rainworld

the environment tells so much to you without a single word. run-down towering megastructures stand unchanging and sprawl so far that you truly feel insignificant. they are in disrepair, caked with grime, reclaimed by the nature they displaced yet the intricate details underneath make you wonder what came before you

but in the end only you and the creatures are left. the ambient music is very sparse which allows you to appreciate the sounds of surviving flora and fauna (although when it does let loose it absolutely goes hard).

eventually you stumble upon the only remnant of civilisation left - the iterators. they lament the cycles which all those in this world are doomed to repeat and the lengths at which the ancients and themselves went to escape. pearls found around the world hold more fragments of lore which rewards exploration even more...even if lugging them back is extremely tedious. but once you understand the nature of your existence you can make the journey and ascend (a sequence rendering me completely speechless).

somehow in my first playthrough i missed five pebbles and ascended through pure coincidence having met all the echoes. i'd even missed the majority of the game by doing so. i'd missed so many regions. this game is massive. luckily i filled in the blanks during my hunter playthrough and fell even more in love with the game.

each creature has their own niche in the ecosystem and their own relationships with others. the scavengers are friendly to you and may even assist you as long as you stay friendly to them, others are indifferent unless you provoke them like the squidcadas. to many such as the lizards, you are just as appetising as any other prey. the network of creature interactions interweave to truly make the ecosystem feel alive too.

you aren't the only thing creatures care about. individuals of the same species will dispute over food; most large predators will tussle with each other; larger predators will prey on smaller ones (although you will also do nicely); small creatures flee at the first sight of danger; some will clump together for safety

it's also constantly simulated so creatures will interact regardless of whether you are there or not. you could walk in on a falling lizard or scavenger battleground at anytime, and you can be caught in the crossfire. this hammers home your insignificance in the world - sometimes you can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. but with enough skill you can survive.

scrappy is the best description of base rainworld

you are agile (and have opposable thumbs). the freeform nature of your movement allows outmaneuvering your foes with backflips, slides, pounces and rolls. not only to escape danger, but to position yourself for a strike. you can improvise with objects from your environment to gain the upper hand. obviously rocks can stun and rebar can wound but you can also use the ecosystem to your advantage.

two lizards will fight each other over food you throw at them, diverting their focus away from you; insects will bind you if aggravated, but can be set on others by throwing their hive; jellyfish which sting you will also sting others; squidcadas and jetfish increase your mobility such that others have no chance of catching you; any large creature chasing you can be lured to a larger creature which will chase them. there is so much emergent gameplay which forms from organism behaviours

on top of all the predation though, you also need to find food for yourself. no special provisions are made for you. you aren't special. if you want to survive you need to work for it, just like everyone else. and damn if that isn't satisfying

the karma system encourages mastery of the mechanics and learning of the ecology. resting in shelters consecutively without dying builds it up. it permits access to new areas and on to the next ecosystem with new dynamics to understand. higher tiers will even allow you to skip to later areas or discover a new side of somewhere you've previously been which definitely incentivises good play. echoes tucked in the corners of the world will enlighten you further and give you that little more lore too.

mods made me fall in love even further with this game

when i first played, rainworld didn't have a steam workshop yet and everything was hosted on good ol' rainDB and CRS honestly most of the mods i still use are from this era and i haven't installed too many more

in terms of quality of life, i genuinely hate playing without camera scroll now. getting picked off from off-screen always felt cheap and that's no longer an issue. manual dialogue progression is also a nice one because i read quite quickly so wasn't a fan of how dialogue was handled. discord rich presence is also always nice to have for a game

dumb cosmetic stuff is always fun too. splat cat has always been one of my favourites allowing you cosplay the consistencies of water balloons, tuning forks and bread dough. blood and forecast (rip i don't think it's been ported) were also nice ones which added particles for blood and weather (bet you didn't see that coming) deltarune explosion is honestly one of my favourite mods and i even ported it to celeste 64 because i loved it so much.

once downpour released dress my slugcat was made which completely opened the floodgates to skins. this obviously saturated the workshop with them but luckily you can filter them out. plus there's some really well made ones too - neko arc, chaicat, slughoodies and canon bug eye rivulet are nice

but the mods that really take my breath away are the custom regions. honestly it blows my mind that the design and art in so many exceed that of the base game. so many also have their own little stories which fit well into the main canon of rainworld. my favourites are aether ridge, undersea, concealed garden, the mast and lush mire - plenty more have been made which i haven't been keeping up to date with though since downpour

i don't really like custom slugcats though - the game feels perfectly refined without any major changes and any grand stories don't suit the tone of insignificance which the game really boasts

yeah downpour added a shit ton to an already huge game. the fact that it started out as a project by modders is such a testament to the great community. the new campaigns boast new creatures, regions, lore and mechanics which all kick major ass and it was amazing to have the world enriched even further in an official capacity... however the new campaigns have the same problem as many of the modded custom campaigns - they fail to capture the scrappiness and insignificance which makes the base game so special.

in these campaigns you are special. you can knock out enemies with the might of your body, blow shit up, spam infinite spears, zoom across the landscape and one-shot enemies. why bother to strategise and understand your environment? despite this though the abilities are still a joy to use and provide a great power trip after struggling against these creatures for so long.

it also introduced workshop which increased modding accessibility to a ridiculous degree. however it rendered realm obsolete which is sad because the hot reloading was really cool.