Emma Fox
Staff Writer
Have you heard of a game called “Rain World?” Probably not. It was not well advertised, and the only reason I heard of it was a handful of animations about the game I saw. And this game was released in 2017! And I only heard of it in 2023! And then I bought it a year later! Crazy.
In essence, “Rain World” is a game about survival and exploration. Surviving downpours of rain, surviving the hunger of lizards, surviving a leap of faith, exploring overgrown scrapyards, exploring spider-ridden corridors, exploring a vast open ocean.
You will be wandering around aimlessly. A lot. You will be lost, you will be confused. But that is all part of the charm. You will struggle to find scraps of lore and direction. You will only be guided a bit – basic controls and mechanics – and then you will be left alone. You may be tempted to look up a guide, but I implore you not to unless necessary. I beat the basic campaign with only some Reddit posts and a few maps.
You may be thinking, “the basic campaign? There’s more?” And yes my dear reader, there is more.
The first campaign you will probably play is “Survivor.” Survivor, along with all the other campaigns, is a soft and squishy slug cat. A cute little blob of a thing that is trying to survive in the world. Every six to thirteen minutes, rain starts to pour down, crushing anything that cannot hibernate. And don’t think you can just hide underground, as it will flood.
This happens with most of the other campaigns, too. Trying to survive the rains. Each campaign has its own goal, with some overlapping. You must play the Survivor campaign to play any of the other ones, so you will be well acquainted with the game.
“Rain World’s” soundtrack is bonkers. You first listen to something like “Sundown”, and then “GREY CLOUD” and wonder what the heck is happening. You look at this cute pixel art game and think that all the music will be nice and chill. You are wrong. All the threat music is my jam, though.
And the “cute pixel art” becomes less cute when you don’t see a bug on the ceiling and it jumps down on you. It is cute at some points, it is beautiful at some points. You may see a rainbow in the background, you may see the shadow of some giant bird.
You might what? That’s right! A giant bird! And huge lizards! And overgrown insects! This is the lovely world of “Rain World”.
If you are at all interested in the game, get it. Watch a trailer or two, look at fanart, even watch a playthrough if you are willing to spoil yourself a bit. You can even wait for it to go on sale. If you know someone who already has “Rain World”, you can play local co-op on Steam without needing to buy the game. The game is limited to Windows, but if you are a Mac player, fear not. You can get something like Porting Kit or CrossOver to play it (with mild amounts of lag).
Final score (because this was a game review, actually): Scug/10