Rain World (2017)

I have finished rain world.

I have "finished" rain world.

I have """""""""FiNiShEd""""""""" rain world.

I have rolled credits on survivor. it took me over 40 hours.

I stand now at an intersection. like hades, the game has given an offramp. I have experienced its main campaign, sinking many hours into it, and found the experience edifying. I can stop now and be more or less satisfied. I will log it away as a good and incredibly unique experience. four stars. will keep a watchful eye on airframe ultra.

or, I can play another slugcat. and, if I play another slugcat, I know I will be playing all of them. rain world has burrowed a few epidermal layers in and I can either pull it out or let it get to the bone. and, if it gets in, the star rating doesn't matter. at that point, it's a part of me.

so: I can feel it within me, the potential to love rain world. but would I love it enough to be worth what it would do to me? to let it be an obsession that lasts... I can't even guess how long. 40+ hours for one slugcat, and, if we discount monk (no) and inv (ain't no fuckin way), that's seven more campaigns. I might be familiar enough with the base game that they wouldn't each take 40 hours, but, from the sound of it... some damn well might take longer.

I can't say, right now. my fate will be sealed when and if I get downpour. that's the timeline split, right there. that's back to the future part 2. for now, I have to think of all the other games I wanna play, all the other art I wanna consume, and if it should all wait until I've played another 200 hours of rain world.

I think...

I think I will tackle a different "big game" and see if rain world is still on my mind after. then we'll see. we'll just see.

spoiler section:

my path through the game: from outskirts I made my way to industrial complex, and from there into garbage wastes. got stumped there a while - made it briefly to drainage system but kept drowning, couldn't find my way east cuz I forgot about jamming spears in walls to climb higher - so I doubled back to industrial complex, and eventually found my way to chimney canopy. it took two karma to go west and four to go east, and I could not stay alive long enough to get four karma, so I expended a good 40ish deaths finding a shelter in sky islands. from there, it was farm arrays to subterranean to filtration system, and, look, what I'm saying is: I made it to the depths before meeting moon or pebbles. I had made it to the endgame area without encountering the actual plot. my rain-world-obsessive friends have informed me this is one of the most batshit first playthroughs they've ever heard. I'd spent most of the game avoiding the wiki, but had, that many hours in, allowed myself to glance at the page for an area I had already spent a good amount of time in, so I was at least aware karma gets expanded and was familiar with the symbol for 10, so I knew why I couldn't advance. thankfully, I'd collected a passage by then and let myself warp back to garbage wastes, which was where I gleaned I'd gone off from the overseer's plan. from there it was a pretty (I gather) typical run: wastes to shoreline, shoreline to moon, double back through shoreline to shaded citadel, citadel to memory crypts, crypts to the exterior, up the leg, under the hang, and into pebbles (through unfortunate development, which is aptly named). then I had to make my way back to where I'd been already. I will say, for all the advice to go in cold: knowing next to nothing and being mostly good about avoiding spoilers absolutely made the first 20-odd hours powerful, but there was a point where, without the wiki, I might've fucking quit. discovering I had gone off course and needed to make my way to looks to the moon, and going all the damn way across shoreline to finally find her, all that buildup, amplified by how long I had spent on the ass-opposite side of the map, only for nothing to happen... I would've thrown the game in the trash. I would've bought a physical copy of the game to throw it in the trash. but the wiki letting me know, no, no, she can't talk to you til you meet with five pebbles... if that had been another "no info, figure it out for yourself" moment? done. it's joever. (I might not have, but hoo boy, I considered it.) this made things weird cuz, after climbing down the wall back to chimney canopy, I burned another passage to get back to moon, finally see what she had to say... and she mostly wouldn't talk to me just cuz I ate some of her brain! it was only like half, sheesh! and then I had to slug it out repeating a lot of areas because I'd burned all my passages and needed to get to subterranean on foot. (never unlocked the wanderer passage because, despite it all, I never actually hibernated in drainage system. only found the garbage wastes entrance and couldn't make headway before drowning. c'est la vie boheme!) what a bonkers-ass game.

This game is a survival platformer that places you in control of a fragile slugcat navigating a hostile, post-apocalyptic ecosystem. Its standout qualities are the gorgeous pixel art, fluid animations, and the haunting atmosphere that emerges from its dynamic world, filled with predators and relentless rain. it's art is what made me want to play this game, and I stayed because of it's amazing gameplay loop.

The game’s ecosystem feels alive, with procedurally animated creatures that behave unpredictably, creating tense and immersive encounters. Exploration is at the heart of the experience, with storytelling left mostly to environmental clues rather than dialogue or cutscenes, which adds to its mysterious tone. I find that the pixel-art is something from another world since the animations and fluidity feels like it is not a pixel-art title at all, it is truly one of a kind on this regard.

However, Rain World is notoriously punishing, death often comes suddenly, and the scarcity of guidance means you must learn through trial and error. It'll make you want to quit several times over, this is truly one of the hardest games I've ever played, and it absolutely does not feel unbalanced or cheap, it is just trying to convey the idea of you playing as a fragile living being in a hostile environment. This combination of harsh difficulty and opaque mechanics can be frustrating, especially for those looking for a more forgiving experience, so I advise you skip this one if you don't like this idea.

The reception was mixed at first, with some people praising its artistry and atmosphere while others criticized its severity. Over time, though, it has gained a cult following among players who appreciate its unique approach to survival and its uncompromising design, even launching some DLCs afterwards, with more playable characters that can drastically change how you play the game. And I highly recommend playing those, even though, particularly speaking, I never came back to it after I finished it for the first time. For those willing to endure its challenges, Rain World delivers a singular, unforgettable journey.

I love this game. I think it helped that I went in expecting it to be the hardest, most infuriating thing ever- so it was a bit easier than I expected.

I love the world, the story, the iterators, the slugcats, the beautiful environment art, the quirky creatures- it all comes together to be instill a unique feeling. It's very 17776. I just find the concept to be extremely engaging in a way that is hard to describe.

Rain World has an attractive aesthetic, a foreboding atmosphere, and an interesting concept. I like almost everything about it, with the rather significant exception of the core gameplay loop.

Summary: You are a slugcat separated from your family. Everyday you must eat, avoid being eaten, and find a place to shelter from that devastating rain world rain. In between, you can explore the vast, vast landscape. Sometimes a lil yellow plant thing will point at things you might want to check out.

That’s all you have to work with at the start. 15 hours later, it’s still all I have to work with.

Rain World is a game I tried very hard to like, and I’m sincerely disappointed that I don’t. I explored dozens of rooms in eight different biomes, evaded and fended off predators, found applications for most of the items slugcat can hold, and for my troubles I found myself at the end of a loop leading back to the beginning of the game. I'm confident there was something else to learn along this route, but my most generous interpretation is that Rain World is completely indifferent to whether or not I know what it is. Well, I find I am equally indifferent.

The game is simply not very fun to play from moment to moment. Every screen is an invitation to make a costly input error or to just get punked by a lizard that falls on you jaws first. It’s tense, I’ll grant, but when I succeed I usually feel lucky instead of smart.

Yet it’s hard to find fault in Rain World because there is no single aspect of it which is bad in isolation. It’s the way it all hangs together; a game that’s less than the sum of its parts. At its core (or, I guess, somewhere on its extremely wide surface), I find a knot of contradictions and mechanics that are all in tension with each other. Some examples:

• A game about exploring further and further into hostile environments to uncover ancient mysteries of a lost civilization vs. A game where the player’s avatar is an animal whose primary motivations are to find food and a place to sleep every day

• Deaths are frequent and sometimes unavoidable vs. The player must survive several consecutive cycles to move between regions

• Procedural animation renders the sprites dynamically based on player inputs and the environment vs. Precision platforming requires the player to quickly discern small visual differences

• An intricate simulated ecosystem with procedurally generated interactions the player can study and learn to exploit vs. The player is always on a ticking clock

• A quick-swap inventory system where the player needs to pay close attention to what is held in each hand at all times vs. A control scheme that is deliberately obtuse and difficult to master vs. A minimalist colour palette where many common items are represented by small black blocks of similarly shaped pixels

Each of these elements, taken on its own, is found in some other game I’ve enjoyed. Even the concept of pulling the player between contradictory mechanics is, on its own, not a bad idea at all. But a bunch of systems that all pull against each other is not a substitute for a center of mass. Nothing holds them all together. So Rain World is tedious to play.

I’ve read accounts from players who love this game. They hint at a subtle, sprawling, environment-driven narrative. I’ve no reason to doubt this is the case, but the game doesn’t seem to care whether I see it, and I’m just tired of looking.

under the hood there are some amazing systems built to make the residents of this world interact in real and unpredictable ways. The ai is very well crafted, there is a variety of interesting creatures that prey on your slug cat and each other. the world is beautiful and tells a story of the end of a world and the pieces left behind.

the parts of this game are brilliant. but the actual experience of playing it is intolerable. it's not just that it's hard to control and hard to get through, it's that I don't feel motivated and I don't care. A little more contact, a little more agency, a little less obstacle, i might have persevered and seen all there is. but this is too much of a chore.

I know this is a good game. for the right person. I was the wrong person