Episode 116: Rain World

Rain World is a game that was released to very mixed reviews. With a whopping 59 on Metacritic, it was panned for its controls, difficulty, tedium and general obtuseness. But take a gander at the community reviews and you get a very different picture.

The thing is, Rain World can at times be all the things that its critics hate so much that they give it a lower score than your generic AAA Ubisoft game that comes out every 6 months. It controls nothing like Mario. It kills you frequently and uncaringly. Its checkpointing and karma systems do force you towards a kind of repetition, and its refusal to explain anything does mean you have to experiment to understand the world in front of you.

But does a different philosophical approach to game design really deserve this kind of heat? Is Rain World’s expectation that you learn by doing, instead of gradually ramping up difficulty with careful tutorializing, really that bad? Is it, perhaps, that the very thing many critics loathe about the game, exactly what makes Rainworld truly shine?

On this special 116th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast, we play the cult classic Rain World, and do our best to cut to the heart of what it’s all about.

On this episode, we discuss:

• What is the fundamental gameplay loop of Rain World actually like? Rain World is a game that resists easy definition or explanation, shrouded in mystery and misunderstandings. We break down what our experiences of actually playing the game was, from start to finish.
• How well do Rain World’s many systems gel together? Are the Karma Gates that bar your progress from region to region an essential part of this system, or do they sometimes force the player into a cycle of tedious repetition?
• What did we think of Rain World’s story? How does Rain World deliver its lore to the player, and was there perhaps a more effective way to get the details of the story across?

We answer these questions and many more on the 116th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Rain World OST: James Therrien

What were your experiences like playing Rain World? Did you like how the story was delivered or was it just too much? What modern game should we play next? Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

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The Ancients of Rainworld’s solution to everything