Rain World

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Hunt or Hunted Bundle along with Grime.)

Rain World is a Platformer released on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2017 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2018. This game has you playing as a cute, fuzzy, rodent-like animal in a post-apocalyptic world where seemingly everything is trying to kill you.

The presentation in this game is absolutely gorgeous, with detailed, intricate, hand-drawn 2D environments that show a degree of beauty in nature reclaiming the ruins of humanity, with well-animated 2D characters that move and behave like real animals. This is backed with a lovely subdued soundtrack that really highlights both the beauty and the danger present in the game.

Speaking of that danger, one thing you should absolutely know going into Rain World is that this game is punishingly difficult. Predators who can devour you instantly not only prowl the various rooms you pass through, but will stalk you from one room to the next, forcing you to figure out a way to circumvent them, hide from them, or divert their interest. What’s more, players have to constantly be mindful of the coming rain, which in this world are a torrential onslaught that will mean certain death if you cannot manage to find enough food to hibernate in one of the rare safe rooms strewn throughout the map until the rains subside. Few games truly give you the feeling of being in a cruel and unforgiving natural world as this game does.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the intentional game mechanics that do this, it’s also the poor controls, which often didn’t seem to want to follow my directions. Jumping from one platform to another always seemed to me like a roll of the dice – sometimes my character would latch on to the ledge, and sometimes they wouldn’t, and it seemed impossible to predict when that would happen. This would be bad enough in any Platformer, but in one as hostile and unforgiving as this one, it’s torturous.

At the very least, the game’s included 4-player competitive mode does a great job of adding a balancing factor to all of this frustration, since the other players competing to survive must deal with the same issues. However, I’d still much rather have reliable controls than a multiplayer mode where everyone is similarly crippled.

In the end, I appreciate what Rain World is trying to do, and in some ways it succeeds brilliantly. The beautiful presentation and unforgiving world of the game perfectly create this feeling of a nature teeming with equal parts wonder and danger. Unfortunately, this high difficulty makes the game’s poor controls fare even worse than they would otherwise, and as a result it’s hard for me to recommend this game to any but the most patient players.

tl;dr – Rain World is a Platformer that has you playing as a cute rodent-like creature struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The game’s beautiful presentation and unforgiving world drive home this game’s atmosphere very well, but the unreliable controls do nothing but frustrate the player and make the game’s unforgiving nature feel unfair and tedious. Only the most patient players wanting a challenge should bother with this one.

Grade: C

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