I spent a few days just following a lizard around. He lived two screens over from the shelter I was staying at. I watched him pick a fight with another lizard who lived nearby. If I got close, he'd try to attack me, but as long as I stayed out of his reach he would quickly grow frustrated and seek easier prey. I watched him try to hunt some of the bugs in the area. Often they were too fast and would escape his jaws. After filling my own belly for the day, I speared a bug and brought it to him. He eagerly grabbed it and dragged it back to his home. After a few days I realized that he had begun following me. He was no longer aggressive, but appeared to be begging for food. One evening he followed me into my shelter, and we hibernated together while the nightly rainstorms scoured the outside world.

I had made a friend.

Together we ventured into a new area. When we ran into other lizards, he would hiss and snap at them while I threw rocks to chase them away. He even saved my life a few times, scuffling with predators until I was knocked free from certain death. I made sure that he ate at least one big bug every day, hunting them from a distance before they could register a threat. One day when exploring, I see my lizard buddy start panicking moments before a giant vulture-like bird swoops down from the sky and snatches him. I tried to hurl the spear I was holding but the vulture was already flying up and out of range. In the blink of an eye, the one other creature I could call friend in this broken world was gone.

There was a moment when this game clicked for me. I had been trying to progress through the game, moving from one region to the next, seeking to roll the credits. I was often frustrated and felt like I wasn't having fun. Rain World is brutally difficult in a way that can feel unfair. Giant death birds will literally come out of the sky in an instant and grab you and then you're dead. The game seems to shrug as if to say "that's life." And yet, there was a moment when I realized that I was no longer just surviving in this ecosystem. I was thriving. Even in the most inhospitable places, clinging to steel girders on the underside of a massive ruined structure, I knew where I could find food each day. I learned where the pack of orange lizards that also eked out a living here amidst the raging storm clouds preferred to hunt. When I needed to pass by them, I would bait them into chasing me to a roundabout where I could easily cross them up. The more you exist in the world, the more you learn about how it operates, the more rewarding the game becomes.

Rain World is probably the best game I've ever played that isn't a very good "game". Super Mario Bros is a "game" in the sense where the purpose of playing it is to move through and complete each level until you reach the end. A "good game" has carefully constructed challenges that are curated in a way to foster enjoyment and prevent frustration. Rain World seems to simply accept the fact that it is not for everybody. It's easy to feel the game doesn't respect your time if your primary goal when sitting down to play is to get to the next level. But if your goal is to see what the local scavengers are up to today, Rain World will have an interesting answer for you.

Ultimately, this simulation of an uncaring ecosystem provides an exquisitely unique payoff. There comes a point where you realize that you might actually be the baddest thing around. Where every threat has a measured response. Where even the lizards are afraid of you because, against all natural order, you, a lowly slugcat, actually managed to kill a death bird and are wearing it's face as a trophy. And it's in these moments that I paused and thought to myself, "This is a good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game."

I would really, really, love to recommend Rain World. It feels like a fun environment to explore, with lots of obscure interactions. The best part is that there's little direction; it sounds like a game I would really enjoy. While I do enjoy it (perhaps one of my top 15 games of all time), I can only recommend this game to the kind of people that like Getting Over It,

The biggest issue I feel as a player is the lack of direction. Normally I love these games--I play puzzle games like the Witness, and mystery games like Outer Wilds; both of these games allow the player to explore with little interference. I'm about 1/3 of the way through Rain World, between two areas called the Shaded Citadel and The Leg. On paper, you can get to these areas within a couple hours. It took me 20 hours.

You're provided with a yellow holographic worm that with provide gentle directions on a "main path" of sorts, which is great! Unfortunately, it will never provide directions the moment you enter a region that isn't on the main path. This is bad, because it still provides other hints for you (such as warning you of danger). That ended up with me traversing 3 difficult, nonessential areas, thinking I'm progressing, only to end up back at the very first area. In hindsight you could say, "you didn't follow the worm," but again, nothing is ever explained! I spent my first 15 hours looping around with absolutely nothing going on, under the guise of progress. That's bad.

There is some degree of difficulty gating (which I absolutely experienced), but it feels extremely inconsistent. The area I'm currently in (The Leg) is just as hard as the areas I got stuck in. I want to fully enjoy this game, but I really can't. I recommend, at the minimum, checking a steam guide that gives the names of areas you should go through to reach the end. That way, you won't end up spoiling yourself, but you'll at least know you're making some progress.

Rai Worl