Andrei Tarkovsky's PAC-MAN
If you had a dream for an entirely original game concept, how much would you be willing to compromise your vision for more sales? If it was possible to quantify such a thing, imagine that making it more appealing to the mainstream by 5% would also increase reception and sales by 5%. Would you stick to your guns and create a completely uncompromised game, even if it meant a Metacritic score of 50? Maybe making it just a little easier or a little more direct would be enough, just so you get to the 70 range and a trickle of word-of-mouth sales. It wouldn’t be a best-seller, but if someone was interested enough to buy it, they would be likely to finish the game with a positive experience.
Rain World decided not to compromise even 1%. This game wants to make a statement about nature, and saw the tiniest bit of compromise to make it fair or predictable as antithetical to the message. For starters, you play as a lonely Slugcat, a defenseless rodent trying to locate the rest of its kind in a journey across an industrial zone overtaken by nature. While predators can snap you up in one bite and machines can crush you effortlessly, all you’re able to do is pick up stuff, throw items, climb, and eat. Your journey is a progression from water lock to water lock, hiding each night from a torrential flood of rain which also kills you instantly. To not starve in the middle of the night, you need to have at least four stocks of food, and surviving a night increases your progression meter by one. Filling this meter to a certain level is required to open the doors between the major areas, but dying means the loss of two levels. This means that to progress to a new area, you have to scour for food sources on a time limit while avoiding unpredictable instant-kill predators and any mistake means you have to repeat the process at least two more times. Once you get to a new area, there isn’t always an immediate water lock, so you have to quickly explore and avoid the new predators after spending most of your time just entering the area in the first place. While those are just the basics, it gives a taste of just how brutal the survival in this game is. I quit the game three times before pushing myself to finish it, and even then I wasn’t exactly having fun.
The reason I'm belaboring the point of just how little fun I had in this uncompromising murderscape is twofold: firstly, to let you know what you’re getting into if you do decide to buy it, which you just might when you hear that secondly, all the pain was worth it. It all paid off. The slow reveal of the game’s themes was absolutely magical. The ending was a perfect mesh of story and gameplay satisfaction, where I felt like I accomplished something and really learned something. It’s the most satisfied I’ve ever felt when completing a game in my entire life. It’s probably going to end up in my top ten games of all time. If all this sounds intriguing to you, and you think you can handle the pain, I’ll be cheering for you every step of the way. Stay dry, Slugcat.
Rain World decided not to compromise even 1%. This game wants to make a statement about nature, and saw the tiniest bit of compromise to make it fair or predictable as antithetical to the message. For starters, you play as a lonely Slugcat, a defenseless rodent trying to locate the rest of its kind in a journey across an industrial zone overtaken by nature. While predators can snap you up in one bite and machines can crush you effortlessly, all you’re able to do is pick up stuff, throw items, climb, and eat. Your journey is a progression from water lock to water lock, hiding each night from a torrential flood of rain which also kills you instantly. To not starve in the middle of the night, you need to have at least four stocks of food, and surviving a night increases your progression meter by one. Filling this meter to a certain level is required to open the doors between the major areas, but dying means the loss of two levels. This means that to progress to a new area, you have to scour for food sources on a time limit while avoiding unpredictable instant-kill predators and any mistake means you have to repeat the process at least two more times. Once you get to a new area, there isn’t always an immediate water lock, so you have to quickly explore and avoid the new predators after spending most of your time just entering the area in the first place. While those are just the basics, it gives a taste of just how brutal the survival in this game is. I quit the game three times before pushing myself to finish it, and even then I wasn’t exactly having fun.
The reason I'm belaboring the point of just how little fun I had in this uncompromising murderscape is twofold: firstly, to let you know what you’re getting into if you do decide to buy it, which you just might when you hear that secondly, all the pain was worth it. It all paid off. The slow reveal of the game’s themes was absolutely magical. The ending was a perfect mesh of story and gameplay satisfaction, where I felt like I accomplished something and really learned something. It’s the most satisfied I’ve ever felt when completing a game in my entire life. It’s probably going to end up in my top ten games of all time. If all this sounds intriguing to you, and you think you can handle the pain, I’ll be cheering for you every step of the way. Stay dry, Slugcat.
Thirty-five odd years ago, the first Metroid proved that game design wasn't an exact science. Corridors that led to nothing, rooms that looked identical, enemies that could damage you in loading zones. All horrible ideas, stuff that would end up making the game understandably impalatable to the modern tongue, but also important, essential, even, to characterizing a truly hostile world. Later entries in the series significantly neutered this feeling, creating environments that players weren't only comfortable traversing, but staying in for extended periods of time, meticulously collecting every health tank and missile upgrade. It seems apparent that trying to make something genuinely alien will always be at odds with "good" game design, which typically revolves around the familiar, the intuitive, and the satisfying, but it's still a shame that the original Metroid's vision never wound up fully realized.
Until now, that is, and from Adult Swim of all publishers. The Rain World mantra is simple: you don't belong here, this world owes you nothing, and it will give you nothing that you don't take for yourself. You probably won't beat this game, and you definitely won't get 100% map completion. You'll have to excuse the obvious hackery of mentioning both Metroid and Dark Souls in the same review, but it's enchanting the way a first playthrough of Dark Souls is enchanting. A world as harsh as it is beautiful, with the desire to learn more about it your only motivation through its crushing difficulty. But, by comparison, even Lordran offered more kindness. At least, there, stairs were built for your feet and ladders for your arms. There are no bonfires in the rain world, instead your only points of safety constrained, metallic cages, as if complete isolation from the outside world your only true protection from it. Play perfectly for an entire cycle and you still might die to something outside of your control, right before getting to the next shelter. That's bad game design, just like any unfair mechanic is, but Rain World has loftier ambitions than being a well-designed game. Traditionally, unkillable enemies exist to be defeated later in a cinematic, cathartic payoff, but here, predators never stop being terrifying. Neither do heights, neither does the open sky, and neither does rain. Terrain should subtly guide you to where you're supposed to go next, and entrances to new regions definitely shouldn't be unceremoniously hidden in plain sight. We wouldn't want players to miss something important, would we? My only nitpicks come from the few concessions to this mentality. Mainly, the map, which too often serves as a nondiegetic crutch for players to lean on. It's hard to imagine anyone being able to complete the game without it, but that really only reinforces my argument. What's less understandable is the inclusion of the yellow ghosts, which seemingly show up when you're playing badly in order to patronizingly point out food and enemies.
But assessing Rain World's flaws truly puts its monumental strengths into perspective. Because what's possibly more impressive than everything that went right is the sheer amount of things that could've gone wrong. The game could've used upgrades to create a concrete sense of progression, an artificial way to counteract being at the mercy of your environment. The experience could've been cheapened with side characters or a more explicit narrative. If the enemy AI was even slightly more predictable, or the creature design not consistently haunting, then the exhilaration of a chase would've been greatly diminished. If there wasn't an enormously deep bag of tricks to figure out, both regarding how the game works at large and what your character is capable of, then it wouldn't be able to require so much creativity in its minute problem-solving. Things might've gotten stale if every single region didn't have a distinct way to throw you even further out of your element. And none of this stuff would've mattered if each and every screen wasn't individually memorable in how it tests a specific part of your skills, and yet meticulously constructed to feel naturalistic. Locations effortlessly fit together to paint a world where you don't belong, but also one that you can conquer if you're clever, persistent, and lucky enough. As it stands now, Rain World is a supreme balancing act, its resounding success as improbable as the survival of a slugcat in the wild. Undoubtedly one of the premiere achievements of the generation, and, hopefully, one of the most important.
Until now, that is, and from Adult Swim of all publishers. The Rain World mantra is simple: you don't belong here, this world owes you nothing, and it will give you nothing that you don't take for yourself. You probably won't beat this game, and you definitely won't get 100% map completion. You'll have to excuse the obvious hackery of mentioning both Metroid and Dark Souls in the same review, but it's enchanting the way a first playthrough of Dark Souls is enchanting. A world as harsh as it is beautiful, with the desire to learn more about it your only motivation through its crushing difficulty. But, by comparison, even Lordran offered more kindness. At least, there, stairs were built for your feet and ladders for your arms. There are no bonfires in the rain world, instead your only points of safety constrained, metallic cages, as if complete isolation from the outside world your only true protection from it. Play perfectly for an entire cycle and you still might die to something outside of your control, right before getting to the next shelter. That's bad game design, just like any unfair mechanic is, but Rain World has loftier ambitions than being a well-designed game. Traditionally, unkillable enemies exist to be defeated later in a cinematic, cathartic payoff, but here, predators never stop being terrifying. Neither do heights, neither does the open sky, and neither does rain. Terrain should subtly guide you to where you're supposed to go next, and entrances to new regions definitely shouldn't be unceremoniously hidden in plain sight. We wouldn't want players to miss something important, would we? My only nitpicks come from the few concessions to this mentality. Mainly, the map, which too often serves as a nondiegetic crutch for players to lean on. It's hard to imagine anyone being able to complete the game without it, but that really only reinforces my argument. What's less understandable is the inclusion of the yellow ghosts, which seemingly show up when you're playing badly in order to patronizingly point out food and enemies.
But assessing Rain World's flaws truly puts its monumental strengths into perspective. Because what's possibly more impressive than everything that went right is the sheer amount of things that could've gone wrong. The game could've used upgrades to create a concrete sense of progression, an artificial way to counteract being at the mercy of your environment. The experience could've been cheapened with side characters or a more explicit narrative. If the enemy AI was even slightly more predictable, or the creature design not consistently haunting, then the exhilaration of a chase would've been greatly diminished. If there wasn't an enormously deep bag of tricks to figure out, both regarding how the game works at large and what your character is capable of, then it wouldn't be able to require so much creativity in its minute problem-solving. Things might've gotten stale if every single region didn't have a distinct way to throw you even further out of your element. And none of this stuff would've mattered if each and every screen wasn't individually memorable in how it tests a specific part of your skills, and yet meticulously constructed to feel naturalistic. Locations effortlessly fit together to paint a world where you don't belong, but also one that you can conquer if you're clever, persistent, and lucky enough. As it stands now, Rain World is a supreme balancing act, its resounding success as improbable as the survival of a slugcat in the wild. Undoubtedly one of the premiere achievements of the generation, and, hopefully, one of the most important.
how early is too early for me to call my shot on the quality of something? i'm not asking this to be facetious, i'm genuinely curious. the reason i ask is that i highly doubt the quality of rain world will falter from my current point in the game. i'm only about say, 3 or 4 hours in? and it's already one of the most impressive games i've played in my life. every frame has been filled with such grace and beauty, while every interaction with the world and it's ecosystem has been lung-crushingly tense at best and downright terrifying at worst. it's chewed me up and spit me out over and over again, but i keep coming back to push through the brutal struggle. if that's not a sign of a special game, i don't know what is.
after i finish the game i may make a vein attempt to write something more formal about it, and by extension probably remove this journal entry to clean up my page a little. for the time being i can only speak for my experience through the first few levels, but if this section is indicative of the quality of the game as a whole, I suspect i'll comfortably be able to call this a masterpiece.
after i finish the game i may make a vein attempt to write something more formal about it, and by extension probably remove this journal entry to clean up my page a little. for the time being i can only speak for my experience through the first few levels, but if this section is indicative of the quality of the game as a whole, I suspect i'll comfortably be able to call this a masterpiece.
honestly, this is an all-timer.
Completing Survivor difficulty on Rain World was one of the hardest experiences I've had with a game. It's not that the game is cruel, or unkind. More that it, and the world it places you within, exhibit a deep indifference towards your survival or success. Predators are everywhere and some will for a long time feel actively unfair, so much of your long-term survival necessitates you experimenting in order to learn and understand but in doing so likely dying in the process, multiple progress-critical mechanics are never explained to you. You need to eat, you need to escape the overwhelming, consuming rainfall, and somehow you need to not let your spirit be broken in the process.
Rain World is an incredibly hard sell. So much of its obtuse construction flies in the face of more standardised "good game design". It's almost impossible not to end up deeply frustrated with the game at some point on your first playthrough as you start to feel trapped into some corner of the map, feeling at the mercy of the harsh world around you and its seeming unpredictability. I will say that the only content in the game I really consider bad is the Rain Deers in the Farm Arrays, and that outside of that basically every moment of frustration did bear considerable fruit for me in the end. Try to find the strength to continue even in those darkest of moments.
You see, for all those struggles and frustrations, all the obtuseness, the game managed to achieve some incredible moments for me. The big one is that, dramatically more so than the vast majority of games, you genuinely feel like you're playing out the role of this strange little slugcat. The desperation to find food, the awareness of the ticking clock as the rain beckons, the panic as predators chase you down and there's not time to think or process and you genuinely have to turn to instinct to figure out how to escape. At its best Rain World is so immensely immersive, the rush you feel speaking less to the feeling of wanting to do well in a videogame and more to the feeling of wanting, desperately, to survive.
It's just such a deeply emotional experience to me. All that frustration is worth it for the time where you manage to find a bunker, deep into unknown territory, mere moments before the rain sweeps you away, or the time you escape multiple predators all closing in on you at once against what feels like insurmountable odds, or finally, finally understanding your movement and the nearby enemies and the surrounding landscape well enough, alongside just the right amount of luck, to break through a pathway that has had you stuck for ages. Curling up in your newfound bunker and getting to rest easy, feel safe, if only for a moment.
There's more to the game than this too. The game ends up turning into a very profound, even spiritual, experience in ways I couldn't really see coming even though I knew others have had similar experiences with it, and in ways I'm still processing the day after finishing it and will likely continue processing for a while (update from almost a year later; this aspect of the game has burrowed into my head wholly and completely, my fascination with the game's Buddhist themes grow with time unendingly). In my playthrough both the central couple hours and the final couple hours were remarkable to me and left a huge impression. I don't want to drift into spoilery territory though, so will leave that there.
Rain World is such a very hard game to recommend, and requires a lot of effort from you to meet it on its own terms, but the experience I had with the game is something that will stick with me for a long time.
Rain World is an incredibly hard sell. So much of its obtuse construction flies in the face of more standardised "good game design". It's almost impossible not to end up deeply frustrated with the game at some point on your first playthrough as you start to feel trapped into some corner of the map, feeling at the mercy of the harsh world around you and its seeming unpredictability. I will say that the only content in the game I really consider bad is the Rain Deers in the Farm Arrays, and that outside of that basically every moment of frustration did bear considerable fruit for me in the end. Try to find the strength to continue even in those darkest of moments.
You see, for all those struggles and frustrations, all the obtuseness, the game managed to achieve some incredible moments for me. The big one is that, dramatically more so than the vast majority of games, you genuinely feel like you're playing out the role of this strange little slugcat. The desperation to find food, the awareness of the ticking clock as the rain beckons, the panic as predators chase you down and there's not time to think or process and you genuinely have to turn to instinct to figure out how to escape. At its best Rain World is so immensely immersive, the rush you feel speaking less to the feeling of wanting to do well in a videogame and more to the feeling of wanting, desperately, to survive.
It's just such a deeply emotional experience to me. All that frustration is worth it for the time where you manage to find a bunker, deep into unknown territory, mere moments before the rain sweeps you away, or the time you escape multiple predators all closing in on you at once against what feels like insurmountable odds, or finally, finally understanding your movement and the nearby enemies and the surrounding landscape well enough, alongside just the right amount of luck, to break through a pathway that has had you stuck for ages. Curling up in your newfound bunker and getting to rest easy, feel safe, if only for a moment.
There's more to the game than this too. The game ends up turning into a very profound, even spiritual, experience in ways I couldn't really see coming even though I knew others have had similar experiences with it, and in ways I'm still processing the day after finishing it and will likely continue processing for a while (update from almost a year later; this aspect of the game has burrowed into my head wholly and completely, my fascination with the game's Buddhist themes grow with time unendingly). In my playthrough both the central couple hours and the final couple hours were remarkable to me and left a huge impression. I don't want to drift into spoilery territory though, so will leave that there.
Rain World is such a very hard game to recommend, and requires a lot of effort from you to meet it on its own terms, but the experience I had with the game is something that will stick with me for a long time.
it is quite a rare thing in this industry nowadays for a game to be genuinely innovative, something that cannot be neatly placed in any one category or easily compared to other works. you could say that rain world takes cues from survival games and metroidvanias, but the crucial bit is that it doesn't let itself get constricted by any genre conventions. it borrows what works and leaves behind what doesn't. how easy would it have been to emphasize the combat a bit more, expand the offensive capabilities, add some bosses here and there? how easy would it have been to make the levels a little bit more neatly structured and paced, to gate exploration and progression behind a lock and key structure? how easy would it have been to make the enemies a tad more predictable, more exploitable, more "fair"? in all likelihood these were enticing temptations; they're tried and true methods of game design that would've served to make the game more marketable, more familiar, more accessible - and worse. instead, rain world has the courage to coalesce into something original. something new. something that's not afraid to question even the most entrenched pieces of game design wisdom, like the notion that games should always strive to be fair, or even fun. it's the sort of game that this industry desperately needs more of. in a just world, this will be looked at in about a decade or so as an influential classic that spawned many imitators and successors. there's no guarantee that'll happen though, because, as rain world itself takes care to remind you, the world doesn't operate on just principles. sometimes, all one can do is hope for the best.
Rain World is a lot of things.
It's one of the most frustrating and challenging games I've ever played.
It's a game where every small success feels like a legitimate accomplishment and where earned comfort, rare as it may be, is relief like no other.
It's a game with a breathtaking world to explore. Every single area is gigantic and inspires your curiosity. Every single screen - of which there are thousands - is lovingly assembled and full of detail.
It's a game that nails its fascinating ecosystem. Animals in this game aren't just 'enemies,' they're realistic creatures with autonomy and personality. Sometimes they'll fight amongst themselves or get stuck and appear frustrated. Sometimes they'll just lounge around and seem uninterested in you.
It's a game that rewards you for being interested in its world, where you can learn things through observation and apply them to improve your gameplay.
It's a game with amazing animations, art direction, and music, which do justice to the rest of its elements.
It's a game full of small details and environmental storytelling that you could theorycraft about to no end.
But more than anything, Rain World is a game about making you feel small and unimportant.
The gameplay tells you this - it doesn't even offer you the precedent of fairness. You will die a lot, sometimes to things that seem unavoidable. The world tells you this. Its post-apocalyptic setting communicates that - even for a people much more powerful than you - this world consumes all. Their ruined architecture exists on a scale you can barely understand.
This overwhelming humility is one of the most powerful things a game has ever made me feel. It makes me sad that no other games like this exist. Undoubtedly one of the best and most unique experiences I've ever had with the medium, and one of my favorite games of all time.
It's one of the most frustrating and challenging games I've ever played.
It's a game where every small success feels like a legitimate accomplishment and where earned comfort, rare as it may be, is relief like no other.
It's a game with a breathtaking world to explore. Every single area is gigantic and inspires your curiosity. Every single screen - of which there are thousands - is lovingly assembled and full of detail.
It's a game that nails its fascinating ecosystem. Animals in this game aren't just 'enemies,' they're realistic creatures with autonomy and personality. Sometimes they'll fight amongst themselves or get stuck and appear frustrated. Sometimes they'll just lounge around and seem uninterested in you.
It's a game that rewards you for being interested in its world, where you can learn things through observation and apply them to improve your gameplay.
It's a game with amazing animations, art direction, and music, which do justice to the rest of its elements.
It's a game full of small details and environmental storytelling that you could theorycraft about to no end.
But more than anything, Rain World is a game about making you feel small and unimportant.
The gameplay tells you this - it doesn't even offer you the precedent of fairness. You will die a lot, sometimes to things that seem unavoidable. The world tells you this. Its post-apocalyptic setting communicates that - even for a people much more powerful than you - this world consumes all. Their ruined architecture exists on a scale you can barely understand.
This overwhelming humility is one of the most powerful things a game has ever made me feel. It makes me sad that no other games like this exist. Undoubtedly one of the best and most unique experiences I've ever had with the medium, and one of my favorite games of all time.
No somos una criatura indefensa. Somos un depredador medio, capaz de usar herramientas, aprender, resolver problemas, hacer amigos y enemigos. Las pantallas fijas funcionan a ratos como laberintos plataformeros en los que hacer parkour y jugar al pilla pilla con caricaturescos monstruos, a ratos como pinturas románticas, con el pequeño animalito descentrado en la composición en contraste con una imponente arquitectura abandonada donde jeroglíficos y grafitis se confunden. Pantallas conectadas en un gran mundo de ecosistemas en diálogo, con nosotros y entre sí. Slugcat, cazador-recolector-explorador-aventurero y, finalmente, peregrino en busca de una salida a un ciclo claustrofóbico.
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.
No greater indictment of the gaming press than the scorn for one of the most innovative games to come out since Demon's Souls. It's a game all about intrinsic reward as really most platformers are but in something like Super Metroid there is a reward in the way of powerups, the reward in Rain World is simply living to the next area and seeing what practical joke will be played on you.
I haven't seen a game that showed this much restraint since Ico. The game could've given you upgrades, a final boss, a significant crutch, a more present story, really anything your usual metroidvania would do but it didnt. The few concessions to minimalism like the map and the titles of the areas being shown never dampened the extreme immersive quality this game granted me.
Despite being quite game-y, this game probably bridges the cold reality of the world to the player in the best way possible, not simply because the game is "unfairly designed" but because it does actually feel like a real breathing ecosystem, the scavengers or lizards arent just obstacles for the player to engage in, they act like how animals would in real life, they go on living their life independent of the protagonists existence.
Very sad that in the mid 2010s indie game hype wave, this genius title comparatively got left out. I had only learned about this game in 2019 from Matthewmatosis and put it on the backburner till now.
I haven't seen a game that showed this much restraint since Ico. The game could've given you upgrades, a final boss, a significant crutch, a more present story, really anything your usual metroidvania would do but it didnt. The few concessions to minimalism like the map and the titles of the areas being shown never dampened the extreme immersive quality this game granted me.
Despite being quite game-y, this game probably bridges the cold reality of the world to the player in the best way possible, not simply because the game is "unfairly designed" but because it does actually feel like a real breathing ecosystem, the scavengers or lizards arent just obstacles for the player to engage in, they act like how animals would in real life, they go on living their life independent of the protagonists existence.
Very sad that in the mid 2010s indie game hype wave, this genius title comparatively got left out. I had only learned about this game in 2019 from Matthewmatosis and put it on the backburner till now.
It's kinda incredible just how uncompromising this is with what it wants to be, everything is contextualized and nothing is particularly convenient for the player. It all comes together perfectly to immerse the player into the mindset of the slugcat. It's stressful, beautiful and almost infinitely replayable to me. It may be flawed in a few aspects but i can't say it really has any strong detriments with how much it excels at most things and just how much it appeals to me personally. Also hunter mode has got to be one of the best hard modes in any game.
This review contains spoilers
I can't think of a game that confuses me more than Rain World, to the point that I doubt I can honestly give it any score at all. It defies measurement, for good and ill.
tl;dr – Rain World is a po-faced “Shaggy Dog” story in video game form that I can't quite leave alone even though I hate every moment.
First let's get what I like out of the way. It is an aggressive middle finger to the metroidvania genre (always a cause to celebrate). No upgrades, no cracked walls, no “that-ledge-is-too-high-when-do-I-get-the-double-jump,” and no Fisher-Price lock-and-key obviousness. Oh you think you'll find a treasure chest in the far-flung corner? NOPE SCREW YOU – only rain and death await thee, LOL.
Though I hate the “crapsack world” theme (more on that later), I can't deny that the world feels – alive. You don't know what it's going to do. You don't know where enemies will show up. Or how many. Are the scavengers dangerous? What about the giant bugs? There's a flicker of Subnautica's awe and fear with each encounter – that delicious tension of split-second decision: friend or foe?
The game doesn't care if three white lizards decide to park in the only viable path forward with no weapons available. This is frustrating as hell – but it's kinda real. No one designed this beyond some spawn points. It's just how it happened. I must admit this is compelling even though I'm tearing my hair out. I wish more games at least toyed with this beyond the rogue-like genre.
But Rain World's pros come with flip-side cons. What I dislike:
The rain cycle. Yes the thing in the title. It just ruins what the game has going for it. It would be more enjoyable to wait out enemies and sneak around if you didn't have a damnable ticking death clock of irregular length to stress you out. It sucks half the fun out of exploration. Why go looking into a far off corner if the Overseer's shelter hint is pointing the other way? The shelters are far and few between and food can be even more elusive. You've got to eat enough for hibernation and reach a shelter before the clock ticks down, all while avoiding predators more-often-than-not parked in the one path forward (see the flip-side?).
“But you're supposed to take your time, raise your karma, feel out the area, you've gotta coexist with it, like it's a real habitat!” But it's not a real habitat. It's merely a literalization, a words-become-worlds manifestation from the lips of that awful 'teacher' in Beasts of the Southern Wild: “YOU. ARE. MEAT!”
“But-but-but all the A.I., and the ecosystem – I saw YouTube videos about it, it's real!” Promise you, it's not. It's a crapsack world, i.e. 100% contrived. It's a thousand screens of intentional degradation and disrepair – a pathological bludgeoning of post-apocalyptic mind-numbing sameness. Yes, it's all rendered very strikingly and no doubt lovingly by the artists, and at least the color-palettes change, but whether it's the yellow-sky farm array or the pitch-black citadel, it's a dead place out to get you and there's no way to live in it. There's no welcoming Elysian field to balance the rot. At best you kind of make peace with the decay and move on before the next rain.
For all the tool-savvy smarts of your controllable slug-cat, there's no way to cultivate an area or make your own shelter. I'm not saying the game should be a farming sim, but if it wants you to take your time, it needs to let you leave your stamp. It needs a Resident-Evil typewriter room. A place with a pensive tune and a trunk. A place that lets you catch your breath before heading back into hell. And the rain shelters ain't it.
Finally, Shaggy Dog time. What I loathe:
The game's story sells you a bill of goods. Your character slips from the saving grip of its slugcat family, falling down (supposedly) into the land of Rain World. Then you start the game. What do you assume your goal is? To get back to your sluggycat family of course!
This. Never. Happens.
There's not a pip or squeak about your family for the rest of the game. The intro cinematic is a lie. It feels like the developers, upon play-testing, found that players had little motivation to progress through the game (due to all the disincentives already listed), so they felt the need to set up a false motivation at the beginning.
You can speculate all you want about the fate of the family, but it's in vain. Are they alive, somewhere in Rain World? Are they in a land far above it, where your sluggy fell from? Does each hibernation or death cycle pass just a day, a month, or a year? Or is it years? Decades? Eons? Has your slugcat family been dead since the first cycle? Are they rebirthing somewhere else? Is it just the regions of Rain World that are subject to the reincarnation cycle or is it the entire fictional planet? Does any of this even matter? Apparently NOT – the slugcat family is a red herring for which you will get no satisfaction.
“But the ascended host of faceless slugcats at the end – that's kind of like your family!”
This takes us, perhaps, to what I loathe most about Rain World.
I'm not a Buddhist by any stretch, but I have a healthy respect for the psychology of the chakras, and in my opinion, the chakras are poorly used and represented in this game. What does filling your stomach and surviving rain cycles have to do with ascension? Why does becoming prey reduce your level? In my readings, the chakras are all about enlightenment and state of mind – not food chain scoreboards.
The game is a one-sided cynic's reading of Buddhist Hinduism. All self-immolation, detachment, void, and darkness – it has no room for love, home, progress, and light. No, the cute pearl quests for Looks-To-The-Moon don't fix this. A glowing tree of ascended slugcats, shown for all of five seconds, doesn't balance the overwhelming Eldritch entity reducing you to a string of gray nothingness. That's the real heart of the game (and the developers): Lovecraftian horror.
This is why I hate Rain World.
It is a twenty-hour monument to despair.
tl;dr – Rain World is a po-faced “Shaggy Dog” story in video game form that I can't quite leave alone even though I hate every moment.
First let's get what I like out of the way. It is an aggressive middle finger to the metroidvania genre (always a cause to celebrate). No upgrades, no cracked walls, no “that-ledge-is-too-high-when-do-I-get-the-double-jump,” and no Fisher-Price lock-and-key obviousness. Oh you think you'll find a treasure chest in the far-flung corner? NOPE SCREW YOU – only rain and death await thee, LOL.
Though I hate the “crapsack world” theme (more on that later), I can't deny that the world feels – alive. You don't know what it's going to do. You don't know where enemies will show up. Or how many. Are the scavengers dangerous? What about the giant bugs? There's a flicker of Subnautica's awe and fear with each encounter – that delicious tension of split-second decision: friend or foe?
The game doesn't care if three white lizards decide to park in the only viable path forward with no weapons available. This is frustrating as hell – but it's kinda real. No one designed this beyond some spawn points. It's just how it happened. I must admit this is compelling even though I'm tearing my hair out. I wish more games at least toyed with this beyond the rogue-like genre.
But Rain World's pros come with flip-side cons. What I dislike:
The rain cycle. Yes the thing in the title. It just ruins what the game has going for it. It would be more enjoyable to wait out enemies and sneak around if you didn't have a damnable ticking death clock of irregular length to stress you out. It sucks half the fun out of exploration. Why go looking into a far off corner if the Overseer's shelter hint is pointing the other way? The shelters are far and few between and food can be even more elusive. You've got to eat enough for hibernation and reach a shelter before the clock ticks down, all while avoiding predators more-often-than-not parked in the one path forward (see the flip-side?).
“But you're supposed to take your time, raise your karma, feel out the area, you've gotta coexist with it, like it's a real habitat!” But it's not a real habitat. It's merely a literalization, a words-become-worlds manifestation from the lips of that awful 'teacher' in Beasts of the Southern Wild: “YOU. ARE. MEAT!”
“But-but-but all the A.I., and the ecosystem – I saw YouTube videos about it, it's real!” Promise you, it's not. It's a crapsack world, i.e. 100% contrived. It's a thousand screens of intentional degradation and disrepair – a pathological bludgeoning of post-apocalyptic mind-numbing sameness. Yes, it's all rendered very strikingly and no doubt lovingly by the artists, and at least the color-palettes change, but whether it's the yellow-sky farm array or the pitch-black citadel, it's a dead place out to get you and there's no way to live in it. There's no welcoming Elysian field to balance the rot. At best you kind of make peace with the decay and move on before the next rain.
For all the tool-savvy smarts of your controllable slug-cat, there's no way to cultivate an area or make your own shelter. I'm not saying the game should be a farming sim, but if it wants you to take your time, it needs to let you leave your stamp. It needs a Resident-Evil typewriter room. A place with a pensive tune and a trunk. A place that lets you catch your breath before heading back into hell. And the rain shelters ain't it.
Finally, Shaggy Dog time. What I loathe:
The game's story sells you a bill of goods. Your character slips from the saving grip of its slugcat family, falling down (supposedly) into the land of Rain World. Then you start the game. What do you assume your goal is? To get back to your sluggycat family of course!
This. Never. Happens.
There's not a pip or squeak about your family for the rest of the game. The intro cinematic is a lie. It feels like the developers, upon play-testing, found that players had little motivation to progress through the game (due to all the disincentives already listed), so they felt the need to set up a false motivation at the beginning.
You can speculate all you want about the fate of the family, but it's in vain. Are they alive, somewhere in Rain World? Are they in a land far above it, where your sluggy fell from? Does each hibernation or death cycle pass just a day, a month, or a year? Or is it years? Decades? Eons? Has your slugcat family been dead since the first cycle? Are they rebirthing somewhere else? Is it just the regions of Rain World that are subject to the reincarnation cycle or is it the entire fictional planet? Does any of this even matter? Apparently NOT – the slugcat family is a red herring for which you will get no satisfaction.
“But the ascended host of faceless slugcats at the end – that's kind of like your family!”
This takes us, perhaps, to what I loathe most about Rain World.
I'm not a Buddhist by any stretch, but I have a healthy respect for the psychology of the chakras, and in my opinion, the chakras are poorly used and represented in this game. What does filling your stomach and surviving rain cycles have to do with ascension? Why does becoming prey reduce your level? In my readings, the chakras are all about enlightenment and state of mind – not food chain scoreboards.
The game is a one-sided cynic's reading of Buddhist Hinduism. All self-immolation, detachment, void, and darkness – it has no room for love, home, progress, and light. No, the cute pearl quests for Looks-To-The-Moon don't fix this. A glowing tree of ascended slugcats, shown for all of five seconds, doesn't balance the overwhelming Eldritch entity reducing you to a string of gray nothingness. That's the real heart of the game (and the developers): Lovecraftian horror.
This is why I hate Rain World.
It is a twenty-hour monument to despair.
playing Rain World for the first time on Survivor difficulty, 15 hours in: yeah, i think this could stand to be more miserable.... i SHOULD do a Hunter playthrough
I simply cannot put my love for this game into words.
It's an absolute masterpiece and will, most likely, remain as my favorite game until the end of my time in this world.
It's an absolute masterpiece and will, most likely, remain as my favorite game until the end of my time in this world.
I'll confess that I've only played about 20 minutes of this game, so I'm not really reviewing it for myself, but for my best friend who passed away in March. We lived together so we would hang out and talk about video games almost everyday and before he passed away THIS was his favorite game, full-stop.
It's hard to describe how much I miss chatting with him about Rain World, it made him passionate about game ideas he was programming and passionate about games in general, it was exciting to see him have that spark for making art again. It's cringey, but I wish I could message the developers and let them know how much it meant to my friend that this game even EXISTED, let alone that it was this amazing to him.
The last conversation I ever had with him he was telling me about the lore for Rain World, how he beat every piece of content in it just to learn more about the story, and to my surprise, I found in one of his journals pages of him deciphering the lore and studying it on his own for fun.
It'll be a long while before I'm able to play any of his favorite games again, but I'm going to rate this a 5 on his behalf anyway, as I have no doubt in my mind it's what he would have given it. I'll never know why he chose to leave, but I at least have this game that spoke to him in a way you wish all art could, and as much as I wish he was here to tell you why it's a 5-star game, you'll just have to take my word for it. This was a perfect game to him, and he had way better taste than me!
It's hard to describe how much I miss chatting with him about Rain World, it made him passionate about game ideas he was programming and passionate about games in general, it was exciting to see him have that spark for making art again. It's cringey, but I wish I could message the developers and let them know how much it meant to my friend that this game even EXISTED, let alone that it was this amazing to him.
The last conversation I ever had with him he was telling me about the lore for Rain World, how he beat every piece of content in it just to learn more about the story, and to my surprise, I found in one of his journals pages of him deciphering the lore and studying it on his own for fun.
It'll be a long while before I'm able to play any of his favorite games again, but I'm going to rate this a 5 on his behalf anyway, as I have no doubt in my mind it's what he would have given it. I'll never know why he chose to leave, but I at least have this game that spoke to him in a way you wish all art could, and as much as I wish he was here to tell you why it's a 5-star game, you'll just have to take my word for it. This was a perfect game to him, and he had way better taste than me!
"Destroy the darkness of delusion with the brightness of wisdom. The world is truly dangerous and unstable, without any durability. My present attainment of Nirvana is like being rid of a malignant sickness. The body is a false name, drowning in the great ocean of birth, sickness, old age and death. How can one who is wise not be happy when he gets rid of it?" - Gautama Buddha
Rain World is not a game about living. It's not a game about dying. It's about samsara.
Why do so many yearn for annihilation, for silence? Why are we caught between quiet and din? What are we tied to? How do we remember the past? How permanent is history? What is it made out of? Is it in objects? Is it in something spiritual? Is it in technology? What are the driving forces of technology? Can technology be spiritual? Why do we make machines? Why do we make them look like us? Why do we make them look so different from us? What do they do when we are gone? How different is technology and nature? What is nature in the first place? Is nature cruel? Is nature kind? What does it mean to be cruel, to be kind? Is there such a thing as morality in an ecosystem? What is nature made out of? What is an animal? What is the life of an animal? What is the life of two animals? What is the life of a thousand animals? What is life at all? What does it mean, really, to be living? Why is it so painful? Why do we go on? What do we need? What do we want?
"Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still. All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett
I am not, nor have I ever been, a spiritual person. I don't think I ever will be. But Rain World helps me understand why people become Buddhists. This game was a spiritual experience for me. I mean that. I hate it, I love it, I am endlessly fascinated by it. It is an utterly singular game. I don't think there has ever been or ever will be another game quite like Rain World.
One of the best games ever made. Beautiful, fascinating, haunting, terrifying. But it's hard to recommend. It's one of the hardest and most grueling games I've ever played. It's profoundly frustrating. But it's a masterpiece. Even without my unique connection to it, it is full of incredible ideas, beautiful art, and shocking design. It's a vast ecosystem full of wonder and terror. It's stunningly beautiful on almost every level. I feel it on a visceral level. It's constantly on my mind. I cannot escape it; it's inside me. It's one of the best games ever made.
Rain World is not a game about living. It's not a game about dying. It's about samsara.
Why do so many yearn for annihilation, for silence? Why are we caught between quiet and din? What are we tied to? How do we remember the past? How permanent is history? What is it made out of? Is it in objects? Is it in something spiritual? Is it in technology? What are the driving forces of technology? Can technology be spiritual? Why do we make machines? Why do we make them look like us? Why do we make them look so different from us? What do they do when we are gone? How different is technology and nature? What is nature in the first place? Is nature cruel? Is nature kind? What does it mean to be cruel, to be kind? Is there such a thing as morality in an ecosystem? What is nature made out of? What is an animal? What is the life of an animal? What is the life of two animals? What is the life of a thousand animals? What is life at all? What does it mean, really, to be living? Why is it so painful? Why do we go on? What do we need? What do we want?
"Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still. All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett
I am not, nor have I ever been, a spiritual person. I don't think I ever will be. But Rain World helps me understand why people become Buddhists. This game was a spiritual experience for me. I mean that. I hate it, I love it, I am endlessly fascinated by it. It is an utterly singular game. I don't think there has ever been or ever will be another game quite like Rain World.
One of the best games ever made. Beautiful, fascinating, haunting, terrifying. But it's hard to recommend. It's one of the hardest and most grueling games I've ever played. It's profoundly frustrating. But it's a masterpiece. Even without my unique connection to it, it is full of incredible ideas, beautiful art, and shocking design. It's a vast ecosystem full of wonder and terror. It's stunningly beautiful on almost every level. I feel it on a visceral level. It's constantly on my mind. I cannot escape it; it's inside me. It's one of the best games ever made.
I would recommend playing this game blind if possible, so before reading, know that I give it my highest recommendation, though I have tried to keep this light on spoilers.
---
Experiential games seem to have a troubled relationship with their mechanics. Most games I've played that aspire to convey deep emotions or truths primarily rely on techniques established in other mediums such as cinema and literature. While these are obviously powerful and effective, it bothers me that they aren't really leveraging their key distinguishing feature: their interactivity. Either the mechanics are clumsily grafted on to a tangentially related narrative experience, they only resonate along some dimensions, or they simply aren't engaging enough to hold attention. Even when a game does mostly succeed, it's hard not to see it as an incomplete realization of its own potential.
Rain World does not struggle with this.
Slugcat is simple to control on a basic level: movement stick, jump button, grab. But the influence of momentum, some intricate Mario 64 esque techniques, and a pinch of QWOP style soft body physics makes quickly maneuvering around uneven terrain tricky, especially with the heavy gravity. There's a real physicality here: you'll feel it when you scramble to clamber Slugcat's body over a ledge, or when your frantic hopping gets stopped stone-cold by a crack in the ground. Holding objects will weigh Slugcat down, which subtly changes the arc and height of jumps, and landing a spear throw on moving targets is easier said than done.
This is paired with a dynamic creature simulation that you'll need to constantly adapt to. A Lizard's bite is deadly, but their bulky bodies have even more trouble maneuvering than you do, and they'll switch focus if threatened by something else. Creatures eat and hunt and flee based on their needs and what information is available to them, something you can work around and exploit by pitting them against each other, or taking advantage of distractions. Death is common and can be punishing, but the yellow flower, which negates this penalty if you can return to where you died with it, rewards those who show caution and savvy.
This is simply to say that the mechanics in and of themselves are intrinsically engaging; there's a good reason this game has extensive modding and speedrunning scenes. But what makes Rain World truly special is its unflinching, all-encompassing commitment to its most central idea: inducing the experience of an animal within a natural world. Developer Joar Jakobsson repeatedly mentions in this interview that the game was conceived as a simulation foremost, with no special privileging of the player character within the game's systems. Every single mechanic exists precisely to push you to behave as an animal would: eating, fleeing, seeking shelter.
Bats flitter, lizards prowl, vultures swoop. Everything needs to eat, not be eaten, and hide from the inevitable rain; they roam within and between screens to these ends. Where a Slugcat fits in is simply a function of opportunity and happenstance. Almost all other games would make some sort of concession to "fairness", but not this one. Sometimes you'll wake up and find a lizard staking out your way forward; other times a usual hunting ground will be empty and silent. That's just how this world is: that's life.
Seeing animals wrap and squish around the terrain, pushed and pulled by their own muscles or outside forces through procedural animation, conveys a certain life-like feeling. There are fundamental physics in this world, even if they are different from our own, and everything must obey them. Struggling with the controls is reflective too: we are born unfamiliar with our own body, and grow into its capabilities with time and knowledge.
It's the game's tremendous success in immersion, only possible through holistic devotion to its goal, that allows it to meaningfully ask you questions about nature, and for you to feel those questions. Why is nature so beautiful? Why is nature so cruel? How much are we animal? What does it mean to be animal? What does it mean to be part of nature, and know that you are part of it? These are thoughts etched deep into our psyche across millennia, which have only recently been allowed to slip from our minds.
In some regions of this world there are colonies of tentacles that coat surfaces and feed by pulling in anything that comes near. Touch only a few, and you can easily rip free; touch too many, and you'll be swiftly sucked in. But touch a handful, and you'll be locked in a futile struggle: you're strong enough to resist their pull, but not strong enough to escape. For the game to immerse me so much that it's able to convey even an inkling of that real situation, of a doomed animal desperately trying not to die, is a monumental achievement.
The clarity of artistic vision in Rain World makes its predecessors look almost primitive by comparison. If there is any justice, this will be looked upon in time with the analysis and praise it deserves, among the highest echelons of the canon. For my own thoughts, it's simple: there is before Rain World, and there is after.
---
Experiential games seem to have a troubled relationship with their mechanics. Most games I've played that aspire to convey deep emotions or truths primarily rely on techniques established in other mediums such as cinema and literature. While these are obviously powerful and effective, it bothers me that they aren't really leveraging their key distinguishing feature: their interactivity. Either the mechanics are clumsily grafted on to a tangentially related narrative experience, they only resonate along some dimensions, or they simply aren't engaging enough to hold attention. Even when a game does mostly succeed, it's hard not to see it as an incomplete realization of its own potential.
Rain World does not struggle with this.
Slugcat is simple to control on a basic level: movement stick, jump button, grab. But the influence of momentum, some intricate Mario 64 esque techniques, and a pinch of QWOP style soft body physics makes quickly maneuvering around uneven terrain tricky, especially with the heavy gravity. There's a real physicality here: you'll feel it when you scramble to clamber Slugcat's body over a ledge, or when your frantic hopping gets stopped stone-cold by a crack in the ground. Holding objects will weigh Slugcat down, which subtly changes the arc and height of jumps, and landing a spear throw on moving targets is easier said than done.
This is paired with a dynamic creature simulation that you'll need to constantly adapt to. A Lizard's bite is deadly, but their bulky bodies have even more trouble maneuvering than you do, and they'll switch focus if threatened by something else. Creatures eat and hunt and flee based on their needs and what information is available to them, something you can work around and exploit by pitting them against each other, or taking advantage of distractions. Death is common and can be punishing, but the yellow flower, which negates this penalty if you can return to where you died with it, rewards those who show caution and savvy.
This is simply to say that the mechanics in and of themselves are intrinsically engaging; there's a good reason this game has extensive modding and speedrunning scenes. But what makes Rain World truly special is its unflinching, all-encompassing commitment to its most central idea: inducing the experience of an animal within a natural world. Developer Joar Jakobsson repeatedly mentions in this interview that the game was conceived as a simulation foremost, with no special privileging of the player character within the game's systems. Every single mechanic exists precisely to push you to behave as an animal would: eating, fleeing, seeking shelter.
Bats flitter, lizards prowl, vultures swoop. Everything needs to eat, not be eaten, and hide from the inevitable rain; they roam within and between screens to these ends. Where a Slugcat fits in is simply a function of opportunity and happenstance. Almost all other games would make some sort of concession to "fairness", but not this one. Sometimes you'll wake up and find a lizard staking out your way forward; other times a usual hunting ground will be empty and silent. That's just how this world is: that's life.
Seeing animals wrap and squish around the terrain, pushed and pulled by their own muscles or outside forces through procedural animation, conveys a certain life-like feeling. There are fundamental physics in this world, even if they are different from our own, and everything must obey them. Struggling with the controls is reflective too: we are born unfamiliar with our own body, and grow into its capabilities with time and knowledge.
It's the game's tremendous success in immersion, only possible through holistic devotion to its goal, that allows it to meaningfully ask you questions about nature, and for you to feel those questions. Why is nature so beautiful? Why is nature so cruel? How much are we animal? What does it mean to be animal? What does it mean to be part of nature, and know that you are part of it? These are thoughts etched deep into our psyche across millennia, which have only recently been allowed to slip from our minds.
In some regions of this world there are colonies of tentacles that coat surfaces and feed by pulling in anything that comes near. Touch only a few, and you can easily rip free; touch too many, and you'll be swiftly sucked in. But touch a handful, and you'll be locked in a futile struggle: you're strong enough to resist their pull, but not strong enough to escape. For the game to immerse me so much that it's able to convey even an inkling of that real situation, of a doomed animal desperately trying not to die, is a monumental achievement.
The clarity of artistic vision in Rain World makes its predecessors look almost primitive by comparison. If there is any justice, this will be looked upon in time with the analysis and praise it deserves, among the highest echelons of the canon. For my own thoughts, it's simple: there is before Rain World, and there is after.
Played on default settings with Survivor.
Rain World's.. well, world, is utterly beautiful and captivating, there's something about it that strikes me as endlessly interesting with just how diverse each region is despite what could broadly be described as "post-apocalyptic industrial"; it effortlessly outclasses many in this aesthetic genre, with a sprinkling of Buddhist theming that elevates it to masterclass status in my book. It feels like a mashup of Girls Last Tour and Made in Abyss visually. I feel like this is where the intrigue for many comes in, especially in the last couple of years or so with the cutesy Slugcat fanart and gifs people love sharing around (I did so for ages before even playing), but I feel something is miscommunicated about the game from this angle by the fandom.
When people talk about a game having disregard for a player in a good way, the vast majority of the time they're talking about Demon's Souls or sometimes Dark Souls 1, or cheap shots in mostly old PC games; but these games always give the player the tools to overcome, especially the lauded Souls franchise and adjacent. Rain World does not, or at least not really; you might be given a spear, but the amount of hostile enemies you can actually kill with it? Like, two, at least somewhat reasonably. The world does not care if you wish to walk across that bridge, there is an eldrich horror larger than you could have imagined casually feasting on one of the beasts that previously demolished you. Wait... There's your chance to get past, RUN! Jump over that rock, hurry! Scurry along you silly little Slugcat and pray the monster is still engorging itself. Finally you reach the pipe, and on the other side, another beast, instantly snaps you up.
Press [start] to continue.
So you've learned something at least, about how this ecosystem interacts; but you died, despite how hard it may have been to get where you were. You can't go back though, you know it's a dead end, the worm nudges in that same direction still. You have to push on, Survivor. So you push forward again, with that depleting Karma meter you haven't payed much attention to only a couple hours in or so. You claw and climb your way through a (to you) arduous section with some beasts and perilous jumps, until you finally reach the door and shimmy through, to be met with a Karma Gate at tier 3, but alas you are only tier 1, and hungry. Time's almost up, the screen begins shaking and the sound becomes thunder, soon you're washed away into oblivion. How utterly frustrating, I thought, how could they make the player go through all of that knowing they'd likely die and be unable to get through? There's a lot of moments like this, and an area in particular that drove me insane, I constantly asked "how would I change this?", and each time I'd conclude, simply, that I wouldn't. To fix that or place that on a cycle or something rigid would defeat the purpose or at least severely crack the game's vision. To approach these challenges from the perspective of "how would I change this for the player experience" is to directly detract from the experience of the Slugcats.
This isn't about you, this is about a Slugcat which in this game no matter how good the player may be might as well be regarded as only a couple rungs above insects. The act of killing something that could also kill you is rare, and reliant on often single-use tools you happen across. You WILL be fumbling with Slugcat's movement to the very end and it's all the better for it. Why should things be easy? The decision as well to make the game fixed-screen was also massively beneficial to selling the uneasiness in a 2D space, it places extra emphasis on immersing yourself in the soundscape, listening to every little audio cue you can to clue yourself in on what's just around the corner. It also makes the game feel even larger than it already is, while still retaining measurable distance over "samey" screens such as certain waterways or long tunnels. The sound design is also masterful, and it synergizes perfectly with the visual presentation and how it impacts progression through the game.
With the Downpour DLC came a free update that optionally adds visual cues to things such as indicators for off-screen enemies and accessibility options such as an engine slowdown similar to Celeste's; I always appreciate these sorts of updates and tweaks on principle, but I would still strongly urge trying to Survive and to only tweak downwards if you're genuinely going to drop the game over these gripes. They are in my mind what makes Rain World, Rain World, but I get it.
Ultimately Rain World represents what I believe to be the most realized vision in a video game, period. Unfaltering in its indifference to the player and their usual power-trip-seeking behavior and drip feed dopamine addictions, it has a story to tell about the cutest thing in the world simply trying to reunite in an apocalyptic world, and it refuses every step of the way to fall victim to dissonance between its gameplay and its narrative.
In one word: Primordial.
Rain World's.. well, world, is utterly beautiful and captivating, there's something about it that strikes me as endlessly interesting with just how diverse each region is despite what could broadly be described as "post-apocalyptic industrial"; it effortlessly outclasses many in this aesthetic genre, with a sprinkling of Buddhist theming that elevates it to masterclass status in my book. It feels like a mashup of Girls Last Tour and Made in Abyss visually. I feel like this is where the intrigue for many comes in, especially in the last couple of years or so with the cutesy Slugcat fanart and gifs people love sharing around (I did so for ages before even playing), but I feel something is miscommunicated about the game from this angle by the fandom.
When people talk about a game having disregard for a player in a good way, the vast majority of the time they're talking about Demon's Souls or sometimes Dark Souls 1, or cheap shots in mostly old PC games; but these games always give the player the tools to overcome, especially the lauded Souls franchise and adjacent. Rain World does not, or at least not really; you might be given a spear, but the amount of hostile enemies you can actually kill with it? Like, two, at least somewhat reasonably. The world does not care if you wish to walk across that bridge, there is an eldrich horror larger than you could have imagined casually feasting on one of the beasts that previously demolished you. Wait... There's your chance to get past, RUN! Jump over that rock, hurry! Scurry along you silly little Slugcat and pray the monster is still engorging itself. Finally you reach the pipe, and on the other side, another beast, instantly snaps you up.
Press [start] to continue.
So you've learned something at least, about how this ecosystem interacts; but you died, despite how hard it may have been to get where you were. You can't go back though, you know it's a dead end, the worm nudges in that same direction still. You have to push on, Survivor. So you push forward again, with that depleting Karma meter you haven't payed much attention to only a couple hours in or so. You claw and climb your way through a (to you) arduous section with some beasts and perilous jumps, until you finally reach the door and shimmy through, to be met with a Karma Gate at tier 3, but alas you are only tier 1, and hungry. Time's almost up, the screen begins shaking and the sound becomes thunder, soon you're washed away into oblivion. How utterly frustrating, I thought, how could they make the player go through all of that knowing they'd likely die and be unable to get through? There's a lot of moments like this, and an area in particular that drove me insane, I constantly asked "how would I change this?", and each time I'd conclude, simply, that I wouldn't. To fix that or place that on a cycle or something rigid would defeat the purpose or at least severely crack the game's vision. To approach these challenges from the perspective of "how would I change this for the player experience" is to directly detract from the experience of the Slugcats.
This isn't about you, this is about a Slugcat which in this game no matter how good the player may be might as well be regarded as only a couple rungs above insects. The act of killing something that could also kill you is rare, and reliant on often single-use tools you happen across. You WILL be fumbling with Slugcat's movement to the very end and it's all the better for it. Why should things be easy? The decision as well to make the game fixed-screen was also massively beneficial to selling the uneasiness in a 2D space, it places extra emphasis on immersing yourself in the soundscape, listening to every little audio cue you can to clue yourself in on what's just around the corner. It also makes the game feel even larger than it already is, while still retaining measurable distance over "samey" screens such as certain waterways or long tunnels. The sound design is also masterful, and it synergizes perfectly with the visual presentation and how it impacts progression through the game.
With the Downpour DLC came a free update that optionally adds visual cues to things such as indicators for off-screen enemies and accessibility options such as an engine slowdown similar to Celeste's; I always appreciate these sorts of updates and tweaks on principle, but I would still strongly urge trying to Survive and to only tweak downwards if you're genuinely going to drop the game over these gripes. They are in my mind what makes Rain World, Rain World, but I get it.
Ultimately Rain World represents what I believe to be the most realized vision in a video game, period. Unfaltering in its indifference to the player and their usual power-trip-seeking behavior and drip feed dopamine addictions, it has a story to tell about the cutest thing in the world simply trying to reunite in an apocalyptic world, and it refuses every step of the way to fall victim to dissonance between its gameplay and its narrative.
In one word: Primordial.
Have you wondered what it would be like to be an insect? To scour for food everyday? To flee from predators because you have no hope of defeating them? To fear rain itself? It's a concept foreign to us humans, but is daily routine for 99% of life on planet Earth.
Rain World is unforgiving. Much like nature it cares little for you. This won't be for everyone. But for others Rain World creates an ecosystem & feeling of survival so convincing it's hard not to be entirely absorbed.
Rain World is unforgiving. Much like nature it cares little for you. This won't be for everyone. But for others Rain World creates an ecosystem & feeling of survival so convincing it's hard not to be entirely absorbed.
Some kind of a miracle had to have happened to let this game come out today. Between the buddhism, virtual ecology and perfect ludonarrative harmony, Rain World isn't just difficult, it's Nintendo-hard. While panned at release, Rain World's method of difficulty isn't anything new, and it's not even comparable to something like the Souls-series due to the degree of randomization and lack of tactile combat. No, it's a modern day Famicom game through-and-through. Characterized by the historical respawning off-screen enemies that can one-shot you, punishing consequences for death, methodical calculative movement, cryptic progression and a constant timer ticking down on the player. Rain World isn't innovative in its methods of difficulty, but it's innovative in how it achieves those methods, which is where the modernization comes in. Extremely rich detailed ecosystems with constantly varying placements of enemies due to their own intelligence telling them where they belong rather than a designers hand and varying lengths of cycles turns you into a gambler each time you go back into nature. For people who think the best video games are oft as simple as a good challenging gauntlet alike classic NES titles, then Rain World may be to them, a legitimate contender for the best game of all time thanks to the fact it's a gruelling challenge generator that wastes no time taking the pressure off you. I, also, am one of these people, and if you ask me for what game has the most consistently engaging gameplay ever, even without the incredible theming, presentation and emotionally impactful ending, it'd be Rain World.
this is def one of the coolest games i've ever played; the slugcat is adorable and the game really sells you on the experience of playing as a living creature traversing these dangerous alien environments. but also i wasn't really like, getting anything out of it, which is a me problem more than anything the game itself is doing. maybe someday i'll be cultured enough to appreciate it on an experiential level and not just a conceptual one
Definitely give it a try without reading anything else about it and see how you feel. Rain World has that potential of eliciting very unique reactions that shouldn't be soiled by any previous experience.
Play it, drop it, play it again, drop it again, play it again, ask someone how to get through the area that's literally just pitch black, play it with them, beat the game.
Ask such existential, heavy-hitting questions as: "why is there an enemy right outside my spawn location that I cannot get past?" and "how was I supposed to know that ever?"
Realize that, honestly, who cares? Watch two lizards chase a zappy bug for 10 minutes. Die to the rain. Lose an hour of progress. Stop playing for a few days. Realize that "that was pretty cool." Go back. Get help. Grow, get better. Realize that, maybe, a part of the game is also the human interaction which arises through discussing this experience.
I hated parts of it. Absolutely despised them. Irredeemable stuff in my mind. It owns.
And to throw epic cool buzzwords because how else could I gain credibility
"Masterclass of storytelling without dialogue" (screw you Playdead)
"Dark Souls of platformers"
"Game journalists am I right?"
Play it, drop it, play it again, drop it again, play it again, ask someone how to get through the area that's literally just pitch black, play it with them, beat the game.
Ask such existential, heavy-hitting questions as: "why is there an enemy right outside my spawn location that I cannot get past?" and "how was I supposed to know that ever?"
Realize that, honestly, who cares? Watch two lizards chase a zappy bug for 10 minutes. Die to the rain. Lose an hour of progress. Stop playing for a few days. Realize that "that was pretty cool." Go back. Get help. Grow, get better. Realize that, maybe, a part of the game is also the human interaction which arises through discussing this experience.
I hated parts of it. Absolutely despised them. Irredeemable stuff in my mind. It owns.
And to throw epic cool buzzwords because how else could I gain credibility
"Masterclass of storytelling without dialogue" (screw you Playdead)
"Dark Souls of platformers"
"Game journalists am I right?"
rain world presents a planet so alive, brutal, and beautiful. its enormous collection of tunnels, hills, and metal structures are designed in a way makes the player feel like the world was not made for them, that it is a real place they're passing through. the setting is inhabited by some of the strangest creatures i've ever seen, which behave fittingly strangely. the adventure starts as a battle for survival, but halfway through, the slugcat's reason for continuing on changes, as both it and the player gains awareness. a truly beautiful video game, and i do not know if there will be many more like it. i recommend you seek out the piece on rain world, buddhism, and transcendentalism out there. it may sound strange to players just starting, but this game has a lot to say about buddhism. yeah, rain world. i love it.
The "2001: A Space Odyssey" of gaming - exactly the director's mindset, a deep and engaging story, unlike anything else in its medium, and outstandingly impressive technical aspects (for Rain World, the Enemy AI and animation go above and beyond), yet still remains controversial due to its unusual presentation.
If you wish probably to experience the most immersive survival game ever created, this is a must-play. Just know that this is an unrelenting, often confusing game that is not afraid to frustrate the player.
Or you could get this game for the amazing competitive multiplayer mode. That's pretty good too.
If you wish probably to experience the most immersive survival game ever created, this is a must-play. Just know that this is an unrelenting, often confusing game that is not afraid to frustrate the player.
Or you could get this game for the amazing competitive multiplayer mode. That's pretty good too.
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]
_______________________________________
[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
There’s little I can really say about Rain World without trespassing on somebody's definition of spoilers. Having something explained to you outright is obviously less engaging than experiencing it yourself, this is one of the biggest reasons games are so loved to begin with. But one of the things that makes Rain World so difficult to review is its near-absolute commitment to this idea. This doesn't seem like a contentious thing on the surface - "show don't tell" after all. But Rain World's strict difficulty and hesitancy to explain itself makes for an environment that seems apathetic as to whether or not the player learns all of its systems. To some that may sound like a welcome challenge and to others, a frustrating chore. And while the former is a good mindset to have, at the end of the day even those partial to the idea will almost certainly find themselves at their limits when it comes to the game’s obtuseness. Very little beyond the basic controls is explicitly laid out, and while there is some guidance given in the form of a little yellow overseer, his hints amount to abstract symbols and gestures that will still require much player interpretation. But even factoring that in, the onus is on you to discover the vast majority of the games systems with no guidance whatsoever. All this is to say, Rain World is a hard game but perhaps the hardest thing about it is getting into it to begin with.
It's impossible to lay out precisely the right mindset to enter the game with, but a step in the right direction would be to relinquish as many of your expectations as possible going in. That's a difficult and impenetrably vague thing to recommend but everything I've said up to this point can only do so much to communicate the experience of playing it. I'm sure most of you reading this can't remember this far back, but try to think of the sorts of games released in the 80s and even in the 90s. Though some classics stand out, a large chunk of games from the period would be considered unacceptable, obtuse, and bizarre if released in this day and age. This is partially because of technological limitations, but people tend to overstate the degree to which that's true. Pressing the X button in 1997 isn't any different from pressing it today, after all. No, the greatest difference between the design philosophies of then vs. now is rooted in the fact that, back then, there was less of a frame of reference for how a game should work. As time goes on, developers will stumble upon certain design decisions that tend to please the average consumer more. As they do this, other developers take note and start to implement these things in other games. The more this is done, the more ingrained certain expectations become in consumers. Whether or not this is a good thing is besides the point, if you’ve been paying attention you’ve probably figured out what I’m getting at here - that Rain World isn't bound by convention in the slightest. If it weren't for the rather robust physics system and detailed creature behaviors, the game, with its fundamental design philosophy intact, could easily have been released in the 90s and blended right in with its environment. As it is, nearly every critic I've seen hate on the game looks at the surface level choices that are simply contradictory to the gene pool of conventions that the game industry has evolved into. Many games hold it to be self-evident that mechanics should be taught in isolated, tutorialized environments so that the player can safely learn them. Many games hold it to be self-evident that lethal threats should be highly telegraphed beforehand to make for a consistent and fair experience, even the first time through. Many games hold it to be self-evident that the character's movement should be intuitive and respond as players expect, and that ideally the player won’t have most of their moveset outright hidden from them. I know many of you would scoff at the audacity of implying that denying these things could result in anything but a disaster. But think to yourself - just how much of that is based on your preconceived notions of what a game should do? Obviously if the game doesn't telegraph threats in a way players will understand at a glance, this leads to confusing, frustrating deaths until the player figures it out themselves. And if a game isn't thoroughly tutorialized, you'll go for some time without knowing what to do, and a similar thing could be said for the atypical movement. To those who have played the game and would criticize these things, I ask you this: can you really imagine a better version of the Rain World that does conform to your expectations? One where there are no creatures, but instead enemies, no environments but instead levels, and no fluid traversal but instead stiff movement? Whether you can appreciate it or not, the fact remains that the lengths Rain World goes to to preserve its artistic vision is absolutely integral to the experience. Never before have I lived through a more believable and dynamic world, nor have I felt each threat and relief with the same passion that the in-game character would. Essentially, the divide between player and character is as thin as I've ever seen it, you all but become a limp, pale, slug-creature starving for food, and your mindset adapts to view the world this way. And it's all thanks to the fact that the ecosystem is clearly not made for you. All of the animals have their own agendas, and the vast majority of the time you won't be fighting them, but running past or even hiding from them. They aren’t placed as obstacles or challenges to overcome, they are your equals and have the same goal as you - survival.
But if you find it hard to enjoy, do keep in mind that you're far from alone even among the most dedicated fans. It's hard to find someone out there who didn't have difficulty coming to appreciate the game. Any of its dedicated defenders, including myself, will tell you the same thing - that it takes many long breaks and even a couple restarts before you become hooked, but once you do, there's nothing else like it. The unshackling of one's expectations is a painful process in this case, but in the end, learning how to live and breathe as a foreign creature in an alien ecosystem is so enrapturing that no amount of my rambling can truly communicate it. In life, pain is essential to know true pleasure. In a similar vein, failure is essential to learn, and eventually to know success. At the end of the day, hating Rain World is an essential step to loving Rain World.
It's impossible to lay out precisely the right mindset to enter the game with, but a step in the right direction would be to relinquish as many of your expectations as possible going in. That's a difficult and impenetrably vague thing to recommend but everything I've said up to this point can only do so much to communicate the experience of playing it. I'm sure most of you reading this can't remember this far back, but try to think of the sorts of games released in the 80s and even in the 90s. Though some classics stand out, a large chunk of games from the period would be considered unacceptable, obtuse, and bizarre if released in this day and age. This is partially because of technological limitations, but people tend to overstate the degree to which that's true. Pressing the X button in 1997 isn't any different from pressing it today, after all. No, the greatest difference between the design philosophies of then vs. now is rooted in the fact that, back then, there was less of a frame of reference for how a game should work. As time goes on, developers will stumble upon certain design decisions that tend to please the average consumer more. As they do this, other developers take note and start to implement these things in other games. The more this is done, the more ingrained certain expectations become in consumers. Whether or not this is a good thing is besides the point, if you’ve been paying attention you’ve probably figured out what I’m getting at here - that Rain World isn't bound by convention in the slightest. If it weren't for the rather robust physics system and detailed creature behaviors, the game, with its fundamental design philosophy intact, could easily have been released in the 90s and blended right in with its environment. As it is, nearly every critic I've seen hate on the game looks at the surface level choices that are simply contradictory to the gene pool of conventions that the game industry has evolved into. Many games hold it to be self-evident that mechanics should be taught in isolated, tutorialized environments so that the player can safely learn them. Many games hold it to be self-evident that lethal threats should be highly telegraphed beforehand to make for a consistent and fair experience, even the first time through. Many games hold it to be self-evident that the character's movement should be intuitive and respond as players expect, and that ideally the player won’t have most of their moveset outright hidden from them. I know many of you would scoff at the audacity of implying that denying these things could result in anything but a disaster. But think to yourself - just how much of that is based on your preconceived notions of what a game should do? Obviously if the game doesn't telegraph threats in a way players will understand at a glance, this leads to confusing, frustrating deaths until the player figures it out themselves. And if a game isn't thoroughly tutorialized, you'll go for some time without knowing what to do, and a similar thing could be said for the atypical movement. To those who have played the game and would criticize these things, I ask you this: can you really imagine a better version of the Rain World that does conform to your expectations? One where there are no creatures, but instead enemies, no environments but instead levels, and no fluid traversal but instead stiff movement? Whether you can appreciate it or not, the fact remains that the lengths Rain World goes to to preserve its artistic vision is absolutely integral to the experience. Never before have I lived through a more believable and dynamic world, nor have I felt each threat and relief with the same passion that the in-game character would. Essentially, the divide between player and character is as thin as I've ever seen it, you all but become a limp, pale, slug-creature starving for food, and your mindset adapts to view the world this way. And it's all thanks to the fact that the ecosystem is clearly not made for you. All of the animals have their own agendas, and the vast majority of the time you won't be fighting them, but running past or even hiding from them. They aren’t placed as obstacles or challenges to overcome, they are your equals and have the same goal as you - survival.
But if you find it hard to enjoy, do keep in mind that you're far from alone even among the most dedicated fans. It's hard to find someone out there who didn't have difficulty coming to appreciate the game. Any of its dedicated defenders, including myself, will tell you the same thing - that it takes many long breaks and even a couple restarts before you become hooked, but once you do, there's nothing else like it. The unshackling of one's expectations is a painful process in this case, but in the end, learning how to live and breathe as a foreign creature in an alien ecosystem is so enrapturing that no amount of my rambling can truly communicate it. In life, pain is essential to know true pleasure. In a similar vein, failure is essential to learn, and eventually to know success. At the end of the day, hating Rain World is an essential step to loving Rain World.
I get the idea. I played this for 5 hours and I saw the idea several times. I get the appeal. I get why people eat this. I still don't want to finish my burger. Sometimes you have to accept that you just don't like Big Mac sauce.
This is both one of the most captivating and frustrating games I've ever played. The fact that I still wanted to keep going after being stomped into the ground by it's brutal and unfair difficulty is a testament to its immersion and respect for the players intelligence. It truly makes me feel something, without a single line of spoken dialogue, which I can't say about many games, even some of my favourites.
Regardless of its frustrating difficulty, this is an experience worth going through. The world is spectacular, the AI is top class (despite the ridiculous RNG spawns), the atmosphere is impeccable, and the ending is... worth sticking it out for, let's just say that.
Regardless of its frustrating difficulty, this is an experience worth going through. The world is spectacular, the AI is top class (despite the ridiculous RNG spawns), the atmosphere is impeccable, and the ending is... worth sticking it out for, let's just say that.
I've beaten this game three times in the past two months and I'm still in absolute awe that it exists. Every single aspect of it is beautiful, unique, and nigh-perfect in its own way, and it comes together to be even greater than the sum of its parts. It's everything you could ever want from the medium. Every interaction with its world is as harrowing as it is fascinating; every screen and region is breathtaking in its beauty and grandness. It's unfriendly and humbling on every level, but also compelling in a way that little else is. It's fun, it's challenging, it's deeply immersive, it's endlessly replayable, it has an enormous skill ceiling, and it's hilarious to play with friends. Its story is deeply entwined with your gameplay experience and as such is cathartic and meaningful in a way that only games can be; it's complex and nuanced in the emotions it conveys, and as other reviewers have pointed out, it's an almost spiritual experience. It pushes the medium forward with its incredible AI and animation but also questions some of its most fundamental conventions - tight and responsive controls are forgone for floppy and physics-based movement, and its unfairness is a vital part of its themes.
I have a couple of nitpicks - the overabundance of carnivores (mainly in the mid-game) can push the believability of the ecosystem, and juking predators through pipe transitions can trivialize encounters in an overly gamey way - but Rain World is still about as perfect as games come, in addition to being a wholly unique and greatly affecting artistic experience. I don't think I'll ever be able to fully describe how good this game is, no matter how hard I try - you just have to play it. I mean, fuck, am I just supposed to play other games after this? Could you imagine playing Rain World and then picking up some tepid survival game with encumberment and temperature mechanics? I'll be counting the days until Downpour comes out.
I have a couple of nitpicks - the overabundance of carnivores (mainly in the mid-game) can push the believability of the ecosystem, and juking predators through pipe transitions can trivialize encounters in an overly gamey way - but Rain World is still about as perfect as games come, in addition to being a wholly unique and greatly affecting artistic experience. I don't think I'll ever be able to fully describe how good this game is, no matter how hard I try - you just have to play it. I mean, fuck, am I just supposed to play other games after this? Could you imagine playing Rain World and then picking up some tepid survival game with encumberment and temperature mechanics? I'll be counting the days until Downpour comes out.