The creators of Rain World, a difficult metroidvania platformer, made by Videocult and previously published by Adult Swim Games, with the new publisher being Akupara Games, announced a new DLC (Rain World: The Watcher) will be coming out soon. While we don’t know what this new DLC will be like, the original game and subsequential modes are worth a play. Even though the game is challenging, after a player plays awhile and learn different moves, it is fun.
The game was originally released on Steam on March 28, 2017 and has also been sprouted to consoles like the Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch. Following the release of Rain World came its first spectacle of downloadable content known as Rain World: Downpour, released for Steam on Jan. 19, 2023, and July 11, 2023 for consoles.
In the game, the player takes control of a creature named a Slugcat which, as the name implies, is a hybrid of the two critters, making their way through a challenging ecosystem to complete their quest. Players should choose their character wisely since not all characters have the same capabilities and are set at different difficulty levels.
Before the release of Downpour, there were three main story characters to choose from and two modes to play. The characters range from easy to hard in order: The Monk, The Survivor, and The Hunter. Monk is the game’s easy mode, while Hunter is the hard mode. There is a fourth character that was only made for the second mode of the game called “Arena” named Nightcat. The character was deemed to have a campaign but was scrapped for reasons such as being too hard to see for their campaign. They are being brought back in the new DLC, “The Watcher”, so this fourth character may return soon.
Downpour brought in five new characters and one joke character to add to the main cast, with these characters all having unique quests, stories, and motives along with three new modes: Safari, Challenge, and Expedition. Safari lets the player explore and watch the ecosystem more, Challenge offers scenarios for the player to complete as the individual characters and Expedition offers a more “Roguelike” experience: a genre of game with aspects of random generation to make each playthrough feel unique. These new modes offer a variety of new experiences for the player to enjoy when they finish the main stories the game has set and laid out. This can be to tune their abilities or practice skills they aren’t comfortable with which is great.
Rain World is infamous for its harsh and punishing difficulty, as the player’s character is an animal at the bottom of the in-game food chain, trying to survive and thrive like everyone else. Unlike most metroidvanias, the rooms and world do not generate around the player, but instead, all move on their own, and the enemy AI (Artificial Intelligence) will function with their life-like personalities. If the player happens to fall to an enemy in the game, there is a slight chance they may have not instantly died, but are only incapacitated leaving the player always guessing what will happen next.
There are a lot of elements in the game that may make the game feel unfair at times. To combat the unfortunate circumstances given to the player, there is a wide selection of tricks and weapons one may use to even the odds. Finding these tricks and weapons makes the player feel powerful and makes the play challenging and enjoyable.
The game never handholds the player and only points them toward a general direction of where the game wants them to explore. It will never force a player to go there but provides helpful information they need to kickstart them on their journey which makes the game very individualized and entertaining.
Metroidvania is a sub-genre of action-adventure games that focuses on self-linear progression, an interconnected world with regions and biomes, and non-linear exploration where the player may explore at their own pace. The story can be great to digest, surviving feels rewarding, the choice of characters appeals to all levels, and the ideology of finding out what is possible and pulling it off in practice makes for an enjoyable game.
