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Rain World is a 2017 survival platformer where you navigate in a hostile world as a slugcat, an animal that is the cross of a slug and cat in appearance. After being separated from your family, your slugcat tries to keep itself alive in a hostile world that shows no mercy. Adaptation is key, a feature that the developers made sure to emphasize. Rain World: Downpour is a DLC for the game that was released later in 2023, introducing more slugcats (More Slugcats DLC), co-op, and more.
The game is noted for its excellent in-game ecosystem that involves a variety of factors- including your choice of slugcat- making each playthrough unique with the same enemies but different challenges to overcome. It also has stunning pixel art that makes it visually distinct from many other games, showing how versatile the style can be when executed well.
Story
Don't look if you want to avoid spoilers!
The story of Rain World is complex due to many details about the world's past being conveyed through subtle, small details. It's further complicated by the Downpour DLC being an official alternate universe of the main story, so I will try my best to retell it based on the Rain World fan wiki's lore page. All graphics and information used in this post are from the same wiki, so I recommend checking it out.
Before the game, there was a society consisting of Ancients, a highly advanced civilization of people that was overflowing with culture and innovation. It was believed that there were five natural urges that kept the Ancients tied to the material world, to forever be stuck in a cycle of death and rebirth. Despite the excellence of the Ancients, it's clear that their ambition came at the cost of the world itself and their inability to find a proper way of ascending. This issue would later be known as "the Big Problem."
The first negative effect was the discovery of Void Fluid, a substance that possesses the ability to allow anyone to leave the physical world behind and ascend. In other words, Void Fluid could be used as a vessel to leave the material world and transcend reality as the Ancients dreamed of doing. They also used the Fluid to manufacture lifeforms for differing reasons, of which would later lead to the world becoming overrun with hostile predators. But the discovery and proliferation of Void Fluid would also be the catalyst initiating the creation of Iterators.
Iterators, while maintaining many functions necessary for society, were created with the sole goal of finding the solution to ascension for all living creatures. Iterators consume large amounts of water to perform their necessary duties, leading to the rain being dangerous as a result. Cities were built on top of the Iterators' structures as the rain worsened.
At some point, Ancients may have decided to ascend via Void Fluid, as there is no trace of them left besides the grand structures they left behind and Echos. Tied down by ego, Echos are forever trapped between the material world the slugcats live in and transcending into a different realm of existence. The only Iterator to ever find the solution that the Ancients wanted was Sliver of Straw. This was dubbed the triple affirmative, which meant that there was a solution that could be shared and easily utilized by others. But she died before any of the other Iterators could learn of the triple affirmative's specifics, causing a huge split between the remaining concerning whether they should continue finding the solution or not. This includes a certain Iterator named Five Pebbles, a self-destructive being who wishes to ascend.
Practicing self-destruction as a means of ascending, once such forbidden information to do so is attained, Five Pebbles begins using water at an immense rate and loses contact with the other Iterators at some point. Rot develops as a result, giving way to the development of Daddy/Brother/Mother/Hunter Long Legs predators seen in-game. (This is presumably a disease that causes cysts and long tentacles to form.) A nearby Iterator called Looks to the Moon is greatly damaged by Five Pebbles' sudden, huge usage of water, to the point that she is unable to function properly and is incredibly weak. Five Pebbles does not receive her correspondence telling him to stop, leaving her in a fragile state that causes a separate Iterator, No Significant Harassment, to send the Hunter to assist her.
With the game and story finally meeting, Looks to the Moon is saved by the Neuron Fly that the Hunter was sent with as the Rot in Five Pebbles' facility continues to grow. But the future remains uncertain.
I would get into the Downpour DLC (which I will talk about later on in this post), but it may complicate this section further and make it longer, so I'll refer you to its respective wiki page if you're curious. Additionally, each slugcat has their own respective story, but I won't go on about those either due to the length of this post and tying in with the DLC, of which has a dubious canon status.
Before the game, there was a society consisting of Ancients, a highly advanced civilization of people that was overflowing with culture and innovation. It was believed that there were five natural urges that kept the Ancients tied to the material world, to forever be stuck in a cycle of death and rebirth. Despite the excellence of the Ancients, it's clear that their ambition came at the cost of the world itself and their inability to find a proper way of ascending. This issue would later be known as "the Big Problem."
The first negative effect was the discovery of Void Fluid, a substance that possesses the ability to allow anyone to leave the physical world behind and ascend. In other words, Void Fluid could be used as a vessel to leave the material world and transcend reality as the Ancients dreamed of doing. They also used the Fluid to manufacture lifeforms for differing reasons, of which would later lead to the world becoming overrun with hostile predators. But the discovery and proliferation of Void Fluid would also be the catalyst initiating the creation of Iterators.
Iterators, while maintaining many functions necessary for society, were created with the sole goal of finding the solution to ascension for all living creatures. Iterators consume large amounts of water to perform their necessary duties, leading to the rain being dangerous as a result. Cities were built on top of the Iterators' structures as the rain worsened.
At some point, Ancients may have decided to ascend via Void Fluid, as there is no trace of them left besides the grand structures they left behind and Echos. Tied down by ego, Echos are forever trapped between the material world the slugcats live in and transcending into a different realm of existence. The only Iterator to ever find the solution that the Ancients wanted was Sliver of Straw. This was dubbed the triple affirmative, which meant that there was a solution that could be shared and easily utilized by others. But she died before any of the other Iterators could learn of the triple affirmative's specifics, causing a huge split between the remaining concerning whether they should continue finding the solution or not. This includes a certain Iterator named Five Pebbles, a self-destructive being who wishes to ascend.
Practicing self-destruction as a means of ascending, once such forbidden information to do so is attained, Five Pebbles begins using water at an immense rate and loses contact with the other Iterators at some point. Rot develops as a result, giving way to the development of Daddy/Brother/Mother/Hunter Long Legs predators seen in-game. (This is presumably a disease that causes cysts and long tentacles to form.) A nearby Iterator called Looks to the Moon is greatly damaged by Five Pebbles' sudden, huge usage of water, to the point that she is unable to function properly and is incredibly weak. Five Pebbles does not receive her correspondence telling him to stop, leaving her in a fragile state that causes a separate Iterator, No Significant Harassment, to send the Hunter to assist her.
With the game and story finally meeting, Looks to the Moon is saved by the Neuron Fly that the Hunter was sent with as the Rot in Five Pebbles' facility continues to grow. But the future remains uncertain.
I would get into the Downpour DLC (which I will talk about later on in this post), but it may complicate this section further and make it longer, so I'll refer you to its respective wiki page if you're curious. Additionally, each slugcat has their own respective story, but I won't go on about those either due to the length of this post and tying in with the DLC, of which has a dubious canon status.
Gameplay
The game leaves it up to you to figure out what to do, making it apparent from the start of each "campaign", or game mode.
Perhaps most importantly, you have to keep yourself alive by filling up "pips", which is akin to the food meter in Minecraft. You can feed yourself by eating fruit or meat, although your food requirements can change depending on the slugcat you have selected. A certain minimum has to be met for the slugcat to successfully "hibernate", or end the day and survive the sleep. There are extra pips that you can fill so you can start out the next day not as starved, but are not required to fill. You have to do this- as well as defend yourself- in these "cycles", which are the in-game days. How much time a cycle provides you is dependent upon your slugcat of choice. It is important to wrap up everything before a cycle ends, as each one finishes with the event that the game is named after; the rain. The rain is so intense that it kills anything that is alive in a given room, making the player retreat to "shelters" that are spread throughout the map. Getting into a shelter does not necessarily mean safety, though. Shelter failures are possible, forcing the slugcat to wake up in the middle of hibernation and leave the shelter while it's still raining, albeit with a lesser chance of dying from the rain itself. Some predators can even manage their way into them. Successfully surviving a cycle grants the player Karma.
Karma is an in-game mechanic that depends on the player's survival and ingesting Karma flowers. For the former, a player must survive a cycle to gain one Karma symbol. The latter can be consumed and will keep the player at their current level of Karma if they die in that cycle. Relatedly, these flowers spawn wherever the player last died, with the only exception being the Hunter campaign (the game's hard mode). There is a 3rd way to achieve Karma, but that one in particular is exclusive to the Artificer campaign that comes with the Downpour DLC. Karma is incredibly important to maintain, as it directly affects the player's progression throughout the game via Karma Gates.
Karma Gates are huge mechanical gates that connect "regions", aka the different maps of the game. A player will not be able to pass through one if they do not have the corresponding Karma symbol attained. The amount of regions available to the player depends on the slugcat of choice, with some being exclusive to certain campaigns. Some even appear dramatically different from slugcat to slugcat. These are sometimes preceded by Scavenger Tolls. Tolls are guarded by Scavengers that let the player through if they give enough items to the local Scavengers to boost "reputation", an in-game mechanic that applies to the player and NPCs of the game.
Reputation is possibly the second-most important feature next to keeping yourself alive. Your reputation with different animals are affected by your interactions with them, and can vary wildly depending on the slugcat that you have chosen. For example, if you choose to save a jetfish from suffocating on land, it will improve your reputation with other jetfish NPCs and make it less likely for you to have trouble with them. On the contrary, your reputation with Scavengers are incredibly awful in the Artificer campaign and can make it difficult to get past Tolls or even Scavengers themselves.
Staying alive becomes increasingly harder as you habitually return to the same places for food, to the point that it can run out and end up in treks that become increasingly longer distances from your shelter- and in no time, you're in a completely different area with new predators to deal with. You only have the choice of rocks and spears to defend yourself with, sometimes having the privilege of explosives, but players have the opportunity to get creative with how they work themselves out of situations.
While this gameplay may seem at first aimless, it becomes apparent over time that a story is unfolding as you follow the Overseer around. You have the opportunity to meet the Iterators Looks to the Moon and Five Pebbles, biomechanical beings that function more as remnants of a long-gone civilization at this point. Besides details scattered throughout the game, meeting these 2 and becoming familiar with them further unravels the story while cluing in the player on what had happened before the game.
This is the basic skeleton of the gameplay. What a player goes through ranges wildly depending on one's skill, the slugcat they have chosen, and choices make during gameplay.
Campaigns
I've mentioned the word campaign before in relation to gameplay, specifically the Artificer campaign. But what exactly is a "campaign"? There are many campaigns that have with different effects on a player's experience. There are currently 9 campaigns available, with 3 being a part of the base game and 6 in the Downpour DLC. I won't be too detailed about the differences between campaigns, but I will highlight some of interest. I will not dedicate a section to the Watcher due to its questionable relevance to the game. I will also not touch upon every campaign's ending, because there is honestly too many with their own specifications to detail here and I want the most spoiler-y section of this post to be the part recalling the story anyway.
Monk
The game's easy mode, the Monk requires 3 food pips to hibernate, with an additional 2 for the next cycle. You start out in the Outskirts- the standard beginning area of the game- as the Monk and have a relatively easier time compared to other campaigns, with the most notable change being a decrease in predator presence and aggression. The opening scene for the Monk is similar to the Survivor's, but a notable difference is that the Monk is depicted going after the lost pup. This is because the Monk is the Survivor's sibling.
Survivor
The "classic" experience of Rain World. Requires 4 food pips for hibernation and has 3 extra. Starting in the Outskirts, this is the standard for the game and therefore relatively has little change.
Hunter
The game's hard mode, requiring 6 food pips for hibernation and possessing an extra 3. Unlike the Survivor and Monk, the Hunter starts out in Farm Arrays with 3 items in its inventory, including a Spear and Neuron Fly. It is also different in the way that the number of cycles the Hunter has is counted down instead of up, with a chance later in-game to get an extra 5 more from Five Pebbles. If the cycle count is 0 and below, the Hunter will experience seizure-like spasms and become very weak, providing an additional challenge to the Hunter campaign. Lastly, another notable change is that any dead animal can be eaten, sharing this feature with Gourmand.
Gourmand
Introduced in the MS DLC, the Gourmand requires 7 food pips for hibernation and possesses an additional 4. This campaign starts out in the Shaded Citadel as the Gourmand is eating Slime Mold. This is possibly one of the more difficult slugcats to play as, as the Gourmand is weighed down and easily tired as a result of their weight. Additionally, the Shaded Citadel is one of the most hostile and difficult maps to traverse through thanks to the overabundance of enemies and darkness. On the contrary, the Gourmand has the advantage of crafting objects, having random items in their stomach, and being able to slam other creatures. The Gourmand is able to eat dead animals like the Hunter.
Artificer
Introduced in the MS DLC, the Artificer requires 6 food pips to hibernate and has an additional 3. You begin in the Garbage Wastes within a Scavenger Stronghold- in other words, an encampment- and quickly find a golden device that follows you. This slugcat specializes in explosives that is an integral part of this campaign's combat and leads to unorthodox ways of getting around. Unlike other campaigns, the Artificer is able to bring corpses of Scavengers along with it to Karma Gates and can pass due to each Scavenger equaling 1-4 Karma pip(s), with Elite Scavengers- much stronger Scavengers introduced in the Downpour DLC- having a max of 5.
Rivulet
Introduced in the MS DLC, the Rivulet requires 5 food pips to hibernate and only has an additional 1. The player starts out in the Drainage System as the Rivulet after the slugcat falls into the water with a dead Scavenger following 2 explosions off-screen. Cycles are much shorter and has fast-paced gameplay, as the Rivulet has the highest movement and swim speed of any slugcat, and can jump very high. Along with shortened cycles, shelter failures are more frequent and can force the player to go long distances to stay in a new one, as shelters cannot be reused in the same cycle due to being flooded.
Spearmaster
Introduced in the MS DLC, the Spearmaster requires 5 food pips to hibernate and has an extra 5. The player starts in the Outskirts with the Karma Gate connecting the region to the Outer Expanse closing behind them, a red Overseer already giving directions off the bat. The Spearmaster can produces Spears from its tail and hold 2, 1 in each paw. The only way the player can eat as Spearmaster is to use the slugcat's Needles- or self-made spears- to drain nutrients from prey. Unlike the other slugcats, Spearmaster seems to be more directly involved with Rain World's (alternate universe) story.
Saint
Introduced in the MS DLC, the Saint requires 4 food pips to hibernate and only has 1 extra pip, with meat not at all a dietary option. The Saint possesses a long tongue that gives it the ability to grapple and swing to and from walls and ceilings. They are also quite weak and cannot throw spears whatsoever. Interestingly, instead of there being a downpour of rain, blizzards take place at the end of each cycle instead. The cold is enough to kill creatures who do not have an immunity to such weather. Another unique trait of this campaign is that the Saint can "ascend" other creatures, which is similar to "killing" a creature but is not registered as such by the game. There is only one odd exception to this. (I will not spoil the exception.)
Inv
Introduced in the MS DLC as a secret, Inv has 12 food pips and no extras for storage. Starting in the Memory Crypts, this campaign isn't to be taken seriously especially given its non-canon status. Some regions are entirely different due to a lack of rendering, with some even having completely altered names. Inv is, essentially, a shitpost. Therefore, I'm not going to dwell too much on this one.
Downpour DLC and Remix
Released on January 19, 2023, a lot of new features were introduced:
- More Slugcats DLC: self-explanatory. Introduced the Gourmand, Artificer, Rivulet, Spearmaster, Saint, and Inv. This is based on mods by the community.
- Collection menu: by collecting Colored Pearls and Broadcasts in-game, they can all be transcribed to show the interactions between Iterators and the story.
- Regions: introduced the Pipeyard, Submerged Superstructure, Rubicon, Outer Expanse, Waterfront Facility, Metropolis, The Rot, Looks to the Moon, Undergrowth, and Silent Construct, all with their own respective subregions.
- New creatures: New predators include Mother Long Legs, Hunter Long Legs, Chieftain Scavenger (Artificer exclusive), Miros vultures, stowaways, giant jellyfish, aquapedes, jungle leeches, and 4 new Lizard variants; caramel, eel, train (Inv exclusive), and strawberry. New neutral NPCs are slugpups, Inspectors, yeeks, Elite Scavengers, firebugs, infant centiwigs, and Mother Spiders.
- New objects: edible items such as gooieducks, lilypucks, dandelion peaches, glow weed, seeds, and fire eggs were introduced. New weapons to defend oneself with were also introduced, including electric and fire spears, singularity bombs, and lastly, a joke rifle weapon for the new Arena mode.
- Other new items: cloaks, rarefraction cells, inspector eyes, and the Chieftain Scavenger mask.
- Expedition: the game itself, but with various changes made to it with the intent of making it more difficult.
- Jolly Co-op: Rain World but with (local) friends, essentially. (EDIT 2/19/2025: I personally recommend using Parsec as a means to play with online friends. In my experience, Steam Remote Play is not very sufficient.)
- Challenges: the player is put in Arenas with particular goals, with there being 70 total challenges to complete.
- Safari: the player controls an Overseer to observe the creatures of Rain World. They can control individual animals to see what situations they can cause and generally experiment with the interactions within the ecosystem.
Modding
The main hub of Rain World's modding scene can be found here with some mods themselves right here. The former wiki contains many articles on how to make your own region, logs to track errors, etc. Some people use the aforementioned Remix feature to make their own mods, but there are also unofficial options and the choice of making mods for older, outdated versions of the game. A comprehensive Rain World mod database can be found here.
The Steam Workshop for more mods can be found here. Here are some cool ones, though do note I have not used these (yet!):
- God Lizard: incredibly overpowered Lizard. I think the concept is really funny.
- The Nightstriker: really cool concept of being the hunter rather than the hunted! Not revolutionary in games, I know, but this is interesting for Rain World due to the game conditioning you into feeling and being prey. Now's your turn to bring that fear!
- Motion Sounds: small decisions for seemingly tiny parts of sound design mean a lot to me.
- Weakened Platform: all new area that provides a new and interesting map feature: vents. This really shakes up the gameplay and provides new ways of messing up and innovating on how you get around.
- Triple Jump: i like to jumping
Closing Thoughts
I stayed up until 2 AM writing this because I simply could not tear myself away from writing this up. I could have just clicked "Save draft" and left it for the morning, but I got the inexplicable urge to work on this simply because I love and respect Rain World for various things, including its music, atmosphere, and internal workings. This game has hit a certain part of my heart that a lot of others have failed to do. There have been some that I was utterly amazed by, such as ANIMAL WELL and Portal 2, but Rain World takes the cake in gaming with how many areas it excels in.
Firstly, the gameplay stands out to me from other games in the way that it perfectly captures the feeling of being a vulnerable prey animal. Other than the few weapons the game gives you- all with varying spawn rates- you are completely left to defend yourself with the likelihood of survival swaying constantly. You can't be sure that a Lizard won't kill you, as some perform camouflage or are just hard to see, and you can't know that you'll be safe when you realize that you have to trek further than you had originally planned- possibly messing up your plan for a certain cycle. It's an odd mix of adrenaline and anxiety that I'm not used to, and the game becomes really exciting as a result of that newfound compound of emotions. This really pays off when I successfully find a shelter or survive a cycle and it makes the game so satisfying. (Given that I'm not repeatedly dying.) I won't even begin to touch on the coding behind this game simply because I am not that code-savvy and I would be gushing a lot more than I already have about the off-screen things we don't see, such as the Overseer sometimes wandering the map with a preference for rooms the game designated as likely to attract the player.
Secondly, the soundtrack is crazy for both the base game and the Downpour DLC. The base game's soundtrack is an amazing exploration of electronic music, mixing elements of minimal techno, plunderphonics, and ambient (as a few examples). For example, Grumblebum is such an odd-sounding track with its almost voice-like sample throughout, yet the beat is insanely catchy and somehow sounds like the track's name. I am really impressed by how this soundtrack can go from a catchy tune with clicks in the background, to absolutely heart-wrenching pieces that make you forget that the slugcats aren't real, because the track for the Artificer's ending is just...
I won't try to spoil that ending too much, but it legitimately almost made me cry when it was accompanied by the visuals. The Downpour DLC is a huge improvement on the emotional aspect of the game in general, feeling a bit more layered as the instrumentals are played with a little more with heavier usage of industrial sound. It introduces some influence from chiptune with its crunchy digital noise intermingled with clearer-sounding instruments- fitting with Rain World's art style- and has a bit more fun with its synthesizers that range from crushed to foreboding. It's definitely more fluid than the base game's soundtrack in a lot of ways and is a wonderful successor as a result. Not enough words can describe how amazing both of these soundtracks are, so I would listen to them yourself.Thirdly and lastly, the ART!! Oh my GOD the art!! I know I said in the second paragraph of this section that I'll basically try to refrain from gushing over the game (as if this entire post isn't doing that!), but oh my GOD!! I've always been a pixel art kid. I lost some interest after a few years of not interacting with pixel artwork, but this game has re-invigorated my love for it to an insane degree. I've attempted to mimic the art style in the past because I just love how everything looks without lines. It feels a bit more realistic, somehow, without any lines in the art and much easier to fall into because of this. I'll stop myself here before I go on a tangent about how much I love pixel art as a whole, so I'll just say that the art direction for this game is truly top-notch. It can sometimes be difficult for a director to accurately execute what they have in mind since there's multiple people on board for projects, but everyone behind the production of this game was in sync and delivered beautifully in the art department. The painting style isn't anything too special, yet it feels like its own identity because of the colors Rain World uses. It's a dark world, yet the colors are vibrant and do a good job of making the creatures distinct from their environment. I think this is partly why their wide shot art looks so good; it captures a lot of detail and are also incredibly dynamic. Like, the line of action in each one are just
But enough about how I view Rain World. What about your thoughts on the game?
EDIT 2/19/2025: fixed an error with Monk and Survivor's stories in the Campaigns section; added a link to Parsec for Jolly Co-op; put the entire Story section in a spoiler, and made the text black to as to prevent it from blending into the white background; fixes to and removal of sentences.
