Rain World Critic Reviews

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.

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.

Think Limbo, but more haunting and with better controls, and you'll have a basic idea of what Rain World is about.

A visually stunning and often satisfying game, but one with more than its fair share of irritating moments. Put up with its nonsense and you'll be rewarded.

Rain World may not be the most forgiving adventure, but stick with it through its trickier times, and when it all comes together it’s capable of producing some genuinely brilliant moments.

The bountiful promise of Rain World’s grim world and the assortment of cunning creatures which inhabit it are summarily undone by fiddly controls and an overwhelmingly punishing level of difficulty. Underneath it all there’s an assuredly decent effort here; it’s just a shame that all but the most masochistically inclined will ever summon the requisite determination to plumb its intimidating depths.

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.

Rain World has massive world that can be pretty easy to get lost in and enables some real survival adrenaline rushes. Unfortunately, these positive aspects – alongside its exquisite art direction – are at odds with some of the less satisfying aspects: the slightly awkward controls, the overwhelming feeling of almost too much freedom, and the fairly constant threat of losing large chunks of progress take away from the experience. The end result is complicated: it's a game we bounced off quite a lot but one we still greatly appreciate. The game does something new with the genre and it does it well for the most part, making the game worth at the very least giving a look.

By the end of my time with Rain World, I no longer found the Slugcat cute or endearing. He was a cruel joke, a mistake the entire world worked tirelessly to correct. A prey animal destined to melt in the jaws of a monsoon. Perhaps with time and tolerance, more dedicated gamers than me will finish this title. Some other kind souls will find the patience to guide this missing link and their kin to salvation. Make no mistake, this is a beautiful world. Just know that it is also a merciless one.

Rain World's unique look, atmosphere, and world are intriguing, as are some of the ideas behind its unusual style of gameplay. However, there's a lot to the game's mechanics and execution that aren't implemented well. If you spend a little time with Rain World, you'll find the wonder and fascination that you had at the start of the game quickly melting into total frustration.

Rain World will probably establish a cult following, which is great because it deserves a fan base for its thoughtful ideas. Unfortunately, too many factors get in the way of what very well could've been one of 2017's most interesting indies.

There are definitely some cool ideas in Rain World, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is far too unsatisfying to wholeheartedly recommend.

Rain World is sloppy, clunky platformer. It's a game of fumbling controls, arbitrary deaths, and tedious repetition. Why should I bother figuring out what all those twee little glyphs mean? Why should I devote dozens of hours to figuring out what spitting up one kind of plant might do in a specific situation when the controls can't even be bothered to feel consistent?

Developer Videocult took a brave chance with Rain World. They've stripped it of almost all the traditional video game tropes, leaving just an aggressively difficult 2D survival platformer. Purists may find a lot to love here but in my eyes, it's simply an interesting concept that fails at being an enjoyable video game.

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.

Rain World is a sluggish platformer with copious instant death situations and infrequent checkpoints. These factors all add up to a game which isn’t fun or easy and seems to actively frustrate any understanding of whats going on. Whilst the art style and interesting setting can pull you in, that alone isn’t enough to keep you coming back for more punishment.

Sadly, despite its pretty aesthetic, Rain World is a confusing and sluggish platformer that failed to give me any reason for what I was doing and just left me feeling bored and bewildered.

What’s most unforgiveable is how imprecise slugcat is to control. We know there’s the whole slug side of things to consider, but he’s a lot heavier than he looks in the videos and because of the procedural animation he often doesn’t respond as quickly as you need him to. Add in the boredom and repetition from having to constantly hibernate and the game proves to be very aptly named: it’s dull, miserable, and makes you want to stay inside and do something else instead.