Incline Rain World

[SumDrunkGuy]

unlike the fucking Dark Souls saga which has seemingly infected EVERY game ever since 2010s

Don't get angry at them you dope. It's not From Software's fault that other devs are talentless hacks who can't come up with their own ideas. Souls haters get fucked.

 

[LESS T_T]

Detailing the free update coming alongside DLC: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/312520/view/3229664706316528818

Announcing Rain World Remix
Hello slugcats!

I am excited to announce a free update called Rain World Remix. This update will add accessibility options, customization options, fix many bugs present in the current version of the game, and improve on some of the things that annoyed players, like the rain deer interactions. Those who don’t buy the Downpour DLC will still get this update when Downpour releases.

I won’t go through all the options as this announcement will turn into a dictionary if I tried, but if you have any questions about ones that I don’t go into feel free to ask and I’ll answer with the best of my ability. Any of these options can be toggled for your best individual experience.

Loading screen tips and extra tutorials will be added to help newer players with the mechanics that the game doesn’t normally teach you in game - like how to drop items or how to tell how much time is left in a cycle. Loading screen tips will occasionally give tips when the slugcat dies or when the slugcat survives the cycle. Extended tutorials will give in-game tutorial messages for certain mechanics and scenarios.

Music is an important part of telling if there is danger nearby in Rain World. However, those that have a hard time hearing do have a major disadvantage. Threat music visual pulse will give a visual indicator of incoming danger. In addition to the music going more intense as the slugcat gets closer to danger, the threat music visual pulse shows a heartbeat of red dots on the bottom of the screen. There are up to five red dots that can appear and the more red dots that show up the closer the slugcat is to danger.

If you ever feel that a creature killing the slugcat just off screen is unfair, then Slug Senses is a way to counter that. Checking the map with this option active will show the creatures that are near the slugcat in the room, including those creatures that are just off screen. On the map it will show the creature symbol and will differentiate if they are alive or dead. However, camouflaged creatures, creatures in darkness, or those underwater, will still obscure themselves from the map.

Karma gates are a big barrier that many players reach. Sometimes it can be super discouraging for players to reach the needed karma to cross to the next region only to die and then not have the required karma to cross the karma gate again. Rain World Remix will have two options that will help players cross those karma gates. The first option is that karma gates will have Monk style gates for all campaigns. Once you cross through the gate, that gate will continue to be unlocked and not require karma again. The second option will disable all karma gate requirements - so even if you are struggling you can continue to go through the karma gates at the lowest karma.

For speedrunners of the game, there will be a togglable in-game speedrun timer that can be used. Now a lot of speedrunners may be distraught to hear that Rain World Remix does fix a lot of speedrunning exploits like karma caching and guardian skips. We don’t want to hurt the speedrun community and make speedruns less consistent so we have put in a toggleable option that can be used to keep exploits and advantageous glitches that speedrunners use to get the fastest times. For those interested in speedrunning for the current version of Rain World the Rain World Discord has a meta-and-tech channel that you can discuss with other speedrunners on strategies.

If red lizards weren’t scary enough there is an Alpha Red Lizards option to make them stronger. This option gives them tongues to pull you close, and if you think that stashing a bunch of spears is a good idea, their tongue can snatch your spear and break it in half with their bite.

The rain deer is one of the most annoying creatures for the community. In the current build the rain deer behavior cannot be influenced by the player once on the antlers. If they go a different direction then what the player wants then there is no way to change that other then jump off and wait for the next rain deer and hope they go the correct way. The tweaked deer behavior option adds two ways that players can influence the direction the rain deer goes once on the antlers. Shaking on the antler will encourage them to change directions, or encourage them to move if they are idling in place. If the slugcat is holding a sporepuff while on the antlers, then the position of the slugcat will also influence their movement.

There are many more options that can be toggled to make your campaigns unique to what you like. Rain World Remix as a whole can be enabled or disabled, if you would like to continue playing Rain World unchanged from the way it is now. This free update will be launching alongside Rain World: Downpour.

Feel free to come chat with us in the Akupara Games Discord, or follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook for updates!

-[AG] Riv Otter

 

[Tweed]

The first option is that karma gates will have Monk style gates for all campaigns.

Bout fucking time. Karma gates were a stupid gameplay element that just slows everything down.

 

[lightbane]

It took them 4 fucking years, but finally, the game will be actually fun instead of an exercise of frustration because of wonky mechanics disguised as "get gud" memes. I like how many of the QoL modifiers are from must-have mods.
Unfortunately, the basic Slugcat character is still too slow and at a severe disadvantage against nearly everything due how little his movement is compared to most predators, he may be fast but more often than not you can get outmaneuvered quite easily.
Hopefully a "suspend" save feature is allowed at some point ot let you quit the game if necessary but without counting as having lost one life.

 

[LESS T_T]

Well next year. January 19th.

 

[Humbaba]

Game's a chore often times, due to how retarded the check pointing is, you're gonna be retracking a buncha fucking times because you die so easily and have to start over. If you could just save like a normal person it would be a lot less frustrating to play.

 

[Tweed]

The karma gates were my biggest complaint. In a game where you're going to die constantly it only slows down the action needlessly.

 

[lightbane]

Supposedly you can at long last modify the Gates' behavior so that they're not that inane, courtesy of the latest update for the base game, but I haven't checked. I agree that being able to save anywhere, even if it's a limited save that prevents quicksaving bullshit, would improve the game greatly. Right now it's not respectful of your time because all of your progress won't matter if you cannot reach the shelters in time. Memorization of the routes doesn't work that well when enemy placement is randomized and suddenly now there's a giant angry centipede blocking your way that wasn't here before. Also, one of the new Slug cats has a melee attack, but not for the others which is frustrating.

 

[Terenty]

Save anywhere system would completely ruin what makes the game so good. It's the feeling of making it at the last moment despite all the hardships that's so satisfying.

Would saving anywhere in Dark Souls improve the game? I don't think so

 

[lightbane]

Dark Souls DOES let you save anywhere though, when you leave the game. It doesn't allow you to savescum, but if you have to stop playing for whatever reason, you can. In RW, depending on your character, you must save at the save spots OR be considered you lost a life, so to speak.

 

[Terenty]

Well, the cycles are not that long, around 20-25 mins the longest, so if you have to exit in the middle, it's like losing 10 mins or smth. Not that big of a deal realy

 

[Fizz]

Split screen or wireless coop would save it!!

I tend to start survivor, feel great getting "the fucking jingling symbols" then I start dying, roam around endlessly for eternity, then give up. :^(

 

[Humbaba]

Save anywhere system would completely ruin what makes the game so good. It's the feeling of making it at the last moment despite all the hardships that's so satisfying.

Would saving anywhere in Dark Souls improve the game? I don't think so

Difference being that Dark Souls isn't random like Rain World is. If you're stuck at a portion in Dark Souls it's gonna be the same everytime, so even if you have to backtrack, you still know what to expect. In Rain World any kind of bullshit may come between you and your goal, so it's a lot more of a crapshoot.

 

[Terenty]

Ok, look at it as Dark Souls having a save function in the middle of a boss battle. That's the same, no tension anymore

 

[Humbaba]

Not really, a DS boss always has the same moves, but any route in Rain World may involve a pissed off scavenger chucking a spear at your dumb face for no reason.

 

[lightbane]

Ok, look at it as Dark Souls having a save function in the middle of a boss battle. That's the same, no tension anymore

Note: If you leave the game half-battle, no matter which one, that's what happens IIRC. Of course, once you go back to the game, the few seconds it takes to take control back means you're going to get hit for sure.

 

[Terenty]

As I said you don't lose much of a progress in Rain World if you have to exit before reaching a check point. It's like 10-15 mins tops. Once you know where the next shelter is it's not that hard to reach it on the subsequent tries

 

[Humbaba]

If everything goes according to plan and you happen to have eaten enough then yeah, if not, then you have to backtrack to a place where there's food and then go back the way you actually wanted to go.

 

[jimster]

Split screen or wireless coop would save it!!

I tend to start survivor, feel great getting "the fucking jingling symbols" then I start dying, roam around endlessly for eternity, then give up. :^(

Didn't they add local coop with the DLC? I read it was originally a free mod for the base game, but it was broken with the latest update to the game, and the game devs added it back in with the paid DLC... I guess if you don't want the DLC/update you can still rollback and use the free mod. You can use these online with Steam Remote Play.

Kinda wish I bought this game on the sale, seems unique.

 

[Tweed]

Tried the DLC, twitched over the edge of a bottomless pit.

Remembered why I fucking hate this game.

 

[3 others]

ANNOUNCEMENT: Regarding the Downpour DLC, the base game got all the same QoL improvements, so unless you specifically want to play the new slugcats' campaigns, or in co-op, buying the DLC isn't necessary.
ANOTHER ANNOUNCEMENT: Maybe combine this thread with this?

Like many, I've had Rain World in my library for years, and like almost as many, I've never played it more than a few cycles before sticking my nose somewhere where it's not supposed to and got it bitten off. Now with the DLC, I've found enough time and persistence to delve further into the game and it's been a mixed experience, equal parts frustrating and delightful. Despite plenty of loudmouths claiming that Rain World should be experienced blind, if you're like me and haven't gotten to it in 5 years, it's probably not going to happen. I took the liberty of reading the Rain World wiki and got a rough outline of the game, the map, and the core concepts. It's made playing the game more pleasant.

Rain World seems to be something that a lot of people find very enticing in theory, only to find out that it's not really what they wanted after all. And it's not the game's fault, really. Rain World sells itself as it is: a harsh, uncompromising vision of a middle-of-the-foodchain creature in a ruined world. And it is really good at what it wants to be. Unlike most "emergent behavior" or "dynamic environment" buzzwords which mean that NPCs don't stand in street corners after dark, the challenge and enemy behavior in Rain World genuinely seems to emerge from their inherent properties and game states. This can and will lead to unfair scenarios where numerous enemies happen to congregate in the exact bottleneck you're intending to pass through, or an offscreen enemy drops down from the room above right on top of you, but mostly it seems you can get by just observing and being careful. I don't think you "gain" anything from killing your predators, they will run away after a few good hits and that's good enough. They're inedible in any case.

I'm not sure lumping Rain World with 2D metroidvanias makes that much sense, really. Sure, mechanically you're climbing, running, throwing projectiles in a blocky 2D world, but the design philosophy has much more in common with NEO Scavenger, for example.

There's also a rare undercurrent of body horror in the game. Nature is harsh, after all, and conflict between predator and prey is often a matter of life and death. If you're the prey, you don't only get killed, you get eaten, providing calories for the monster that dragged your in-game avatar's helpless corpse to its lair. You get desensitized to it over time, but it is unsettling to see the slugcat's limp corpse helplessly dangling in the jaws of a giant lizard. The game doesn't even end there yet, you can choose to observe what the lizard does to you afterwards: it attempts to return to its nest where the coup de grace will thankfully be administered offscreen, but if it encounters other lizards (or other predators), they might try to snatch the meal (you) from its mouth. In those occasions, you might even be able to escape in the scuffle - at least when the initial bite wasn't lethal.

And that's only the lizards (of which there are loads of varieties). Other enemies include demonic centipedes that own the subterranean burrows, demonic eusocial spider swarms that gradually get over their fear of you, overwhelm you in numbers, and bite you to death. Then there are demonic aquatic leeches that and drag you down to the bottom until you drown, demonic carnivorous mimic plants that blend into the background and drag you underground if you grab them, demonic mobile cancer cells that just absorb you. All of them appear to have their own behaviors and methods of detecting their prey, and dying to any of these is horrifying.

And of course, in some occasions the script is flipped backwards. You're the hungry predator and some unfortunate butterfly or baby centipede is your next meal. Tough luck, a man's gotta eat.

It's also easy to bitch about quest compasses and autojournals and such, but Rain World shows what it really means to ditch practically all handholding in a game. Sure, you have sort of a guide with you but he doesn't speak your language, gives conflicting directions, and is subject to the same restraints as other entities in the world: when the rain starts coming, he's off sheltering somewhere safe. What's worse, his first mission that covers the first third of the game is to lead you to another odd character who can't communicate with you either.

The rain cycle is also a mixed bag. Every 10 minutes, a lethal downpour covers the land. You can only survive in specific shelters where you hibernate until the next dry season. To hibernate, you need food. To get food, you have to hunt. To hunt, you have to explore. If you explore, you expose yourself to danger. Progress in Rain World is about getting to the next shelter with a full stomach in time before the next rain hits. Or just returning to the current shelter to hibernate, there's no shame in that. Every successful hibernation gets you a karma point, every death removes one. Areas are separated by "karma gates" that open if your karma is high enough. This is intended to promote a careful playstyle, where you don't just rumble around recklessly without regard for the slugcat's life but it can be a source of frustration as well. Grinding some calories to hibernate a few karma points might be immersive in a sense but it isn't really fun. But then again, Rain World explicitly seems to disregard "fun" as a motivating factor in its design so it fits the game world.

All in all, Rain World is a remarkable feat in so many ways. The dynamic ecosystem, the procedural animation, the bold design choices, the surprisingly deep lore. As a personal preference, it's nowhere as exhilarating to play as meticulously curated platformers like Super Meat Boy or Hollow Knight. I'm not sure that I'll ever finish Rain World, but I'm delighted that this game has been made, and that it's found its audience, and that its makers stuck to their unique vision.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Hopefully a "suspend" save feature is allowed at some point ot let you quit the game if necessary but without counting as having lost one life

I think that there will never be a suspend feature, more for technical reasons than for game-design reasons. I suspect that, in order to implement suspend and restore, the devs should rewrite the game from the ground up.

 

[Tweed]

I went back and finished it, wew lad. I don't know who would mistake this for a metroidvania. You gain no abilities, the entire world is open to you except the very end, and you have no stats. You don't even need to visit the two main NPCs of the game in order to finish it. It's really a cinematic platformer, from hell. The only thing that determines if you finish the game is your threshold for frustration and your ability to learn the game's mechanics. A good example of this is The Underhang which is mostly bottomless pits, you either master the grapple worm or you don't go that way, ever. A whopping 8.7% of players on Steam completed the game and that's on any difficulty. It's also a total dick move to send you to Moon first and 5P later, if you want to talk to her you'll have to backtrack down The Wall although descending is a lot easier than climbing and if you have any talent at all you should have at least one passage by then for fast travel, up to you if you want to waste it talking to a hand puppet attached to a dying AI.

 

[Tweed]

Started a regular survivor game. Monk is a good primer, I made it all the way to Moon and only died once. Death is still frustrating as hell though since it's usually caused by total BULLSHIT and always after a long walk.

 

[lightbane]

It's a game more fun to watch than to play. Perhaps in co-op is more tolerable if players can resurrect each other.

Also, be sure to edit the rain timer to the maximum or disable it entirely, as otherwise it can range from 10 minutes tops to a few seconds and you don't want to be stuck with the later, as it takes a second to check the timer and the game doesn't use numbers but circles to tell the remaining time.