Rain World

 PC
Metascore
66

Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Games.cz
    Apr 27, 2017
    70
    Huge and sophisticated game. Less resistant or tolerant players will be destroyed, rumbled and spit through its brutal and even unfair difficulty. But the hard-core players will be rewarded with flawless and functional mechanisms, an excellently designed ecosystem of the world, exploratory joy, breathtaking atmosphere and an addictive feeling of success.
  2. PLAY! Zine
    Jun 9, 2017
    65
    Beautifully crafted game with unique depressive atmosphere, but unfortunately the core gameplay mechanics are simply wrongly presented and designed.
  3. Vandal
    Apr 3, 2017
    65
    It's a quite special game, but not necessarily in a good way. We understand what the developers tried to achieve, but in the end it's a game that doesn't give you any help and can feel unfair. If you're ok with this and you're looking for a challenge, it can be an interesting experience.
  5. Meristation
    Mar 30, 2017
    65
    Rain World could have been one of the best independent titles of this year, but risky design choices have just backfired here, causing it to be a missed chance, no matter how good some of the ideas that it brings to the table.
  6. IGN
    Mar 27, 2017
    63
    Rain World is a maddening thing, because of quite how special it could have been. Beautiful environments, incredible animations and enticingly hazy mechanics are fantastic, but the sheer cruelty of how it’s pieced out to the player transcends challenge and becomes an unwanted trial.
  7. Everyeye.it
    May 23, 2017
    62
    Quotation forthcoming.
  8. Gamer.nl
    Apr 22, 2017
    60
    Rain World will beat you up. The progression system is extremely frustrating, which is a pity as this game had the potential of becoming one of the most intriguing survival games of the year.
  9. Merlin'in Kazanı (Turkey)
    Mar 31, 2017
    60
    With its pretty visuals and cute protagonist, Rain World seems like an interesting experience at first sight. But after a while, it crushes under its repetitive game mechanics.
  10. Eurogamer Italy
    Mar 29, 2017
    60
    Rain World is the typical missed opportunity, a game with brilliant ideas ruined by some flawed mechanics which risk to hold back the wonder of an extraordinary world.
  11. GameSpot
    Mar 31, 2017
    50
    In Rain World, the spectre of failure, often caused by events you can't control, lingers heavily. It quickly drives home the point that you're a foreigner in a ruined land where anyone larger than you wants to eat you. Its stunningly detailed backgrounds and few rewarding gameplay opportunities are vastly outweighed by its platforming imperfections and hibernation mechanic, which makes little sense in its connection to accessing new areas. Oftentimes, the frustrations resulting from failure devolve into apathy, which is a wholly unfortunate outcome for a game that gives off a deceptively promising first impression.
  12. Polygon
    Mar 27, 2017
    50
    I never felt properly equipped to discover, to improve. With core systems opaque and unnecessarily limited, all I ever felt equipped to do in Rain World was fail.
This publication does not provide a score for their reviews.
This publication has not posted a final review score yet.
These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation.

In Progress & Unscored

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  1. Eurogamer
    Mar 29, 2017
    Rain World, for all its stark beauty, feels overly punitive. As such, the audience who will view its impositions as a welcome challenge rather than a grim deterrent will be small.
  2. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    Mar 27, 2017
    At 20 hours, having discovered just 8 of the regions, I threw the gamepad aside with a mixture of exasperation and disappointment. There are those who will relish the challenge but I never found the slugcat’s family, and not just because there were no clues or direction as to their whereabouts. There was a big part of me that didn’t want to stop playing and maybe I’ll pick it up again some day, because there is so much to love about discovering the laws of nature behind this huge, ruined ecosystem. But with each random death, each accidental roll off a cliffside, each checkpoint drought, that love turned to ash. 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.

Awards & Rankings

46
#46 Most Discussed PC Game of 2017

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
8.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 169 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 148 out of 169
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 169
  3. Negative: 13 out of 169
  1. sailermoonhater
    Mar 28, 2017
    7
    What I like about the game:

    Gameplay: -using the creatures as weapons and tools to interact with the environment(as flashlights, stun    What I like about the game:

    Gameplay:

    -using the creatures as weapons and tools to interact with the environment(as flashlights, stun grenades,grappling hooks...)That's a very clever and unique version of a "power up/item system"

    -Every creature behaves different, has really its own personality and needs to be approached with a different strategy.Some are peaceful, some are predators and some are inbetween.And its not always clear on the first view which creature is what.

    -When two or more creatures hunt you at the same time , the game really gets intense.Often one creature begins to hunt you and then suddenly one or two more drop down and join the hunt onto you or begin hunting each other.That makes for a intense experience.And it really does immerse you into believing you are in an "alien" ecosystem.

    -The games does not handhold you like many other games nowadays do. The tips of the worm companion are cryptic enough that you really have to/ are allowed to explore and figure out things on your own instead of getting told everything by the game.

    Visuals and Atmosphere:

    -The atmosphere in this game is so dense.There are many triple A games with a way more complex graphic engine which have not half of the atmosphere of this game.

    -The dynamic lighting and water effects in this game are so good.Never saw them so good in any other 2d game.Especially the shadows of the clouds moving in the background.Awesome!

    -Best physicaly based animations i have ever seen in a 2D Game

    -The creatures feel so alien like and strange which is totaly awesome especially with the procedural generated animations, great creature design

    -The postapocalyptic setting with the overgrown industrial ruins inhabited by those strange creatures and every area has its own look and ecosystem with different creatures creates such a moody feeling.

    What I don't like about the game:

    The timelimit:
    -The timelimit through the "deadly rain is coming every x minutes and you have to go into hibernation to survive" does totally not work together with the exploration nature of the game.The hibernation places are very unevenly spaced. There are some areas and routes where the hibernation places are very close together and some where you have to walk almost half a level in distance to find one. There is nothing more annoying to find a new area and really want to explore this new area with all the new creatures in it,but have no time left. and then you come to a parting of the way into two different directions and you go into direction one,but the desperately needed hibernation place would have been into direction two and then you die and have to walk half through the level again just to get through the newly found ecosystem .

    The controls and spawning system of the creatures:

    -Some of the controls feel clunky and way to cumbersome to use.

    +Why do i have to press down for charging up the leap jump when pressing down is also used to crawl down pipes and sticks.There is often the situation that a downward leading pipe or pole is directly placed beside a spot where you want to leap jump from.So you try to charge up for a leap jump but slugcat instead tries to crawl down the pipe.
    +slugcat controls like a slow moveing truck and you const. fall of of sticks and ledges accidentally or crawl accidentally into enemy spawning pipes because the game misinterpret your movement constantly
    +Some leapjumps or reaching slippery poles you have to perform with an movement accuracy which is very hard to achieve with clunky controls like this.Even compared to difficult games like the contra/probotector or battletoads games for snes and megadrive.Those games are all harder/more difficult then rainworld but none of them felt so frustrating controlwise.
    +enemys spawning directly behind you or camping at the end of the next pipe.
    . If you get chased by a creature and have to deal with things like clunky controls,level geometry placed in a way that it messes up the movement options and enemy's spawning in pipes or camp direct at the exit of pipes at the same time... It can get very annoying.

    The unreliability of certain gameplaymechanics:

    --somethimes you jump down a cliff and you live and sometimes you jump down a cliff and you die and there is no way of telling which cliff you can jump down savely.
    -Throwing objects can also be a real mess. Especially if you have one item in each hand,the game has a very convoluted rock–paper–scissors like ruleset on which item is been thrown by slugcat first when you press the throw button! Why cant the game give the player two keys , one for left hand throw and one for right hand throw?
    -Also many of the "using the plants and animals as tools and weapons(flashlight,stun grenade,grappeling hook...)" mechanics do not work in practice in game in a reliable and reproducable way.Often its a 50/50 chance of them not doing what they are supposed to do even if you handle them correctly.    … Full Review »
  2. Ly_ric
    Jan 3, 2021
    10
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. Phenomenal game that got ruined by lazy game journalists who can't even finish a the game. I understand they have a tight deadlines but don't judge the game by the first three areas. The magic of the game will come much later.… Full Review »
  3. Traderman
    Apr 9, 2017
    10
    This is the most ingenious and inventive game of this generation. People that don't like it are simply too bound to conventional gaming. It'sThis is the most ingenious and inventive game of this generation. People that don't like it are simply too bound to conventional gaming. It's intelligent, challenging and awesome. I have played it through, and if you have done that aso, you know exactly what I mean… Full Review »
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