Rain World: A Guided Tour (Review)

good morning it's May 18 2020 and it's on Monday here in LA by golly we've got rain with a slight breeze around 60 degrees rain world is an open world survival game made by indie developer video cult and released in 2017 it's one of the few actually good games to come from Kickstarter and it's unlike anything I've played before the bulk of the game was made by two people and development started in 2011 the game received mixed reviews on release with most reviewers citing its unpredictable and sometimes unfair enemies clumsy controls and generally excessive difficulty rain world's developers usually describe the core gameplay as learning to navigate through the game's ecosystem if I wanted to review rain world in a few words or work for Kotaku this might suffice but I think there's much more to this game than that hopefully as we go through it looking at rain world simply as a game about learning to navigate an ecosystem will allow us to illuminate it's deeper success this video is structured like a guided tour and I'll be covering points of interest as well as sort of general topics along our way I hope to give a fair assessment and to convince you that rain world is a great game from the very first screen we see rain world's dedication to immersion the three difficulty levels and the various changes they implement are contextualized in the world the monk is more in tune with nature so needs less food to survive and can open karma gates permanently the survivor is your standard character and the hunter is trained in battle so is more maneuverable and can carry an extra spear the hunter also needs to eat more and has a limited time in the world we'll be focusing mainly on the survivor since this is what most players will experience first we learn from this short opening that you are a slug cat and have been separated from your family due to some mysterious torrential rain stills like these are used to convey story throughout the game and I interpret them as slug cats dreams or memories after this opening they usually appear only when you rest and their style is much more painterly than the games normal industrial pixel art cutscenes are another ostensibly gaming mechanic which is contextualized within the world the game does this a lot so instead of pointing them out as they appear I'll just list a few examples slug cat has to stop and think to see the map it's also revealed slowly as though he's retracing his steps backwards instead of an inventory you just have your two hands on your stomach lore and story are revealed by actual characters and objects instead of item descriptions respawning is a vital component of the game's story rolling all these features into the action of the game helps draw you into the world you and slug cat are going on a journey and both of you have the same tools these mechanics also help the game to feel seamless even though it's cut into 10-minute chunks I find it easy to spend hours playing rain worlds and a big part of this is that there are no interruptions except for the hibernations which just give me a few seconds to relax rain world's marketing material leans pretty heavily on select cat and rightfully so he's a simple cute element of an otherwise quite brutal game which may be a hard sell after the opening cutscene were tossed into the world a mysterious yellow overseer who the developers call eggy delivers the game's tutorial according to an interview with gamasutra this tutorial was a concession for new players the developers originally wanted players to figure everything out on their own eg indicates the controls symbolically which is a fine idea but there's also explanatory text placed at the bottom of the screen this isn't a huge deal since the tutorial is only 2 minutes long but everything else manages to integrate seamlessly into the world on top of that the opening cutscene gives a lot of information about the gameplay it shows that slow kick and hold objects can eat bats and should avoid the rain so even if the tutorial were completely removed you would have some idea of what to do after their first sleep the player is thrust into the world with no obvious limit or goal with the amount of hand-holding in most modern games it's refreshing to see one that actually asks players to figure things out on their own there's no bestiary to describe all the different creatures and no path is forced on you making the player a fish out of water brings them closer to their character since just a day ago the slug cat had a whole tribe to help him survive on this first day you're likely to see the game's AI at work lizards will hang around and stare at bats fight each other or even go after slug cat if he's unlucky enough to encounter one head-on the first thing you notice is how organic the interactions in creatures feel outskirts is by far the calmest area but rain world doesn't weaken its AI for new players and there is potential for some pretty desperate situations if you get trapped outskirts does act as a kind of second tutorial its threats usually appear in such a way that they're easy to avoid since the developers are committed to avoiding scripted interactions encounters and outskirts never disrespect the players intelligence even if the level design gives you multiple exits using them is still up to you in this way traveling through outskirts remains interesting on subsequent playthroughs here we encounter our first karma gate as you might guess these tie in with the karma system which is sort of a measure of survival making it to a shelter causes the meter to tick up and dying causes it to tick down the gates act as bottlenecks which allow the developers to check your skills before you enter a new area if your karma level is at or above the one shown you can pass through this game is hard and often overwhelming a first playthrough starts off directionless and forces players to rely on exploration and the hope that a shelter is somewhere ahead every mistake is costly because it either causes a death or wastes time a huge amount of variety makes sure new areas always feel unfamiliar and dangerous this all brings you closer to slug cat and it really begins to feel like you're on a journey through the world the game is cut in two days that lasts around ten minutes the time between rainstorms the length of each day forces the player to make a strategic judgment do you want to take a risk and travel farther or play it safe and return to a nearby shelter since first time players don't know the region's tension builds over the course of a day returning players may wish to challenge themselves by going long distances in a cycle and as the hunter you're forced to beat the game in under 20 cycles since progress is only made when a shelter is found in theory the player can only gain or lose ten minutes of progress at a time in practice this isn't always the case like when the player has to farm karma to pass a gate but usually dying doesn't lose much progress much of the time dying will also cause a karma flower to grow wherever slow cat was killed these prevent the karma wheel from moving backwards after the next death karma flowers incentivize players to retry difficult sections by removing one of the punishments if they die again [Music] [Music] as we travel through the garbage wastes I'd like to talk about the scavengers there in organized social species and they are the crown jewel of reign worlds AI they also show off the game's reputation system trading with them or saving them from danger will allow you to befriend tribes of them conversely killing or stealing from them will make them your enemies lizards and a few other creatures actually use the reputation system as well there are scavengers in most areas and their presence helps the region's feel like a cohesive world but there's more each individual scavenger has a personality which falls on a scale from timid to aggressive and your reputation with individual scavengers can change as well if you'd befriend one they'll follow your lead and hibernate with you there's even more they also use body language to express a wide variety of emotions which I'll put on screen now I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a game AI that can express more than 10 emotions I know I certainly can't the scavengers are stunningly well executed well most creatures give the impression of a volatile animal intelligence the scavengers feel like an evolved and emotive species this is difficult to put into words but if you've played the game you probably know what I mean they're varied colors and intelligent looking eyes communicate their nature very well before slow cat even interact [Music] [Music] nice throw the minimal direction we've been given by Iggy is leading us to shoreline it's a very distinctive area with outdoor sections that feature empty skies and swaths of water you can use these jet fish to move around quickly and they can be lured towards slow cat by placing fruit in the water although the game uses another text box when you first see a jet fish it doesn't tell you explicitly that you can ride them and doing so for the first time does feel like a discovery as we approach our destination I'd like to talk about brain world's story the plot of rain world is your journey through it by learning to navigate the ecosystem you are driving the story forward the ultimate goal of the beings and rain world is to escape endless cycles of death and rebirth although it is spelled out later on all of this can be inferred and it's rain world's greatest triumphs that these ideas are so effortlessly communicated through the players direct experience of the world there can't be a happy ending in the traditional sense you may as well be the last of your species and there's no final boss to slay the purpose of your life is to find its ending this dawns on you as you play and it's absolutely sublime the initial feeling of directionless nests gives way to a struggle against the unknown a survival game morphs into a spiritual quest acted out through gameplay your ascension of the food chain is also your metaphysical ascension [Music] my first meeting with looks to the moon was the most affecting experience I've had with the game the contrast between this moment and the bone crushingly difficult journey that preceded it was really striking something about slow cat staring back at her as I began to leave also stuck with me this moment feels like the climax of the first part of the game and it gives us some hint as to what the world used to be like [Music] we can't communicate with moon yet but she can read the data on the pearls that are scattered around the world the pearls are initially used to trade with scavengers but are eventually revealed to contain fragments of information revealing this hidden facet of an established game mechanic gives the world a sense of history and hidden depth even if we never see that depth the colored pearls hint at this hidden purpose since they're unique and therefore collectible like so much of rain world putting the pieces together feels like a discovery bringing the pearls to moon is a difficult quest well worth pursuing if you enjoy the game but for now I'll just give you the gist far in the past the world was inhabited by a highly evolved people who built the structures that slow cat is now traveling through it's clear from the massive extent of the world that these beings were above humans in terms of development however the inhabitants were faced with the problem the world is best described as industrial religious in its heyday the inhabitants were highly industrialized but their machines have explicitly spiritual purposes spirituality and rayon world is not an abstract concept the inhabitants are forced to recognize the cycle of death and rebirth and it obsesses them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] eventually they discovered void fluid which slowly dissolves everything it touches deep beneath the earth there's an endless horizon of wood fluid called the void see those who enter it never return and are believed to have escaped the cycle you can guess why their cities and buildings are all abandoned the void fluid itself has this industrial spiritual duality it's a source of practically infinite energy which allowed the ancients to build the iterators these are sentient bio computers tasked with managing the inhabitants cities and solving what they call the great problem helping the world's lesser creatures ascend by the time we learn all this the iterators have largely given up and are instead working on their own ascensions the iterators eventually die as their systems decay but their biological parts will be reborn bunch of moons complex has been destroyed and she lives on her little island now the ancients built a lot of iterators there are seven that we know of but they're referred to as the local group so there are likely many more one iterator sliver of straw purported to solve the great problem but she somehow managed to self-destruct immediately afterwards which is supposed to be disallowed by the iterators programming there's quite a bit more terrain worlds lore and its best experienced within the game the story is doled out in small chunks and often out of order so you're given a lot of time to put it together on your own as you discover more of it your awareness of rain world as an accumulation of historical events is amplified more and more I find it hard to believe that any of the background elements pearls or creatures were placed without some kind of purpose whether there truly is a purpose doesn't really matter but the world feels like it has a history [Music] now that we're done visiting with moon Hickey is pointing us towards something new our next destination is actually what's casting the shade on shaded citadel although it's completely shrouded in darkness there are hints of grand religious architecture in the region's backgrounds this area is populated with some very skittish lantern mice spiders and black lizards that navigate and hunt by touch and sound alone or also scavengers but we talked about them already I really like how they carry lamps in dark areas the attention to detail in the creature designs is impressive the black lizards are only present in dark regions since they're blind and would quickly be killed anywhere else their blindness is conveyed by their design they have feelers on their faces and their heads light up in reaction to sound but not when you're in their line of sight lantern mice have big eyes and they glow which tells us that they aren't dangerous and probably helps them to navigate they also hang from ceilings to stay out of harm's way spiders are an obvious choice for a dark area but the way that they group up to kill their prey is quite unsettling this attention to detail is everywhere and I could provide a rationale for every single creature if I really wanted to all this design supports AI that behaves just as organically as you'd hope head developer I will mispronounce this horde Jacobsen had this to say about designing the AI instead of thinking how can I make this creature act and serve as an obstacle in the game I went at it from the angle how can I make this creature behave in such a way that it can find food and move around and get back to its home before night comes you might assume that the AIS behavior is achieved by just making each creature search for food but it's much much deeper than that here are a few examples of different creatures behaviors lizards will fight each other for territory and you can befriend them or make them fear you they become visibly frustrated if they can't reach their targets and they have a whole host of other emotive behaviors just like scavengers vultures become extremely aggressive towards anyone that steals their masks squid kada will start knocking you around if you bother them lantern mice and egg bugs flee from threats bats hide in their nests which are built to provide camouflage or they'll flee the room if they can't get to their nest drop wigs hide in dusk ceilings and can lay out food as a trap for anything that comes by there are many more behaviors than I've listed and even more interactions between creatures this whole gives the impression that you're outwitting your enemies rather than just passing by them the AI combined with the animation makes creatures so expressive that even the occasional glitch feels like a personality quirk like how some creatures enjoy moving in tight circles the third piece of this ecosystem puzzle is the food chain in each region and some areas fare better than others let's trace the food chain and shaded citadel this is based on assumptions but I don't think there are any real leaps in logic here lantern mice and bats could feed on slime mold and the fruit that grows in the Citadel as well as small insects the black lizards probably feed mainly on lantern mice and occasionally on scavengers the spiders eat small non-threatening bugs like flies they may also consume the slime mold scavengers probably know how to butcher lizards and their larger bodies would make eating small creatures and efficient this is a pretty well fleshed out food chain and we can draw webs like this for most areas however the regions that make up the exterior fall a little bit short the exterior only has four creatures grappling worms don't seem to eat anything although their sticky tendrils might pick up particles from surfaces or the air lizards and drop weeks can eat each other but there are only a few drop weeks for the many many lizards in the area and these guys will leave just about anything despite the lack of a food chain reign world had so engrossed me at this point that my immersion wasn't hurt who's to say that there aren't hidden pipes leading to areas full of food the last facet of a believable ecosystem is the interactions between creatures watching this video has probably convinced you that the creature interactions are quite varied and they only get more impressive as the game goes on it's important that these interactions happen whether you're on screen or not the makeup of the ecosystem can change albeit in a limited way without you affecting it this makes the whole world much more believable since the creatures don't just exist for you it also creates some interesting gameplay situations where you can walk in on battles in progress help creatures out if they're in trouble or even be saved by something attacking your attacker several times I've saved from the jaws of a lizard by a second lizard also trying to eat me memory crips is the most linear region but it makes for a fantastic set piece the player has to traverse a land populated by sprinting terrifying scissor Birds it's a long tense section that often becomes a race against time you can take the above-ground path which is faster but more dangerous or the below ground path which is slow and safe the quiet ambience of the region is pierced by the beaks and feet of the birds which nicely signal that danger is nearby the game's sound is actually worthy of some discussion the ambience is made from many layers of field recordings which blend natural and industrial sound scapes and it's quiet moments brain world's only sounds or the wind and slug cats feet the sounds made by creatures and objects are also sampled and they cut through the silence every effect is crisp visceral and satisfying there's a huge amount of dynamic range and the sound seems to be mixed realistically your footsteps are almost silent creatures are moderately loud when in combat and explosions almost clip the game's audio choosing to sample the sounds and mix them this way once again serves to ground the game the sound manages to be effective as game sound but it's also believable as the way this world sounds on my first two playthroughs after finally successfully passing through memory grips I threw myself into this large pit and had to do the whole thing again [Music] [Music] areas in the exterior are platforming heavy and very difficult so it seems like an apt time to discuss the games movement all of rain world's challenges rely on its movement system and it's one of the game's best features if you've only played rain world for a few minutes and gave up I would guess your main question is how I'm doing all these backflips the first thing to explain is the novel way that rain worlds procedural animation works imagine we wanted to represent Mario with the simple shape Mario could be a rectangle and nothing about Super Mario Brothers would change mechanically in fact as far as the game's code is concerned Mario is a rectangle things are done this way to save on processing power because it's much easier for a computer to check if two rectangles are touching than two differently shaped sprites characters in rain world are described by the developers as blobs of physics a bunch of simple shapes connected together with what they call paper doll graphics pasted it on top doing things this way allows rain world's unique animation system to work to its fullest extent the developers did a talk on rain world's procedural animation system which sheds a lot of light on how it works and why they chose to use it it's best summed up with a phrase they use so this is another very important aspect of what's going on which is that AI is animation in rain world you cannot really draw a line between the two in rain world animation is like behavior basically the AI is in control of what each blob of physics does on screen the developers know basically what tools of vulture has in its arsenal but how it achieves its goals how it moves and what the movement looks like depends on what the AI wants to do to put it metaphorically the AI animates creatures the same way your mind animates your body slug cat is given the same amount of freedom this is to say that movement and rain world is complex and feels very organic learning to play rain world is like learning to walk again because that's exactly what you have to do the tutorial gives you the bare essentials but to really thrive you need to learn advanced techniques [Music] [Music] [Music] it's impossible to explain how the movement feels but I'll show you all the tricks that I can consistently pull off you can wall jump turn around to boost your speed backflip by changing direction and jumping throw spears straight down while backflipping stick a spear in a wall and climb to higher ground throw items to gain momentum turn around and tunnels to speed up your crawling boost off corners for extra speed loosed out of a Piper tunnel roll when falling from Heights slide around slide around on your belly jump and roll and most importantly juggle pearls the game asks you to figure all of these maneuvers out on your own and the sheer amount of variation forces your movement choices to be instinctual rather than self-evident in Mario for example there's usually only one way to cross a gap well in Rain world there are always many the movement system is what makes rain worlds such a unique survival game your survival isn't measured by the size of your base or the quality of your tools but in the development of your skills the satisfaction derived from rain world is in mastering the movement and pulling it off to kill or avoid enemies there's also an aesthetic progression as your skill grows slow cat looks and feels awkward at first but perfect movement is smooth and graceful the initial clumsiness in the controls is a necessary part of the rain world experience both from a technical and thematic perspective the developers crafted slug cat's movement mechanics with a stunning amount of depth and this risks alienating some casual players like paid professional game reviewers the struggle of learning and mastering the game mechanics is what gives the quest for ascension its poignancy if the world were easy to live in there would be no motivation to ascend versus simply continuing to survive it's admirable that a game is willing to ask so much of its players and I think characterizing rain world's commitment to its premise as a flaw is a great way to keep games stale repetitive and mind-numbing Lee for years to come let's take a detour to industrial complex to see how a new player handles the game I managed to convince a friend of mine to pick rain world up and he sent me some footage of his playthrough outskirts connects directly to Industrial Complex and it seems to me that the architecture directs the player this way earlier I discussed the shift in priorities that happens about halfway through the game where your goal changes from survival to ascension you'll notice that our friend plays pretty conservatively and this is because he's just trying to get food and get back to his shelter well this aimlessness is a little bit frustrating it does again bring you further into your character like a real animal you'll test your limits a little bit more every day and your reward for this continued exploration is eventually finding a new region [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] five pebbles is a standout region there's no gravity in here and we finally see some functioning technology I'll discuss rain world's art and music as we make our way rain world contains over 1600 screens of lush complex pixel art the steam store page says that the art style is inspired by the simplicity and aesthetics of 16-bit classics I'm glad video called didn't follow the indie trend of blocky indecipherable pixel art and instead managed to take inspiration while still making use of modern technology the art style incorporates the best of pixel art by using small focused palettes and distinct hard edged graphics while not limiting itself with bulky pixels or traditional sprites particles decals and lighting are used very effectively to highlight areas of interest but they never clash with the overall art style it feels as though video called used the pixel art style because it was a good fit and not because it was easier to make in point of fact making the art must have been extremely time-consuming with the level of detail on display the creatures are splashes of neon on backgrounds that use just a few muted colors slug cat contrasts the levels and enemies by being completely white and these differences make the screen very easy to read at all times each area manages to have a distinct look and feel but also coheres with the others and each is a logical progression from the last in terms of geography and enemy placement the art lets the organic and industrial mingle together which is appropriate for a game about life in a deserted civilization the little background details like the scavenger paintings and garbage wastes are also fantastic the developers actually released the level editor used to make the game so if you'd like to learn about how levels are made or make your own check out rain DB and the modding wiki [Music] [Music] [Music] Rane world has a non-diegetic score this might seem like an odd choice for a game so firmly grounded in its world but the score is stunningly well implemented and always complements what's happening on screen instead of drawing too much attention to itself each track is made up of eight to twelve layers with different tracks and layers fading in and out depending on the occasion this technique allows the music to react to whatever happens in the game the way that threat music builds and morphs as enemies appear and disappear is particularly impressive according to the composer thousands of different samples were used to make the game's three-and-a-half-hour score all the samples are so warped that the music is as alien as the world itself and it bounces between serene bizarre and frantic much of it is ambien but in combat you'll sometimes be treated to alien techno from a dusty old cassette my favourite track is the one that plays at the end of five pebbles it blends the mystical technical and mysterious together and is quite unique [Music] [Music] [Music] you you you you five pebbles is actually the source of the rain iterators use water to function and five pebbles tried to rewrite his own genome which would allow him to kill himself doing this takes quite a bit of time so he ran many many parallel processes using tons of extra ground water this starved moon who used the same reservoir and her complex eventually collapsed moon interrupted five pebbles to save her own life and part of five pebbles mutated into the rock which we can see in the incredibly difficult unfortunate development region now five pebbles is attempting to flush out the rot with massive amounts of water though it seems hopeless iterators exhale as much water as they take in which results in the deadly rain every night [Music] we just arrived at the top of the wall but let's switch characters for a bit so we can climb it from the bottom the hunter is unlocked after you beat the main game and offers a much harder experience than the survivor on normal mode killing an enemy has a chance to advance its lineage which evolves the creature the hunter faces the most challenging versions of each enemy right out of the gate he needs to eat a lot and he only has 20 cycles to live the hunter is not so much a hard mode as a whole new quest so getting him off was probably a good idea [Music] [Music] [Music] chimney canopy is kind of a crossroads it connects the beginning middle and end of the game together normally getting to the top of the wall requires climbing all the way up from Industrial Complex so reaching the summit is quite an endeavor chimney canopies level design is very vertical but it's less straightforward than the wall however in the interest of time we're going to go right to sky islands which is just a few screens away [Music] sky Islands is technically an optional area but first time players won't know that it's dense with life very unpredictable and dials up the difficulty of the platforming considerably [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it must have required some discipline to keep every area from being this chaotic since it is so impressive the hunter increases the amount of action quite a bit in every region but for a first playthrough it's best to have this sort of chaos in smaller doses sky islands also shows off one of rain world's flaws although I think the static camera is on the whole a good choice and the screens are designed around it I suspect it was implemented due to technical limitations and it does have some problems at times it's unclear whether a fall will kill you or just scroll the screen downwards this doesn't make any sense because slug cat should just be able to look down it happens in unexpected places I can jump down here and die or go through this pipe and seemingly arrive safely in the place I just fell this happens a lot in the more vertical regions and there's no way to discern between safe and unsafe Falls additionally the screen sometimes Scrolls in a disorienting way usually when you're in corners it's very rare but also very annoying since being able to see is a large part of not getting killed five pebbles told us to go this way and since he doesn't seem to wish us ill we'll take his advice five pebbles oversaw the abandoned city on top of the wall so at one point he would have managed the farm raised like so much of rain world they now stand in disarray since the inhabitants are all gone one of the bleakest pieces of lore comes from the teal pearl found right at the end of the game everything built by the inhabitants inevitably decays but they have no way to die moon is completely crippled and we can see the beginning of five pebbles doom in the rot that is slowly eating him he's frustrated and purposeless but I digress farmer raises a relatively linear region that relies on a movement gimmick rain world does this a number of times and I think the reindeer here is both the most transparent and best use of a gimmick in the game the reindeer are well considered they eat a type of food that grows in the area they break up the gameplay a bit and they're uniquely docile gigantic and majestic you can either feed the reindeer or wait for them to come by of their own accord which makes the ecosystem feel just a little bit more real although they're all implemented well reign world does rely pretty heavily on gimmicks as the game goes along I'll put all the ones I can think of on screen I think if the gimmick items or creatures were present in areas where they aren't required to progress their inclusion wouldn't even raise an eyebrow the grappling worms are a lot of fun to play around with and I can't think of any area that would be worse for having them scissor birds are reused later and seeing them interact with scavengers and lizards makes the ecosystem just that little bit more believable farm-raised is a nice break in game play coming here after sky islands one of the most difficult areas is a nice change of pace and leads up to the final sequence of the game [Music] [Music] [Music] although gimmicks are used well the core of rain worlds gameplay is the slug cat armed only with his wits and some debris subterranean gives rain world the chance to leave nothing on the table and create a final big challenge I'm glad to say that it's among the game's most biologically diverse and mechanically satisfying areas it blends the spiritual and technical featuring a train yard religious statues a filtration system and a temple all in close proximity light is used to great effect on certain screens and the spiritual core of everything the inhabitants built is more obvious in the architecture since here it's mostly intact the environmental storytelling here is great in its heyday this place filtered voice Luud and served as a freight hub to transport it around the world in the inhabitants last days it would have been in high demand there's another layer of history in the sinkholes and Cavins that let the light shine through from farm-raised subterranean is to me a synthesis of everything that makes rain world great you enter it at the height of your survival ability and it asks you to navigate screen after screen of beautiful architecture packed with danger the level design gives you multiple routes through the area and each is populated with different threats something I've struggled with in making this video is how to relate the feeling of playing rain World maybe I haven't really succeeded but if I had to pick an area that typifies it it would be subterranean filtration system is a maze of tight tunnels patrolled by black lizards who are usually invisible in the dark going through the area is quite tense but it's not very difficult or long if you just want to get to the depths if you get caught by the lizards you'll have quite a challenge on your hands but moving stealthily allows you to avoid most encounters stealth is another way the game's movement is utilized since different routes and maneuvers make different amounts of noise you can also throw objects to distract and confuse the lizards we'll be making our way back up to subterranean so I can show off a little bit more of it before we finish the game [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the depths is the final region and I'll use it to say my final words great art escapes any attempt you make to describe it you can list every great thing about it and try to explain in detail but ultimately the work is greater than the sum of its parts throughout this review I've tried to stick to what is mechanical in reign world but I think its appeal is more ethereal than that as I played through it the game made me question why I continued living in its world and that question eventually made me think about my own world reign worlds atmosphere is grim but it ultimately wants us to keep venturing into the unknown and to keep living what I like most about this game is how uncompromising it is it's a labor of love on behalf of everyone involved the product of six years of work and it manages to simultaneously invent and perfect several new game systems rayne world is short uncompromised streamlined mechanics and i mean that in the best of ways playing it really feels like taking in someone's vision which is quite rare in a game rein world is singular and its quality is exceedingly high even if you don't enjoy it you have to respect it you [Music]

Channel: Jimmy McGee

Views: 298,541

Keywords: rain world, platformer, game review, underrated

Id: STZ5NM8C_SU

Length: 80min 1sec (4801 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020