Early 2017 was a pretty good period for Metroidvania games. In February we saw Hollow Knight land on PC, and just one month later, a scrappier, weirder game called Rain World hit PC and the PS4. Hollow Knight, of course, now has the spotlight – it’s one of the most successful and beloved indie games of the past decade – but Rain World also made a splash (pun not intended), just in a much more subtle way.
Rain World’s one of those where even long before its release, you’d see GIFs of it across social media. Thanks to gorgeous and peculiar traversal mechanics (slinking up walls, sliding through pipes) and a wet, collapsing world brought to life with jagged, fluid pixel art, Rain World really lends itself to short, sharp clips. Watching your character, called a ‘slugcat’, slink and slide through pipes and peel itself off walls and cram itself into little nests captivated me before launch, and said GIFs did their job – I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it when it finally released.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
I’ve always been surprised it didn’t capture the public’s imagination as much as Hollow Knight. It too focuses on exploration, survival, and implicit storytelling, and even boasts a similar doomed, lonely world as set dressing, to boot. The combat isn’t as satisfying as Team Cherry’s insectoid platformer, granted, but the desperation communicated – through your slugcat’s use of debris and spears to defend itself from the threats that prowl around the obtuse, post-industrial ecosystem of the world – certainly works. The twist is, here, you want to avoid combat, where possible: there’s a distinct sense of predator versus prey in this game, and you are not at the top of the food chain.
The rhythm is hard-going and slow. Finding spots to hibernate in is tough, and it makes each of these cosy nests feel even more vital and valuable when you finally manage to tease one out of the meandering, labyrinthine world design. You also need a decent stockpile of food in order to hibernate (and, henceforth, save your game). Honestly, watching slugcat finally curl up in a nest, rest, and replenish its stocks of energy feels even more satisfying than finding a bonfire in Dark Souls. Really.