Sometimes it’s as simple as throwing a rock to distract a dragon, or poisoning swamp parasites with a specific form of plant, but it can go way past that if you’re willing to experiment. Slugcat is a softy, but with your human brain calling the shots, they can use tools to turn the tables on anyone or anything.
Like in many of the best games in the survival genre, Rain World makes it fun to push back on the barriers that separate predator from prey. Like you, they just need to eat, and sometimes that means eating someone else. Few of these monsters are your “enemies” in the traditional sense of the word. Slugcat sits near the bottom of the chain, above bats and centipedes, parallel to giant beetles and ape-like scavengers, and far below the Ghibli-esque fungus deer-rabbits and monstrous deep sea leviathans. Now they are gone, replaced by nature’s food chain. Through traces of lost language and smatterings of graffiti, you get the sense that people used to live here. Like in Pikmin, Rain World‘s animal kingdom is fascinating to observe. Hiding a tip amid a morbidly fascinating wildlife funeral procession may seem like a random move, but it falls right in line with the game’s overall aesthetic. Eating the plant can later help you to preserve “karma,” the in-game currency you need to progress. Heading back to the scene of your most recent murder also yields more practical benefits, as wherever you died in a past life, a flower will grow. In your next life, you can use that information to discover all new areas that you may not have found otherwise.
Watch for long enough and you may see it drag your dead body to an undiscovered location. For example, if (or should I say, when) you are killed by a giant lizard, you can watch where it carries your corpse as it travels back to its nest. That may sound overly intimidating, or even disgusting, but thanks to its consistently poetic delivery and reward for risk-taking, Rain World almost always inspires curiosity. It’s all like a big bed of moss that may or may not release endorphins, hallucinogens, and/or toxic spores into your lungs at any time. Everything from the controls, the characters, the story, and the game flow feel alive and mushy. Organic is probably the best word to describe all of Rain World. You’re supposed to discover them organically. Also like in those Nintendo classics, most of these maneuvers are never explicitly taught to the player. Coupled with those powers come specific moves that seem directly inspired by some of Samus’s tricks in Super Metroid and Mario’s acrobatic turn in Donkey Kong ’94, like the wall-jump, the quick-turn backflip, and the tuck and roll landing. Your wobbly feline has no claws or bite to speak of, but their javelin throwing and gymnastic abilities are beyond Olympic level strong. Rain World puts you in the role of Slugcat, a noodle-like mammal trying to explore and survive in a serene post-apocalyptic wasteland. I just wonder if Switch owners will pull Smash and Pokémon away for long enough to see it too. Though they aren’t directly related, you can see the DNA of all three running through different aspects of Rain World. I know this game has an audience in the home of Mario, Samus, and Olimar. With a new physical edition on PS4, and a surprise early launch on Switch, I think it has a chance, especially on Nintendo consoles. I hope that Rain World fares better than that. Still, it’s unclear if the positive press for either game led to much of an uptick in sales.
TumbleSeed added an entire new game’s worth of content for free a few months after its debut, which helped it to get some additional headlines. Slain managed to garner some goodwill after completely overhauling its combat system shortly after launch. Still, it’s an uphill battle for any game that’s looking to reestablish its reputation after coming out of the gate to a mixed critical response. Steam’s user reviews definitely tried to get the word out, which now average at very positive. So the devs did their part, but did anyone let Nic know?
Then a few months later, many of the issues Nic described were indeed addressed in a series of updates that added difficulty levels, decreased the need for potential grinding, and improved the map system.
Maybe some of these issues will be addressed in a future patch and Rain World will become the game it feels like it should have been. It seems so close to being something special and wonderful, but is just undermined at every turn by baffling design choices, poor controls, and frustration. The bad news is, he was also feeling pretty disappointed when he said “ I feel so badly for this game in a way. Nic Rowen’s review of Rain World seemed sympathetic but sad, which makes sense given that the game does a lot to invoke those two feelings. What if Mary Lou Retton was an unlucky cat in a global warming wasteland?