitably lacertilian, the vultures suitably avian, the insects suitably insectoid, and the godawful monstrosities suitably godawful.

The platforming is astonishingly fun for a game whose jump height is no taller than the height of its character. The jump (there are two kinds, distinguished by horizontal speed) mainly provides horizontal mobility, while vertical movement is best achieved by climbing. You quickly reach the point where you can reliably gauge your jumps. The gorgeous levels, each individually drawn, nonetheless have consistent units of dimension, allowing you to gauge your possibilities; for instance, you can crawl up through one-unit-wide spaces, and wall-jump up two- or three-unit ones. Building on these basics are an absurd number of advanced techniques; only yesterday, after some sixty hours of play, did I realize that I can kick off corners in tunnels for a substantial speed boost. Many of these advanced techniques involve your tools, which can be carried two at a time. The basic ones are bits of rubble (good for distraction or stunning an enemy) and rebar spears, good for attacking or creating impromptu platforms. The combat involving these spears has such a high skill ceiling that I still feel like I'm only middling at it. Then there are all sorts of situational items, like a small grub that can either be eaten or thrown (in open spaces) to attract its avian parents. I'm still figuring out new uses and interactions for objects, dozens hours in.

The ecosystem doesn't revolve around you. Other critters share your taste for bats, and may harass you if you compete with them. A small insect carrying eggs on its back is a welcome sight, being a complete meal on its own, but lizards also savor these. The same lizards that plague you are easy prey to vultures, and if a creature is in your way, waiting for some kind of systemic interaction between it and a newcomer is usually a better option than fighting. However, such a creature will rarely block your path entirely, because the maps are designed to allow multiple routes, both on the level of individual screens and on the macroscopic level. Broadly speaking, cycles become safer later on, as some predators are killed and others retire, well-fed, to their dens. If nothing else, everything flees to shelter when the rain approaches, giving you a minute of unhindered travel. To emphasize how much freedom there is even on a large scale, to reach the first major objective, a player might descend into the drainage system, emerge in vast garbage dump, then traverse a shoreline crowded with derelict machinery. On the other hand, that player might ascend to a industrial area, from there find a shadowy ruin, and struggle their way through to find themself at the end of the shoreline area. (These are not the only options!) All of these areas are gorgeous, each individually drawn room enhanced with various lighting effects.

The setting is post-humanity, but not, strictly speaking, post-apocalyptic. Rather, a hyper-advanced species converted every last bit of land to industrial, agricultural or residential use, before gradually dwindling away in pursuit of transcendence. The game is a masterclass in environmental storytelling. The original game featured three characters (corresponding to difficulty levels), but each has its own individual story, and the expansion adds five more. The game's biggest downside is its high difficulty, but to go along with this there is a high skill ceiling. My first game was a relentless struggle, where every new shelter reached was a big accomplishment. After beating the game once and starting anew to redo a decision I regretted, I found food plentiful and the foes much more surmountable. Then I tried the higher difficulty character and was right back in the struggle.

By God this game is good. It took force of will not to go back to playing it while I wrote this.

Aja on 22/3/2023 at 19:53

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I've been meaning to reply to this thread but I wasn't sure if I should because I actually kind of hate Rain World. Granted, I've only played it for an hour or so, but I did not get on with the controls at all: the jump is way too short, climbing is fiddly, and I felt like I was fumbling constantly, which just led to death after death. The game also provided no guidance for what I should actually be doing or how the obscure save/death system works.

That said, on paper it does sound like something I would like, and I'm enjoying your writeups, AF, so I should probably give it another try.

Anarchic Fox on 22/3/2023 at 21:50

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Oh, there are good reasons to dislike Rain World. The platforming, being physics-based, is quirky and unintuitive. Almost all the game mechanics and advanced movement techniques go unexplained. Sometimes death is unavoidable. But I fell in love with it regardless.

There is guidance, though: do what the little yellow pal tells you to do. That will carry you through a third of the game, possibly two thirds depending on a choice you make. Also, don't go through karma gates with high requirements early on, because they lead to tougher areas.