Rain World

I was over 90 cycles into the game, making my way through the section which connects Sky Islands to Farm Arrays. I managed to pass the gate and die a couple of times, meaning I'd have to backtrack a bit to level up my karma until I could enter Farm Arrays again. A bit boring, but not too bad. Until at one point, for no reason whatsoeverm the game RANDOMLY DECIDED to not spawn ANY FOOD for SEVERAL SCREENS, forcing me to backtrack for MINUTES AT A TIME through some very difficult and, frankly, really boring areas just to find four items of food. I even managed to do that one time before losing my patience with this terrible game completely. When I hibernated and went into a new cycle, there was absolutely NO FOOD for an even greater amount of screens. I tried to love this game, I really did. After all, Matthewmatosis recommended it, and I was super on par with his thoughts on the game for the most part. But there's no other way to put this – the game is BROKEN. Some people get good RNG and have a good overall experience, some people (like me) get absolutely wrecked by an unfair, incompetent, and entirely deceitful and artificial game design. I'm trying to keep a cool head because I know that the game is supposed to be frustrating, but blatantly disrespecting my time by creating (or allowing the code to create) a situation where I have to spend FIFTEEN MINUTES getting to a place where there MIGHT be food for ONE KARMA POINT... That's where I draw the line. I spent 20+ hours with this game and a few parts of the experience were indeed very good and unique. However, I cannot recommend that anybody ever play this in its entirety. I don't know if there's some sort of demo, but if there is, maybe just play that instead. Get a feel for the game, appreciate its art and uniqueness, and move right along – don't let this game waste your limited amount of free time.

I was really intrigued when I first saw this game. The idea behind it sounded fun until I got to play it. However, the positives first: The atmosphere and the overall presentation of this game is top notch. The quiet ambient sound with the straight forward gameplay really invites you to explore this eerie dangerous wild land. It's basically a 2D Platformer with one single survival aspect: Eat food and find one of the rare hibernation spots that also acts as the ONLY checkpoint in game, while avoiding instakill enemies and deathtraps. Beware, this game is relentless. Which isn't a big problem. The problem is that it uses a physics engine for all the jumping. That means your little fella moves realisticly, but very clunky, much like some enemies that glitches out sometimes. To top it off, there is no grab button and you don't climb automaticly. You have to push up to hold on whatever you wanna climb. This creates many problems: Coming out of a roof vent, you press down, but in order to grab the pole that IS ATTACHED TO THE VENT, you have to push up or you will fall to your doom. Combined with physics that pushes you into every single nook it adds to the frustration. And the game is really harsh, but also unecessarly tedious: You only get like 20min before the rain comes to kill you, which is ok in on itself and really enough to get food, but enemies AI is so random and glitchy that they sometimes block the only way out, forcing you to reload and reloading equals death. And death is meaningful, because adding insult to injury this game has a karma system. Hibernate = +1 karma. Die = -1 karma and you will die A LOT. And you need karma points to get past certain gates. In summary: Backtrack, grinding food, hibernate, get to the gate without dying, repeat. I was stuck in the sewers without food, in front of gate with 4 points needed and a lot of swimming and walljumping behind me, when I just gave up. +1 star for the overal artdesign +1 star for the gameplay idea

After 25 hours I gave up on the game. While the atmosphere and concept are top notch, I found the difficulty completely unnecessary and detrimental to the experience. Too many wall jump sections that go on forever and require perfect timing, too many water tunnels that don't allow for a pixel of missed movement, too many pixel perfect jumps, and too many occasions where you're completely reliant on the right monster spawning, or the wrong enemy not spawning. Add to this obscene amount of back tracking (unless you use a guide, but then what's the point of an exploration game?) and you have a recipe for one frustrating game. I rate games on enjoyment, not on how theoretically good a game is, and in the end I just did not enjoy this one.

Let me begin with a short summary: BUY THIS GAME! It worths every penny! The amount of content in this game is simply astounding. The game world is interesting, colorful, atmospheric, beautifully crafted and HUGE. The inhabitants of the world are interesting and frightening at the same time, and creatures have their own unique abilities and behavior. Rain World is both an open-world survival game and a platformer. And it is mercilessly hard in both aspects. Many people criticise the game's difficulty and not without reason. Unlike hardcore platformers, you cannot really muscle-memory your way through levels as the positioning of predators, items, prey etc. are somewhat randomized, and the real hardest part of platforming is avoiding predators that can move to just about anywhere. By random chance a Daddy Long Legs decided to have a nap in a passageway on your way forward? Tough luck, go back to the shelter if you can and wait out another cycle, or find and alternate (arguably more dangerous?) route. Or try to sneak past it. Or try to kill it. Typically, the game presents you with problematic situations, and you have to rely on your smarts and skills to solve the challenge.. The game offers very minimal character development, you cannot really gain new abilities, moves etc. They are all there in the beginning. As a beginner player you will stumble, trip, plop around with your feeble slugcat. Play 20 hours and you become quite an agile slugcat. Play 40 hours and you will be parkour-extraordinaire slugcat. At the beginning you will feel that your are only a step above the lousy bats in the food chain. Play it long enough and the world will tremble when the apex predator slugcat tumbles around. Why run away from that lizard if you can kill it? Honing your skills in this game can be frustrating at times, but very rewarding once you master the controls. Did I say Rain World is an open-world game? If you follow the game's guidance and strictly stick to the path, you will explore roughly 50% of the game's world. Stray off the path and you will find yourself a very different journey. The big areas of the game are interconnected, and you can revisit any area using either the route you have taken so far, or a different one off the beaten path. Nothing compels you to visit any area in any order, or finish the game before whatever time, so feel free to take your time and explore. It is a lovingly-made fantastic game. Buy it. At this price you get a huge bang for your buck.

I don't mind difficult games that don't take the player by the hand: one of my favorite PC games is the original Pathalogic. However, this game just doesn't have very much to recommend it. I don't mind repetitive games if the main gameplay loop is fun, but it's very underwhelming here. The fact is, exploring samey environments gets boring fast, and there is very little motivation to keep trying. What story there is just comes off as pretentious. People are super defensive when you criticize this game, but I really just don't see much here worth playing. Hard "No" from me.