Rain World

 PlayStation 4
Metascore
59

Mixed or average reviews - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 18
  3. Negative: 2 out of 18
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  1. GameSpew
    Mar 27, 2017
    90
    Not since Mark of the Ninja have I played a stealth game that felt so impactful, lingering in my thoughts long after I put the controller down.
  2. GameCritics
    Apr 11, 2017
    85
    Rain World asks players to get to know its world over dozens and dozens of lives, to figure out each area one at a time, learning to time jumps and hurl spears to earn their right to survive in a ceaselessly hostile environment. It’s a gorgeous jaunt through an alien world full of horrors, like Another World crossed with the open map of a Metroidvania title. With its incredible art design, tight controls, and extremely deep set of gameplay mechanics, this is a truly special platforming experience that anyone with a high tolerance for constant failure owes it to themselves to try out.
  3. CGMagazine
    Mar 27, 2017
    80
    Think Limbo, but more haunting and with better controls, and you'll have a basic idea of what Rain World is about.

User Reviews

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User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 46 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 46
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 46
  3. Negative: 11 out of 46
  1. GFCat
    Apr 5, 2017
    5
    About 4 hrs playtime. Expected game to be good, was as impartial as possible.

    PROS: -Gorgeous artwork with a consistent design to keep    About 4 hrs playtime. Expected game to be good, was as impartial as possible.

    PROS:

    -Gorgeous artwork with a consistent design to keep the game world feeling alive and immersive.

    -Violent and dangerous enemies make the player feel helpless as the bottom of the food totem. Combat exists but is mostly futile.

    -Unique controls for Slugcat that make the player constantly adapt to how his slinky little body moves in tandem with the environment he's navigating.

    -Sprawling MetroidVania world that brings to life the challenge of the game, alongside a sense of being a small creature in a much larger post-apocalyptic world. The player has a map that fills itself out as they explore and discover, making navigating areas easier after making a second pass.

    -Brilliant music. Understands tension and relaxation very well.

    -Basically no railroading. The world is your oyster after finishing the tutorial.

    -Time limits keep the running tense and an omnipresent threat over the player that if the fauna won't kill you, the rain will.

    All in all, a beautifully crafted world that clearly took some heart and soul in crafting, and genuinely does its best to keep the player immersed. Interesting theme and design choices that always want to be in the limelight.

    Unfortunately, this is where the fun stuff ends.

    CONS:

    -Despite my praise of the lack of railroading, there is such a thing as getting your player properly acquainted. The game does the bare minimum of tutorialization for the player and leaves them stranded with only half the information they need to survive. Information is obscure at best, unknowable at worst. The game confuses itself into thinking "show, don't tell" means "do nothing to teach."

    -My appraisal of Slugcat's movements also have their negatives. More emphasis is put in the SLUG part of Slugcat, so he often moves around with this wiggly goopiness that makes the pixel perfect platforming in later areas an active nightmare to micro-manage. Coupled with his below average speed and a pitiful jump height, you'd be forgiven for being confused as to why this species has not gone the way of the dodo yet.

    -Save points are few and far between. In a game as difficult as this where anything can happen, players will often feel themselves losing patience as they die repeatedly, not know wither they were inches from a save-point or close to finding one of the flowers to reset the clock.

    -The rain's time limit coupled with the scarcity of save points means that instead of being a system to punish negligent players for staying outside too long, it is a harrowing race against time every day, making a brisk jog into a ragged and unenjoyable sprint to beat the buzzer.

    -Save points have a required food cost, meaning the player will have to waste additional time gorging themselves on fruit and gnats (or whatever the flying creatures are), which are intensely hard to catch given Slugcat's aforementioned maneuverability issues. It always feels like things are actively stacked in trying to run the player out of time.

    -Death comes with not only the pain of having your progress halted (reset food and maps to their status at the beginning of the day), but actively regresses the player's progress, with a horrid karma system arbitrarily locking the player out of new areas until they have survived X amount of days in a row. Karma is not only reset but depleted upon death, with the exception of finding and consuming a yellow flower.

    -Swimming controls do not rise above the usual brand of horrible that they are in every other video game in existence.

    -Certain enemies hide themselves in ways that are nearly invisible to the player.

    -In my opinion, the worst design choice of all. Randomized enemy spawns each day, often making the game not a test of skill, but of luck. Many times the player will find themselves in a compromising situation in which the enemy not only impedes their progress, but makes it genuinely impossible for the player to progress. This of course means the player will die and will then have their progress taken away, and the player will come out with nothing to show, because randomized spawns mean the player has no chance to learn how to overcome since the thing that killed them will be somewhere else next time. Difficult games should be like obstacle courses, and should give the player the chance to learn and familiarize themselves with the best method for coming out on top. That opportunity is actively denied to the player. Sometimes enemies can even fall into view from offscreen (due to the lack of parrallax scrolling or view expansion) and kill the player mid-flight. Very poorly thought out.

    All in all, a game with a lot going for it that comes away with too many annoyances to recommend. Perhaps if there were a patch I could give it my solid approval, but for now I'd say pick up HyperLight for a relatively similar experience.
    5.5 / 10    … Full Review »
  2. Noanopolis
    Jul 29, 2018
    4
    I could write an entire essay about this game, but I'll keep it brief. This game is designed to have you play a certain way and punishes youI could write an entire essay about this game, but I'll keep it brief. This game is designed to have you play a certain way and punishes you for failing to do so, with design decisions that on paper seem like terrible ideas. But these were not bad things, and I had fun once I adjusted and felt the thrill of being a tiny animal in a hostile alien world, surviving on my nimbleness and knowledge of the terrain.

    However, in order for a game like this to work, it has to make sure that if you die, it's because you screwed up somehow. The thing about this game is that sometimes, enemies will bug out. And because of the way the game is designed, this often leads to inescapable death, which just leads to a chain-reaction of frustration. Other death-inducers that weren't as bad included dead enemies blocking the exit, and controls that may or may not have been just a little too finicky.

    This all being said, there's no other game quite like it, and it somehow has a very positive on steam. So if you really like artsy hard games, and can brush off deaths that weren't your fault, you might have fun with it. MIGHT.    … Full Review »
  3. Nathan1423
    Apr 7, 2017
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. I hate this game....I hate this game so much....lol naw not really, not literally. Here's what happened: I saw the game, the art style, the premise, and thought, "WOW that looks super cool mann far outt!!"....lol...bought the game for $20, played it for 40 minutes, died 5 times, quit, looked up videos and articles explaining the game and how to play it and do well, since the game has no tutorial or narration. I then hopped back in and played a total of 2 hours knowing the game mechanics. I became utterly put out, deleted the game off my ps4, and highly regret spending the $20 dollars as I am a value fanatic and can get a TON of game time for that price. Why did I do this? Well the art style and the premise are literally the ONLY things I enjoyed about the game, 2 things I knew before even starting the game. Controls are SOOOO much garbage. Game play mechanics are highly questionable to say the least. No narration, no tutorial, no cut scenes. This game is like hyper light drifter but with only 25% of what that game has going for it. The sound design is not even very good, which is surprising since I use some awesome $140 headphones. Biggest downside is the controls. Mannn....I can play just about any sack of garbage if the controls are good, but I literally could not take the frustration of these nonfunctional controls, especially when jumping into a tunnel that is next to another tunnel or hiding spot. So basically this game is dark souls SNES cat edition, but instead of a cool warrior you're like an 8-bit cat....meow.… Full Review »
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