Rain World may not be the most forgiving adventure, but stick with it through its trickier times, and when it all comes together it’s capable of producing some genuinely brilliant moments. [June 2017, p76]
Rain World is a maddening thing, because of quite how special it could have been. Beautiful environments, incredible animations and enticingly hazy mechanics are fantastic, but the sheer cruelty of how it’s pieced out to the player transcends challenge and becomes an unwanted trial.
Rain World has massive world that can be pretty easy to get lost in and enables some real survival adrenaline rushes. Unfortunately, these positive aspects – alongside its exquisite art direction – are at odds with some of the less satisfying aspects: the slightly awkward controls, the overwhelming feeling of almost too much freedom, and the fairly constant threat of losing large chunks of progress take away from the experience. The end result is complicated: it's a game we bounced off quite a lot but one we still greatly appreciate. The game does something new with the genre and it does it well for the most part, making the game worth at the very least giving a look.
Rain World is a sluggish platformer with copious instant death situations and infrequent checkpoints. These factors all add up to a game which isn’t fun or easy and seems to actively frustrate any understanding of whats going on. Whilst the art style and interesting setting can pull you in, that alone isn’t enough to keep you coming back for more punishment.
Rain World is sloppy, clunky platformer. It's a game of fumbling controls, arbitrary deaths, and tedious repetition. Why should I bother figuring out what all those twee little glyphs mean? Why should I devote dozens of hours to figuring out what spitting up one kind of plant might do in a specific situation when the controls can't even be bothered to feel consistent?
Sadly, despite its pretty aesthetic, Rain World is a confusing and sluggish platformer that failed to give me any reason for what I was doing and just left me feeling bored and bewildered.
This game is definitely not my cup of tea: though I'll try to be fair because it is subjective. The game appears to be good for its platforming genre with a decent set of movements and a large free-roaming world. However where it loses me is that in its desire to be free roaming it becomes too disconnected from any sense of good progress and storytelling that it ends up being mainly an exercise on platforming exploration without much boundaries which can be considered a positive for many players but for many others it would be desired to have more structure.
Rain World is a beautifly constructed platformer that suffers from imprecise controls.
This game was clearly made with love and talent. Art work is superb. Each screen evokes a sense of wonder and builds this alien world of machinery, animals, plants and various beings that defy typical classification. It doesn't do much hand holding past the first few minutes so you are left to figure out where you need to go. Though there is regular sign posting and a map so you don't get completely lost. It can be difficult as you can often die instantly from predators and your escape can be frustratingly hampered by controls that seem at times not designed for the intricate paths the game wants you to take.
If you are looking for something different or even just a challenging platformer I definitely recommend Rain World.
I could write an entire essay about this game, but I'll keep it brief. This game is designed to have you play a certain way and punishes you for failing to do so, with design decisions that on paper seem like terrible ideas. But these were not bad things, and I had fun once I adjusted and felt the thrill of being a tiny animal in a hostile alien world, surviving on my nimbleness and knowledge of the terrain.
However, in order for a game like this to work, it has to make sure that if you die, it's because you screwed up somehow. The thing about this game is that sometimes, enemies will bug out. And because of the way the game is designed, this often leads to inescapable death, which just leads to a chain-reaction of frustration. Other death-inducers that weren't as bad included dead enemies blocking the exit, and controls that may or may not have been just a little too finicky.
This all being said, there's no other game quite like it, and it somehow has a very positive on steam. So if you really like artsy hard games, and can brush off deaths that weren't your fault, you might have fun with it. MIGHT.
SummaryAssume the role of a nomadic slugcat, both predator and prey in a broken ecosystem. Grab your spear and brave the industrial wastes, hunting enough food to survive, but be wary— other, bigger creatures have the same plan... and slugcats look delicious.