Rain World is an expansive game featuring several regions and dozens of enemies, with hours of lore to back it. After playing for over 50 hours, I can firmly say that Rain World is one of the most innovative and creative games I’ve played. This article contains minor spoilers for the backstory of the game, so do keep that in mind.
The game starts with you controlling a mix of a cat and slug, a slugcat, if you will. An opening cinematic details how you have been separated from your family during one of the game’s central gameplay events, a rain storm. After the cinematic, you are literally dropped into the starting region, the outskirts, where the basic controls and core gameplay loops of exploring, eating, and hibernating are explained. Soon after, you are completely free to explore and piece together the history of the industrial wasteland you call home.
The most integral part of Rain World is the exploration aspect of the game, which is reminiscent of open-world games but without side quests or markers telling you exactly where to go. The entirety of the game is built upon the players’ desire to explore and learn by themselves, rather than being guided on a predetermined path and experience. This is all helped by the game having enemies featuring artificial intelligence, rather than wandering around a set route. In a typical game, enemies will move in predetermined routes in the world and won’t break out of them. In Rain World, however, the game loads an entire region, and while you are exploring the different rooms making up the region, so are the enemies. They move from room to room, fight each other, and act sporadically, even off-screen. This allows for a real sense of exploration since the ecosystem and world around you really feel alive. which of course brings a higher level of difficulty and the need to master movement in order to really progress, which can be a turn-off for casual players, but which elevates the game to a new level of immersion and replayability.
The game doesn’t just use AI for its enemy’s behavioral patterns but for the entity’s literal animation. Every living creature in Rain World features procedural animation, animation produced not by a human but rather by a computer based on the in-game terrain and circumstances. This allows for very fluid and adaptive creature movements and heightened immersion; it also raises the difficulty since enemies can move somewhat spontaneously, really selling the idea that these are real creatures.
Rain World features a vast amount of lore spanning hundreds of thousands of years, incorporating science fiction and Buddhist philosophies to create a one-of-a-kind experience. The lore is hidden throughout the game, inscribed in pearls that can only be read by a mid to late-game character. The basis of the game’s lore is that every living thing is stuck in an endless cycle of life and death. Eons prior to the events of the game, the world sees an ancient race of creatures, aptly named The Ancients, who grew tired of the torturous “Great Cycle.” Over the years, several Ancients began seeking enlightenment, ridding themselves of natural urges, hoping that this would result in “ascending” from the endless cycle. At some point, these Ancients discovered a sea composed of void fluid slowly eating the world from the inside out. Seeing the highly corrosive properties of this fluid, they debated whether it would permanently kill you–and sure enough, it did, but with some unforeseen consequences. Some ancients with physical attachments to the world, large egos, or all-around not-cool people wouldn’t be completely destroyed; rather, an echo of their past selves would remain scattered throughout the wasteland for all eternity. Seeing how not everyone could be killed, the ancients began extracting this highly corrosive fluid because it was an excellent power source, allowing great technological advancements and leading to the construction of the Iterators. Iterators were giant superstructures housing biological computer components, essentially a giant biological calculator. These were created to help the Ancients find a solution to escaping their Great Cycle without the need for void fluid since not all could ascend using it. After centuries of trying, a solution was never found and slowly all the ancients took a dip in the void sea, bringing their race to extinction.
This is just the overview of the events prior to the first campaign, not including the vast amount of history surrounding the downloadable content recently released. This base storyline, along with its concepts and philosophies, elevates Rain World to new heights, cementing it as one of my favorite worlds to have experienced.
Rain World features an expansive 12 regions, each with its own subregions, which are vastly different and large in scale. The game doesn’t feature a common progression system like other games, with upgrades that close off certain regions. Rather, all regions are separated by Karma gates that can only be opened by meeting or exceeding the required Karma, which is gained by hibernating and lost through death. This pushes players to master the deep and layered movement and combat system and encourages player curiosity as they seek to survive the grueling world to proceed to newer regions.
Although I say this is a great thing, which it is, most of the movement, combat, Karma, and exploration aspects are never explained directly. While Karma and exploration can be figured out after some time, the movement is never really explained. Because of this, I would suggest first fidgeting with the controls, then looking up movement techniques since they change the game quite a lot.
Rain World has become one of my favorite games of all time. The beautiful pixel art, dynamic gameplay, and introspective lore, all add up to one of my favorite gaming experiences, which I hope many others will share in the future.
