Rain World
2017 video game From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rain World is a 2017 survival-platform video game developed by indie studio Videocult and published by Adult Swim Games and Akupara Games. It was released for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows in March 2017, and Nintendo Switch in December 2018. The player assumes control of a "slugcat"—an agile cat-like creature—that is tasked with survival in a derelict and hostile world. The slugcat traverses through the decaying remnants of an industrialized ancient civilization.
| Rain World | |
|---|---|
| |
| Developer(s) | Videocult |
| Publisher(s) | Adult Swim Games Akupara Games |
| Engine | Unity |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Platform, survival |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
The game features a simulated ecosystem in which creatures act independently to the player and perpetually wander through the environment. The slugcat uses debris as weapons to escape from lethal predators, scavenges for food, and tries to reach safe hibernation rooms before the deadly torrential rain arrives. Rain World uses procedural animation and conveys much of its narrative through environmental storytelling, adopting an adaptive lo-fi and electronic soundtrack. Other game modes also include multiplayer. Beginning in 2011, Rain World was in development for over six years by a two-man team and funded through Kickstarter, who intended to simulate a realistic ecosystem. Players are given little explicit guidance on how to survive so that they would feel like "a rat that lives on subway tracks," learning to survive in an environment without understanding its higher-level function.
Rain World received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its art design and procedural animation, but expressed significant frustration towards its high difficulty, inconsistent checkpoints, and imprecise controls; some of these concerns were addressed with later updates. Despite the mixed reviews, the game garnered a cult following and modding community. In January 2023, a downloadable content pack titled Rain World: Downpour, which was adapted from a popular community mod, was released for PC and ported to various consoles on July 11, 2023, receiving generally positive reviews from critics. A second content pack titled Rain World: The Watcher was released on March 28, 2025 for PC.
Gameplay
Summarize
Perspective
Rain World is a two dimensional (2D) survival-platformer where the player controls a "slugcat", a white creature visually similar to a cat and slug. The slugcat uses spears and debris to defend itself from predators in the ruined and obtuse ecosystem, where its animation is generated in real time through procedural animation.[1][2][3] As part of a nonlinear game,[4] the slugcat freely crawls through pipes and passages that span across over 1,600[5] screens shown individually; each screen spawns various creatures that wander around the region.[6][7] The slugcat can jump, swim, and climb poles to avoid enemies while foraging for sparsely placed food, which must be consumed to hibernate in scarce, designated safe rooms.[2][6] Hibernation spots serve as checkpoints where the player returns to after death; if the player does not reach a shelter before the end of the cycle,[a] rain will come, crushing the slugcat or causing them to drown in the ensuing flood.[6][9]
Upon returning to the last hibernation room, the slugcat loses one "karma" level. Karma is gained upon successfully hibernating, and the player can prevent one loss of their current karma level by eating a yellow karma flower. The flower appears in set locations around the map and is re-planted wherever the slugcat dies while under its effects. The slugcat must meet a specific karma level to pass through karma gates, which lie at the borders of the game's regions, allowing further progression.[1][10][11]
Predators range from camouflaged carnivorous plants to large vultures and Komodo dragon-like lizards. Many enemies can kill the slugcat in one attack, and some species have different variations, such as the different colors of lizards, which all have unique characteristics.[2][7][12] All creatures possess dynamic behavior and wander perpetually in the game's world independently from the player, occasionally battling and hunting each other; without a set path for predators to explore, the player is usually faced with problems they cannot avoid.[9][13] Players are mainly expected to evade predators[14] but are able to injure and kill them by hitting various weak points with spears.[7] The slugcat may carry three items at a time; two in their hands and one in their stomach. When throwing an item, the slugcat will use its right hand first, and can swap the items' places.[6] Some foods grant status effects when eaten,[2] such as slowing down time.[1]
Along with the default slugcat, the player may instead choose to play as the Monk and Hunter slugcats. As the Monk, creatures are less aggressive and the slugcat needs less food to hibernate. The Hunter, a carnivore with a bigger appetite, must also compete with more powerful and hostile creatures. Other game modes also include a multiplayer arena mode, where up to four players battle each other, and a sandbox mode, where players can freely spawn objects and creatures from the game.[15][16][17]
The game begins when a family of slugcats are struck by the rain. They become separated from one of their children—the player's slugcat—as it is flushed away[10][18] into the decaying remnants of an industrialized ancient civilization, now long abandoned.[7][11] Rain World's setting is destroyed by ecological catastrophe and illustrated in pixel art.[2] As a form of environmental storytelling, the game's narrative is told through its environment,[13][8]: 9:19 dreams during hibernation, and holograms from a worm-like creature that monitors the slugcat.[2] The game offers little to guide the player,[1] apart from the worm creature that directs the player towards nearby food and story-related events; this assistance becomes rarer as the game progresses.[6] The player may also view a map to check their progress in the large in-game world.[6][19]
Downloadable content
Rain World has two downloadable content packs (DLCs), the first being Downpour and the second being The Watcher.[20] Tripling the game's world's size, the Downpour expansion adds five new slugcats and ten new regions, accessed separately from the original game's content. Each slugcat features a different set abilities.[21][22][23] The Spearmaster can create an infinite amount of spears, though penetrating other creatures is the only way that it can receive food. The Rivulet, a semiaquatic slugcat, has an overall increased agility, but must deal with more frequent rain. The Gourmand requires a tremendous amount of food to survive, but has access to a crafting system. The Artificer can jump twice and create explosives, but is constantly plagued by tribes of ape-like "scavengers" that hunt them. The Saint has a grappling tongue that gives them large amounts of mobility, but is unable to throw spears or eat meat.[21]
Downpour also adds three other game modes: Safari allows players freely spectate the ecosystem without worry and control any living creature within it. Challenge mode provides 70 unique scored challenges with preset objectives. Expedition is a semi-roguelike with random missions that award experience points upon completion.[22][23][24] Downpour's release was also accompanied full local-coop functionality and the free Rain World Remix upgrade, which added accessibility options, ways to customize game difficulty, and better modding support so that players may modify the game.[22][23]
The Watcher DLC adds the eponymous slugcat, multiple new regions, and creatures.[20][25] The content pack's additions are significantly larger than the original game.[26]
Development
Summarize
Perspective
Rain World is developed by indie developer Videocult made up of Joar Jakobsson and James Therrian (also known as James Primate).[b][4] Before creating Rain World, Joar Jakobsson was a graphic designer in Sweden who taught himself how to animate sprites. He had played few games and without industry experience[14] when development began in 2011.[13] Jakobsson started with a sketch of an unnamed animal and posted development updates on his YouTube channel, with one YouTube commenter dubbing the creature a "slugcat".[14][29][30]: 4:25 Jakobsson had a previous interest in abandoned environments and what they reveal about the people who previously occupied them.[14] Partly inspired by his feelings of foreignness while living as an exchange student in Seoul, South Korea, a core idea of the gameplay was to recreate the life of "the rat in Manhattan". This rat understands how to find food, hide, and survive in a subway, but does not comprehend the subway's purpose or why it was built.[13][24]
I wasn't prepared for any of it! I have never made a video game before and I was a graphic design student and I was winging it the entire time!
Originally, Rain World was conceived to be a single-room multiplayer platformer where the player would hunt one prey as they run from one bigger predator.[32]: 5:05 The game strayed from that initial vision as it was developed and expanded, taking many "unexpected twists and turns," but had always retained the concept of the slugcat[33] and the "grimy, wet industrial environment".[4] Jakobsson Primate hoped that players would similarly feel as if they were close to making sense of the game's abstraction of an industrial environment without fully understanding.[14] Jakobsson did not intend for the game's extreme difficulty which resulted in its mixed reception.[31]: 12:00
[Instead] of the AI creatures just existing as a player obstacle, they exist in their own right, they exist there for themselves.
Jakobsson designed Rain World's enemies to live their own lives, in which they hunt for food and struggle to survive, rather than serve as obstacles for the player. Enemies dynamically wander around without a set path,[34] and in final playtests a week before release, the developers noticed how some players became more or less interested in the game based on how lucky they were with enemy behavior.[13] When inquired, Primate explained that he disliked traditional enemy behavior that solely acted as an adversary to the player, preferring the predators act like hungry animals in a real ecosystem likewise to that of the slugcat, eliciting empathy in the player.[13][27] In a Playstation Blog post, Jakobsson added that the creatures in the ecosystem "are also individuals that can learn to recognize you." He took this concept into account when developing the scavengers in particular; they are initially distrustful of the slugcat, but eventually ally with it once trust is established.[35][36]: 8:28 Placed near the bottom-middle of the food chain,[13] the slugcat is intended to avoid combat while evading enemies through stealth and flight.[14][37]
Jakobsson served as the game's artist, designer, and programmer. The game was initially written in the Lingo programming language before switching to C# early on with its own independent game engine.[4] Jakobsson's levels are made by hand in a standalone level editor. The designer brushes recurring, cloned elements, such as plants and chains onto the map, as well as combining and processing shadows.[14] At one point, the original release of Rain World was planned to include a multiplayer mode with separate story and custom modes upon release.[14][38]: 7:14 The development team crowdfunded some development costs via Kickstarter in early 2014 and quickly surpassed its goal, being greenlit in five days and picked up by Adult Swim Games;[39][40]: 2:14 By early 2015, about four years into development, the team had switched to the Unity game engine and released a test version of the game to its Kickstarter backers.[41] A seven-minute trailer was released by the end of the year.[42]
Music and sound design
Primate wrote Rain World's soundtrack, handled the indie studio's business,[14] and designed levels, becoming his first experience in directly developing gameplay.[4][13] Primate first found the game on an indie game Internet forum and sent Jakobsson 12 tracks as a successful pitch after experiencing a nightmare where "the game came out and was filled with garbage music." Though Rain World's soundtrack was originally chiptune,[28] Primate felt that "Arcade bleeps and bloops and retro concepts" did not fit with the naturalistic mood of the game, and instead aimed for a more "moody, immersive atmosphere".[14] The final product resulted in a lo-fi and electronic soundtrack. He and his musician partner Lydia Esrig turned to field recordings of urban ambiance for both the soundtrack and sound design, along with litter and metal for otherworldly sounds.[4][28] Primate aimed for the music to approximate the game's eclectic visuals, which mix industrial, science fiction, jungle, and various architectural elements.[4]
Without the use of traditional character dialogue and narration, Rain World's story was partly communicated through its soundtrack to contribute to its environmental storytelling.[4] The soundtrack of the beginning of the game uses primitive drums based on the slugcat's feelings of fear and hunger, while eventually transitioning to describe new areas.[14] Rain World has over 3.5 hours of recorded music across 160 tracks. When the slugcat is chased by a predator, between eight and twelve tracks will simultaneously layer to create ambiance and respond to the slugcat's in-game context, which Primate names "threat music".[4][28][43]: 0:24 Although, while the creatures of Rain World are simple animals like the slugcat, the torrential rain was designed to represent "oblivion incarnate", a threat that no creature could survive against. To contribute to this, a collection of sampled rainstorms with varying intensity layer up as the rain develops. The storm's climax introduces pipe organs that give a "totally biblical wrath-of-god vibe."[4]
Release
Promotional art pre-release
The development team announced that it was in the last phases of development in early 2016[44] and posted another trailer on December 5.[45] The animation of Rain World was popularized on social media[46][47][48] in praise of what IGN attributed to its "uncanny fluidity", contributing to the game's popularity pre-release.[2] Primate specifically noted one GIF that was posted on Twitter and retweeted over 15,000 times, though this popularity didn't contribute to Rain World's sales.[49] A final trailer was posted on March 8, 2017, revealing its release date to be on March 28[5] for PlayStation 4 and Windows, and to be published by Adult Swim Games.[50][51] Previews compared Rain World's design elements to other video games, including the difficulty of Super Meat Boy (2010), the environment and soundtrack of Fez (2012),[14][18] and the puzzle-platforming of Metroid and Oddworld.[52]
After its release, the game received an update to alleviate its high difficulty in reaction to the game's reception.[53] Videocult also announced another series of major content updates which were planned for release later in 2017. The update was slated to include the local multiplayer arena mode, featuring over 50 new rooms, and the Monk and Hunter, which make the game easier and harder respectively.[16][17] The update eventually released in beta in November for Windows[54] and finished officially on December 11, 2017;[55] the update was also ported to PlayStation 4 on December 21, 2018.[15] Following speculation in January 2018,[56] Videocult and Adult Swim Games ported Rain World to the Nintendo Switch platform on December 13 in the United States and December 27 in Europe.[57] Limited Run Games released a physical edition of Rain World for the PlayStation 4 later that month.[15]
Wanting more, fans picked Rain World apart, produced mod tools and set to work expanding it. More playable creatures, more environments, more art and music. Many drew fanart and wrote extensive fiction, building on its story of alien transcendence. Downpour is the result of those efforts.
In January 2022, due to conflicts with Adult Swim Games, Videocult announced that Rain World would be published by Akupara Games from then on after a prolonged legal dispute.[58][59] On March 28 of that year, the first DLC was officially announced, to be published by Akupara Games.[60] Titled Rain World: Downpour, it adds five new slugcat characters with their own storylines, over 1000 new rooms across ten new regions, and three new game modes.[61] Downpour is an expansion of the "More Slugcats" mod and was developed by 40 community modders over the course of 5 years.[21][62] It was released for Windows on January 19, 2023[63] and consoles on July 11, 2023.[64]
According to lead programmer Andrew Marrero, development of Downpour had started before the Monk and Hunter update released. A major theme of the DLC was the passage of time and how the hostile world transforms as new catastrophic events occur, placing the five slugcats' environments across different periods of time. Regarding the new game modes, Marrero intended for the Challenge mode to teach players the game's mechanics. The structured challenges with pre-determined tasks act as an easier practice than the "spontaneous challenges" of the unpredictable main gameplay. Lee Moriya, the creator of the Expedition game mode, said that the given quests encouraged players to do things they wouldn't have done normally and rewarding them with experience points. Marrero created Safari mode to allow players to observe the simulated ecosystem without the stress of surviving or being pursued.[24]
On March 28, 2024, the development of a second DLC titled Rain World: The Watcher was announced with a teaser trailer, featuring multiple new regions, creatures, and a new playable slugcat named the Watcher, also being dubbed the Nightcat.[65][66][67] The DLC released on March 28, 2025[68][20] with some content also adapted from multiple community mods.[25]
Reception
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Perspective
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | PC: 66/100[69] PS4: 59/100[70] NS: 71/100[71] |
| OpenCritic | 43% recommend[72] |
Reception
The game, before obtaining cult status[21] and a modding community,[58] received mixed reviews on its release, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.[75] Reviewers praised the game's art design and criticized the harshness of its gameplay mechanics,[1][2][6][10] particularly its unpredictable deaths, ruthless enemies, and time-consuming hibernation requirements.[10][76] Paste Magazine and Eurogamer compared its savage, survival elements to Tokyo Jungle (2012).[7][11]
Rain World's punishing gameplay frustrated reviewers,[1][2][6][10] who often descended into apathy.[1][10] Considering the random enemy spawns, one-hit kills, infrequent game saves, frequent repetition, crushing rain, some inexplicable enemy movements, and sometimes clumsy controls, IGN wrote that any of the game's challenging elements taken alone would be "tough but fair", but when considered together, "the odds are stacked so high against the player that it risks toppling the entire structure of the game".[2] Though Game Informer recognized the game's intent to simulate the slugcat's suffering in a punishing, mysterious environment, the lack of assistance and terrible controls ruined that intent; they did not complete the game to provide a score.[77] Reviewers were bored by the repeated navigation of rooms with random enemies after each death, which tempered their strong urge to explore.[2][6] Polygon's reviewer was miserable following the loss of her multi-hour progression. She wrote about futility as a central tenet of Rain World, and felt that she was not given the proper tools to survive.[1] Critics lamented, in particular, how the slugcat's jerky animations and imprecise throwing mechanics led to many unwarranted deaths, with Rock, Paper, Shotgun comparing hypothetical instructions for those throwing mechanics to a "bizarre legal document."[6][1][2][7][9]
I haven’t finished Rain World. I know I won’t finish Rain World. And a not insignificant part of that is because I just do not enjoy playing Rain World.
Multiple reviewers concluded that while some hardcore players might enjoy the tough gameplay, Rain World excluded a large audience with its design choices,[2][7][6][11] as its choice of emergent enemy strategy would feel unfair to most players.[9] Regarding the game's controls, Paste Magazine compared them to Devil May Cry due to their required specificity which would've frustrated even the most experienced of gamers, especially in partnership with the game's checkpoints.[11] Rock, Paper, Shotgun called the checkpointing among the worst in modern platformers, and its challenge, unlike the similarly punishing Dark Souls, without purpose.[6] Rain World's karmic gates, which require players to have a positive hibernate to death ratio, were arbitrary goals "disrespectful" of the player's time, according to GameSpot.[10] Making players trudge through an area a dozen times, IGN argued, is "antithetical" in a game in which exploration itself is the reward.[2] In contrast, PC Gamer's reviewer, with time, began to see Rain World's cumbersome controls less as "bad design" than as "thematically appropriate", given the game's intent to disempower the player.[9] Though Rain World was a "beautiful, forward-thinking game", Paste Magazine concluded that it should've been more accessible in regards to the game's "puzzles" that gave only "half of the pieces."[11]
Some critics fondly recalled serendipitous in-game encounters as they learned the game environment's unwritten rules.[6][10][78] Not knowing how foreign figures would react, Rock, Paper, Shotgun's reviewer treated new encounters as puzzles. This experimentation led to moments of fearful scrambling across a room to avoid a new, encroaching enemy type, and discovering that other enemies are harmless if left alone.[6] Rain World was abundant with opportunities for a player to demonstrate ingenuity and improvisation, according to GameSpot's reviewer, whose highlights included making a mouse into a dark room's lantern, using weapons as climbable objects, and luring enemies into battle to distract from the slugcat's presence.[10] PCGamesN, praising this element, believed it was lacking in many other games.[78] Nintendo World Report, who reviewed the game in January 2019, believed the unique creature behavior deserved its "own level of praise" which differentiated it from the "typical goombas" of other video games.[74] Those critics considered these mysterious, perceptive interactions to be among the game's best features,[6][10][78][74] though far outweighed by Rain World's other punishing game mechanics.[10]
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Rain World received early attention for the "uncanny fluidity" of its animations
During development, Rain World animations became popular on social media for their "uncanny fluidity", which reviewers continued to praise at release. IGN described the slugcat's animations as beautiful and reactive to the angle and physics of movement, from clinging to poles to squeezing through ventilation. The reviewer said it was among the best aesthetics in a 2D game, with each screen showing abundant detail and meticulous craft.[2] Likewise, Eurogamer described the "naturalist movement" of both the slugcat and predators as pleasing.[7] Kotaku had much anticipation for the game's graphics—especially with the "pixellated cuteness that is the slugcat"—despite falling into the frustration like that of their colleagues.[79] The graphics were more interesting than beautiful to Polygon's reviewer, who also praised the limited color palette's role in distinguishing the slugcat, prey, and enemies from the environment.[1]
There is so much beauty and intrigue and diversity of life in Rain World. It’s a pity the game doesn’t want you to see any of it.
While some may compare the game's aesthetic to that of Limbo (2010), Rock, Paper, Shotgun's reviewer felt that Rain World had more in common with Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee's (1997) aesthetic: both featured similarly dark yet attractive worlds, scary yet fascinating characters, frequent inter-enemy conflict, and frustrating or masochistic controls; Oddworld, though, had more frequent saves.[6] Rain World successfully depicted "the cruel indifference of nature", according to GameSpot. Its imaginative and compelling landscape—surreal inhabitants in a bleak, alien atmosphere—recalled the spirit of games like BioShock (2007) and Abzû (2016), in which the reviewer was too attracted to the artistic detail to contemplate the credulity of the man-made environment.[10] Calling it one of the best games of 2017, PCGamesN was also pleased with the game's narrative, describing how the game's "gruelling survival story" turned into "a sci-fi epic that has you meditate on both the futility and beauty of life".[78] In a review of Downpour, PC Gamer complimented the original game's story, and summarized the Rain World as a "truly daunting game, but a mesmerizing one to inhabit".[21]
Coming to grips with the inner workings of this world can be exhausting, but the sheer impenetrability perfectly captures the helplessness of an animal trapped in an environmental catastrophe engineered by humans, which explains how Downpour remains so utterly absorbing.
Downpour was well received by Rock, Paper, Shotgun and PC Gamer.[21][80] Rock, Paper, Shotgun said the gameplay experience was less confusing than the original game due to the build-up of guides, as well as enjoying the new game modes which allowed new ways of approaching the game. Comparing the expansion to the 2022 video game Stray, they enjoyed the immersion of the new slugcats and their struggles to survive, but still considered its difficulty unfair. The reviewer recognized that the unexplained gameplay was one of Rain World's core elements, and concluded that Downpour reintroduced Rain World as "one of gaming’s most fearsome and unpredictable beasts".[80] PC Gamer's reviewer explained how the DLC's easier accessibility made the game "finally click." According to them, the new content was a "monstrously huge package" and a "new beginning" for Rain World in prediction of future community mods.[21]
Accolades
Rain World was nominated for "Best Platformer" in PC Gamer's 2017 Game of the Year Awards,[81] "Best Platformer", "Best Art Direction", and "Most Innovative" in IGN's Best of 2017 Awards.[82][83][84]
It was also nominated for the Statue of Liberty Award for Best World at the New York Game Awards 2018,[85] and for "Excellence in Audio" at the Independent Games Festival Competition Awards.[86][87]
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
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