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.

It won't matter how well made your physics interaction systems are if your lead designer/director is fundamentally bad at level design, pretty much the same flaws as Boneworks but with a little more polish. Stop trying to make actual campaigns, just do a sandbox with multiplayer like Garry's Mod. Even something like Vertigo Remastered (mind you a game created by a few teenagers without Meta backing) has a better designed campaign and actually somewhat captures the wit of Portal/Half-Life more accurately than this is so desperately trying to.

The developers are totally scummy too, not only is the game more expensive than Boneworks (while looking worse and having a shorter campaign), there have been zero updates to the game since late 2021, and they promised us all these updates to the modding SDK and game fixes yadda yadda. There has been nothing but radio silence from the devs until recently and its just too little too late, if they reach base competence maybe their next game will be featureful at launch, i'm not holding out hope. Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice....