this is an interesting video and it kind of reminds me of games on the opposite end of the spectrum with the exact same problem. which if i had to give a name to would be "open world survival sims." games like Dwarf fortress, Kenshi, and project zomboid to name a few. games that have comprehensive tutorials but are so big that they can be overwhelming to new players who just want to jump in and enjoy the game without having to research how not to die for 5 hours. all before they even get what's so fun about the game.
that’s why rain world is the best survival game i’ve played. it literally tells you how to jump, move, and pounce. the rest is to be found out by yourself. 11/10 game
@@znoopsy Back flipping was like the first thing I did when I first got control over my slugcat for the first time. I couldn’t do it again until the wiki taught me.
Rain World is something special. I think the main problem is that the barrier to entry is quite high due to the nature of the game's difficulty and people who just want cool, fast action aren't willing to put in the time to learn all the mechanics. It's just the way things are, but atleast it's getting appreciation here.
@@mythmakroxymore1670 Nothing wrong with that, there's a reason why games like Doom are so popular. I meant that it's difficult to attract most people to your game when your game is difficult to access for someone unfamiliar with it.
Rainworld doesn’t completely feel like a game but like a Buddhist exercise honestly. It’s a test of perseverance and patience. Work really really hard and get little reward, or just straight have that progress erased.
@@htwo1 wait is it not? I haven't gotten around to playing it yet but I've seen quite a few videos talking about it and how it has some of the best ai in gaming so I always assumed it was relatively popular for an indie game
Rain World's actually gonna get a free update to coincide with the upcoming DLC, which adds a ton of quality of life options to give the game more of a broad appeal. I couldn't finish it because of how long, frustrating and punishing it was, but this update might get me to finally pick it up again, maybe even buy the DLC.
As a rain world fan, I would say a big reason that the game isn’t more popular is that it isn’t quite fair. You can near the end of a cycle in an area such as sky islands that has very far apart shelters, and a gang of vultures just decide to chill in a room that you need to go through. Some people are into this though. It’s definitely a flawed game and nowhere near perfect, but it’s a pretty damn good ecosystem sim.
I was told to play the game blind, that there's "Nowhere in specific you have to go", just to end up in drainage early and be told "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO GO THERE", and that apparently this happens to a lot of players. There was a part in sky islands where, if I went as fast as I could, I could reach a 3-way split that, no matter what, I'd only have enough time to explore one of before it would rain. Several attempts later, I learn the hard way the third path I took is the one with a shelter. Felt like I was playing Mario Maker and I was presented with a level you can only beat by picking the right door and praying you got it right. I think I made it pretty far into the game (where gravity starts turning on and off), but spending 20+ hours exploring and feeling like you haven't been rewarded for it yet, only punished, is very exhausting. I'd have loved to finish it, if not for the fear of sinking more hours in only to be rewarded with a dead end because I didn't know any better. Thankfully the game is actually getting a free update alongside the DLC that adds a ton of QoL settings to customize the experience. So at this point, I think sweeping these problems under the rug by saying "It's just not for everyone, that's the appeal of the game" is just silly.
@@dailydelphox it’s a great game tho. I recommend exploring that zero gravity area that you are in a bit more. That’ll give a much better understanding of what you should do. Just be prepared for quite the struggle.
@@cryobyte2170 Nah I'll just wait for the QoL update to drop, I think it'll make the game nicer for me lol. I don't have a deep appreciation for the unfair design like some people do, I'm more interested in the world and exploration, so I don't mind the game being easier.
Also I always figured that the game had a very set path it wanted you to follow. That path for me was always outskirts, industrial, wastes, shoreline, citadel, exterior, pebbles, chimney, sky islands, farm arrays, and subterranean. This places sky islands very far into the game, which I think explains why it’s so difficult. I won’t lie, I actually love the challenge of sky islands, the only issue is the karma gate into it.
The fact I never heard of rain world until one of my friends (who has been into the fandom for a long while) basically dragged me into playing the game in co-op with her. We also made me a puppy-sized slugcat and oh boy... thats exactly how I felt like. A helpless child following my parent and constantly bringing myself in danger. I was so incredibly lost and if I had not had my friend with the knowledge I would have given up on the game due to it being too frustrating for me. But after we finally reached the end of the game I kind of was down this rabbit hole and two years later now I am still in this rabbit hole called rain world. Since this day we kinda invite all of our friends into the game this way and our small sluggie friend group has turned pretty big by now.
If I'm gonna be honest, I was in this same similar situation about 7 months ago. My friend introduced me to rainworld with having slightly higher knowledge than me of the game. When we began playing together, we had a blast. But once we beat survivor, we sorta drifted off into our own thing. She slowly drifted away from rainworld, while I stuck to it like the grapple worms from underhang sticking to you. I guess once you actually get the mechanics down, it's only by that time you truly admire the game only after the fact that the one that introduced you to it has long moved on to another...
Hi! Ex World Record holder here, thanks for showing Hyper Demon to more people! On the topic of why some games are niche is due to target audience - all games shown are made for very specific type of people who enjoy challenge and improvement through experimentation and discovery. Especially with Sorath titles, the games are inherently arcade titles, with no story nor clear goal - the gameplay loop revolves around trying to improve your score, so do source movement games where the goal is to get the best times. But I usually think the games being niche works in their favour; HD and DD communities are small yet dedicated it's always exciting to check the leaderboards whenever someone gets a new PB, and in case of HD, the top is REALLY contested with new scores being set in top 10 almost daily. In the end, good games don't have to be popular, rather, good games will easily amass dedicated yet small playerbases. And their size even works in their favour, where every community member gets to know eachother, and in case with HD it makes the competition that much more exciting considering everyone from the top knows one another. I recon the same magic wouldn't be here were there too many players to count. It applies to many communities, even the mentioned Source movement games and Rain World, where people share their progress, experiences and discoveries in their enthusiastic circles. The niche titles will remain niche since they weren't made with intent of being a hit or an approachable experience, but rather something one-of-a-kind that's targeted to a very specific group. Thank you for showing both DD and HD to more people, I can't wait to see more people join the cult of the dagger :)
I did a community service by getting four younger children into rainworld and they loved it! Somehow they got over the difficulty and one of them that was seven years old got to shoreline by himself without my help.
@@VoidWorldGaming that's a funny question considering I walked in on that exact situation of them getting chased by a vulture, and then out of the depths came a leviathan that then ate the vulture barely missing them. they were screaming.🤣
@@jeremyfitzhugh2897 lol that must a wild first encounter I can imagine it already, getting chased by what you think it the biggest creature only for a bigger fish to show up and devour it leaving you speechless as you didn't know that thing existed and you could of been devoured alongside the previously thought to be biggest creature
@@jeremyfitzhugh2897 That sounds like the perfect inroduction to a leviathan you could have, other than getting eaten by one as you cross a screen border
I am currently playing Rainworld, and I have to say: it´s easily one of the best games I EVER played! The gameplay is absolutely unique, and you get addicted even when you just have little progress. You get better and better no matter how much you are stuck. And the further you get (you WILL get further, even at the hard places), the more you are fascinated by the incredible world! Poeple say its very hard, that is true - but its also very balanced, since there are ALWAYS noumerous ways to get further, you just have to EXPLORE! The game is an absolute MASTERPIECE!!! 😍😱🤯 (I even bought the soundtrack on Vinyl!)
About rain world, i spend all day in the discord helping new players and there is something interesting about expectations. These "hard games" games which let players figure things out by themselves are often experienced better by "non gamers" since they dont have expectations about how things should work or be taught, while "gamers" have experience with other games and generalize the way they should play in a game into the genre the game is. The clearest example is the encounter whith LTTM which is a massive "attention check", everything is designed to be as confusing as possible while giving enough information to know what is happening if you stop to think for a second, this is the moment where rain world tests if you are playing the right way and observing reactions and behaviour rather than being impulsive. -ppl who didnt harm moon saw the first check: shaking hand and making noises loud. -ppl who just harmed moon didnt see the first check but saw the second: painful scream and violent seizures. -ppl who just ate 4 neurons didnt see the 2 first checks but saw the 3rd (since you can only eat 4 before being full): retuned to the shelter and saw the stolen enlightment screen and overseer threats -ppl who actually killed moon arent actually blind, they usually A: play the game the wrong way by not having enough food even after finishing LTTM which is full of food and managing to have more than 4 hunger points B: they are expecting "something" to happen, they came here and "there must be a reason" so they come back to eat the last one and see if they unlock some double jump skill or something, because they have the expectation that "there has to be something here, this cant be a dead end" very common if you played other metroidbanias and came thinking this was a metroidbania. This is never the case with ppl who are starting to play videogames, they dont have much expectations about anything and are more willing to learn the rules and use common logic rather than following. In fact, i must say i see lots of stupid behaviour, some ppl is extremely blind, after killing lttm i ask them if the overseer showed some images (the big ass red cross with dead slugcat images as a threat) and since they dont pay much attention to anything they often go like "ah yes yes, the yellow worm showed some random images, i didnt understand them". Also saw ppl extremely stubborn, rain world is a game that rewards playing smart and punishes stubborness, but since they learnt from otehr videogames to "persevere" they spend 8 hours in unfortunate development even if you tell them than there is a different way which is safer, prettier and faster, same thing with the garbage wastes to drainage system gate, a gate designed to have all odds agains the player which ppl decide to bash their head agains for hours instead of catching the hint and leave, or the useless red pearl farm arrays room where i saw ppl thinking there must be something when is just a dead end. New gamers usually just do whatever they want or think, while gamers very rarely want to actually learn and quit very early these types of games, or play it while blaming the game for "not teaching them how to do that" when nthey just didnt see the hint.
Remember when everyone/the media blew up about how hard the Souls games were/everything got compared to Dark Souls? Then you play it and it's just a medieval combat sim; you get through 9/10s of it with common sense. Common sense is rarer than gold in these times.
Drainage system is one of the only times where I'm like "fuck this game" because even the devs have said the area is hard as hell. I just question the placement of a 2 karma gate that leads there, especailly since thats where the game guides you towards. So many people i've seen on 1st playthru including myself getting stuck in drainage, not able to get past the flooded tunnel but not wanting to give up 'progress' because backtracking feels unintuitive. Aside from that though it's a good game n one i absolutely love.
The thing is is that perseverance can pay off a lot. Yes, I was stuck in Unfortunate Development, but that showed me one of my key strategies for when I'm stuck: try this way a few times, now that way, and see what could work. That's gotten me out of a lot of places that got me very discouraged, and now that I did that basically *all on my own,* I'm not willing to give up again. And if the game rewards exploration, why not just try anyways? Bad things are expected to happen, although they are, well, bad. Sorry if this is a ramble its 1am and idk what I'm doing so I hope this made sense. This is just my take on the comment, everything about it is very good and thought provoking.
@@miimows Holy, is that Miimows, aka Del Northern, the great artist who made the rain world ilustration scenes and slugcat redesign? :0 your style is the best
Rain World and Noita are the perfect examples of why sometimes it's better to let your players struggle and suffer in the short term to give them a better pay off later.
Yes, noita is also SUCH a good example of this philosophy. I love noita so much, like the fact tha most people probably never see farther than kolmi and might not even know the orbs exist
I like my games to be hard to learn. When I play a triple A title, 9 time out of 10 I just turned my brain off like I'm watching TV. Thanks Rain World for helping me to take care of these 2 neurons I've left.
I disagree with the take about the barrier to entry being part of the charm. I think games like Outer Wilds, Portal, and Antichamber do a great job of not explicitly teaching players mechanics, but placing them in a controlled environment where they can learn about them. I played Rain World, and learning mechanics either felt incredibly obvious, like spiders being stunned by flash plants, or hidden to the point where it should have been told, like throwing an object in the air violates newton's second law and gives you forward momentum. When you learn about the storms on Giant's Deep in outer wilds, you're not only placed in an environment where you can focus your attention on it, but you're also able to recover from dealing with it incorrectly much easier.
Rain World is also getting a QoL update too, so people who keep saying "The unfairness is part of the appeal" can finally stop saying that. Like sure, maybe it's part of the appeal to SOME people, but you can 100% fix that for others.
The barrier to entry doesn't give the charm, it's that the methodology of not teaching both gives the game charm and creates a barrier to entry. While the games you mentioned (and The Witness) are about executing teaching better, the games in the video are about games that don't teach at all, and still choose not to compromise by lowering the difficulty. They're two different types of games for two different tastes, of which a person might possess both, none, or one. Rain World is a unique case where the people who originally got into the game liked it for the latter appeal, but as the game spread via word of mouth and countless artworks, the game became "indirectly accessible". Now the game will introduce a QoL update which internalizes the information that surrounded the game, begging the question, will the de facto new player experience actually change? Is it possible to have an experience that appeals to people who prefer to teach themselves for more than a few years?
To this date Rain World is the game that has ofered the most original and immersive experience. I wish more people knew the game because it is a true gem.
There are games that have a sort of progressive tutorial. It Steals is probably the best example, because while it gives you an objective, it remains vague about how to play against the monsters. You have to either rely on clues in the map itself or, after dying a few times, resort to the “hint unlocked” page, which gives a detailed explanation. It’s a step in the right direction, made by a horror game which got some massive popularity after its first year of quiet existence. It doesn’t always tell you outright, not if you don’t want the help. You can figure it out for yourself if you want, but it also allows you to stumble through figuring the game out on your own. It Steals is a game that will try to respect your decision to stay as blind as possible, and i highly recommend you give it a shot.
Coming back to it after the update and DLC I can say that the new player experience looks a bit better. For starters the prompts between hibernation cycles giving you hints about mechanics that would be hard to discover alone work really well without feeling like a huge dump of information. The way the yellow overseer works seems to have been tweaked too since the prompts directing you to the right regions appear more often and seem to immediately try to direct you out of an area if you're going the complete wrong way (hopefully less players wandering into wrong regions early on and quitting). I also noticed that the suggested path away from Moon to FB has changed entirely and is much nicer to follow. Overall I'm not a fan of wiki games and having to search for answers online definitely takes away from a game for me. I'm glad to see that rain world has added QOL improvements while still requiring a lot of patience to work through. I'd be more hopeful of new people picking it up now than I was in the past.
rain world was one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had. The fluid gameplay and seeing the world and creatures interact with each other is incredibly satisfying and I honestly doubt Ill ever get so see something like that ever again. Cannot wait for the DLC
Another fun thing in Rain World is that if you master the controls you can get past more or less any creature, regardless of their position, spawn rng, etc. It makes mastering the game feel so rewarding because the movement rewards you by never showing you the death screen, and giving you some high adrenaline clutch escapes.
Great video, I completely agree. I don't think my Rain World experience would have been as good if the game held my hand all the way through like a lot of other games do. It just adds to the uniqueness of the game and the feeling of being lost in an unknown and hostile world. Although I think a few accessibility options that didn't mess with the experience too heavily wouldn't hurt, honestly.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a free update called Remix coming out in February that does exactly that. It has a bunch of optional difficulty tweaks that can make the game easier or harder depending on what you’re looking for. I’m sure it still won’t be easy, but hopefully it’ll allow more people to enjoy the game.
@@B_Skizzle Yeah, I saw that, but I'm not sure of what these options will do exactly, I remember one of the toggles being something like "extended tutorial", maybe? Which is a bit vague. Either way I'm glad there's efforts to make this incredible game more accessible to a wider audience!
Rain world is genuinely one of my favourite games, I’m so happy I decided to get it when it came out despite all of the negative reviews it got! The movement took me about an hour to get used to the basics but when I noticed I could boost off of corners in pipes and would randomly do backflips when turning to run in a panic I began to realise how deep the movement actually was. Then when I started to catch onto what my goal was and seeing all of the new creatures I was completely hooked. The hardest thing I’ve ram into with this game is recommending it to friends and getting them to actually play it. I also have devil daggers and found that quite fun. Nice video!
Devil daggers & Hyper Demon are two of my absolute favorite games. I love them so much, and I am so glad that I found them. Went out on a limb grabbing DD when I seen it on sale for like $5. I thought “Ah man, that looks kinda like the original quake, I’ll give that a try” oh boy was I wrong. Devil Daggers is one of the most hardcore shooter arena survival games I have ever played. Hyper demon, well, that’s a whole other game I have yet to wrap my head around. As for Rain World, I have heard of it but, I have yet to grab it and play it. It looks absolutely incredible, and like I could sink countless hours into it. This was a great video my man, keep it up! Stay gaming!
Rain world is exhausting, yes, and I’ve gotten really frustrated with it, yes. But it is a spectacular game. The nuances of the AI, the attention to atmospheric detail, the story, the layers of unlocking, the movement progressively getting more rewarding and second nature- y’all, listen. It’s hard. Like you have to want it. You have to have that confounded gamer determination. If you’re not those things, then it might not be fore you. I wanna say “just try it!” But I know how hard it is, and don’t wanna sway people to try something they might hate. But. If it sounds remotely interesting? Like even just watch someone else play on TH-cam then go get it yourself. Or get it partway through a play through. Or just jump in blind. Death isn’t a setback, it’s a chance to learn something new. To make it a few steps further each time and slowly become a master. And this game has also made me cry. It’s rewarding when you finally get it, and my stars, I wanna be so good at this game. I’m gonna stick with it. It gets like 8.5/10 stars from me for real, deductions simply for that initial learning barrier being so hard. But it’s worth it.
I enjoy all of the games you have mentioned and I think part of the charm is the obscurity of the games. I started playing among us the week it came out in early access on mobile years ago and it was fun until it became popular. The community of smaller games is much better than the community of bigger games, imo. The lack of a tutorial is also crucial to some games. If you need to learn how to get good, then you need to learn.
I would rather have no tutorial than a god-awful one (looking at you TF2, i have seen many many engies turtle and i know damn well they played the shitty tutorial)
I don't fully agree with the wording of the games "not telling you anything", because these games put a lot of effort into telling the player what is happening. The catch is that these games don't tell you what's going on in English or any other human language. They tell you how the game works through the language of gameplay, which is not a language everyone speaks fluently. I think Hyper Demon and Rain World are much more complex and nebulous with the way they present information to the player, perhaps not in a good way imo. There's dozens of tech in those two games you'd have no chance of understanding without reading a guide, watching footage, or stumbling upon it through experimentation. Devil Daggers, on the other hand, is simple and there's plenty of people who learn all the mechanics without any help. If you pay attention to the sound cues, visual cues, enemy behaviors, read the key config menu for controls, it's all there. One thing I love about this design approach is that it forces players to talk to eachother. There's something very nostalgic about having to actually interact with other people to understand how to improve at the game.
Fans: "Rain World FUNDAMENTALLY cannot have mass appeal, the unfair design is what makes it great!" Dev of Rain World: "'By the way I'm gonna add a quality of life options menu to go with the DLC, I understand the unfairness isn't for everyone and I hope this is a good compromise that lowers the barrier of entry."
The reason why I won't beat Rain World (for now) is not because it doesn't hold my hand, it's because it's so gruesome and gutteral. It made me more paranoid of bugs than ever, it really feels like an ecosystem where there is no rest ever and it made me more stressed than any horror game, and I'm literally scared to play.
Oh gosh, I too share this feeling. Even baby centipede scared me before I learned of their nature. And that's just one creature, because when you catch sigh of a new not-gentle-looking creature, it's natural to be scared of them. The first time I crossed path with a monster kelp, it was one in the drainage system, guarding a couple of passages, I immediately turned back and didn't return; there was the jetfishes too who seemed very dangerous at first. Then one area I got past, the Shaded Citadel... Oh gosh the nightmare. I somehow managed to get one lantern from a scarvenger (by pure luck, simply that. It passed there, I crouched and let go of my spear, he dropped one lantern, and left.), and even then it was incredibly, utterly terrifying. The spiders. Oh god. And the centipedes. I do not want, nor WILL come back there. It's dark. It cramped. It will awake your inner arachnophobia and turn it to eleven.
I had that on my first playthrough. It kinda went away after I completed first playthrough. If you can make it to the end, I highly recommend it, the end is spectacular and the DLC game modes are awesome! Also, I recommend avoiding Shaded Citadel the first time around, it is a cool area but pretty tough. Chimney Canopy and The Wall are a lot easier.
@@big_sis_moon I think my first playthrough of Rain World was one of the wakiest of them all. I went everywhere BUT the iterators, to the point I didn't visit the wall (I upgraded my karma only with the echoes). It went like this: outskirst > drainage system > garbage waste > industrial complex > shaded citadel > shoreline > subterranean > drainage system > outskirt > farm array > sky islands > chimey canopy > sky islands > farm arrays > subterranean
Hollow knight introduced me to these kind of hard, single player 2D story games. I never really understood how much I cared about a games appearance until I was fascinated with hollow knights graphics. Recently got Rain world and it is the most beautiful pixel art I’ve ever seen.
you've actually sold me on Rain World now, i've known about it & watched your other vid on it but i actually do want to play now. time to wait a year so i forget all those mechanics spoilers
I think another game falling into the “excellent and difficult game, but not too popular” genre would be Don’t Starve or Don’t Starve Together. It’s either you die countless times to learn how the game works, or you constantly peruse the wiki finding out what does what.
on january 19th, there will be a free update with sort of accessibility settings like "extra turorials" or "loading screen tips" i just hope they wont be toggled by default, but if not, it might just solve a part of the issue
I paused this video so I could go buy Rain World without any more being spoiled. Everything about it sounded so intriguing. I'm enjoying it a ton so far. I actually found the beginning pretty easy to understand, now that I'm in the second zone it's quite a bit harder.
I play the game too. And to give a peace of my mind: I wanna explore, I love it when I find the new shelter, the cheer relief of it. But I'm also terrified of exploration. For how simple they look, to me, deaths are absolutely gruesome (even more for the carnivorous plants, and god forbid, the coalescipedes). The Shaded Citadel is, in its own way, worse that a AAA horror game. And yet I continue to try.
@@lukasprazak7362 I thought this exact thing. I accidentally wandered back to industrial complex several times during my playthrough and the fact of the matter is that Industrial Complex is mf *fulla* lizards, it's a terrifying hellscape to be sure.
@@shoug6555 Actually, I was wondering that the op may have wandered into drainage system. That happened to me. When I finally got back on track and to industrial complex, it was basically a cakewalk (the industrial complex (and garbage wastes and shoreline), not the game as a whole; in fact, I haven't finished it yet, I just don't have the nerves right now). I assume you didn't have the displeasure of stumbling into drainage system, or you were already pretty skilled at the game. Believe me, if you are new, that place is the true hellscape.
i feel like Dwarf Fortress fits into the category of "obscure complicated hard game that has little to no handholding" as well. I mean it has a wiki but it's not much help
I wanted to play rain world for myself, and im a very impatient person so i looked up longplays, and ignored spoilers just to see what the game was about. And i regret that decision so much, because now i know everything! How Karma works, what echo's are, how each slugcat plays, etc. I still plan on getting and playing the game one day, but the experience will be very simple now that I've ruined the challenge for myself. If anyone reading this wants to get into rain world, don't make my mistake and go in blind.
Everything about Rain World is incredible. I highly recommend it to everybody. Even if you're not one for difficult games, I still recommend it, because you can at least play the Monk, which is the "easy" mode. If you have to look up some tips and tricks or guides or whatever, then do that. It's a one of a kind experience.
Absolutely agree with the second point you made, about community content using one program to do something it's not meant for. As somebody who's (trying) to make a parkour map in Raft, an open-world survival game with not-so-great physics and basically 0 ground for writing text, teaching advanced tech that actually makes the gameplay fun is so fruiting to work around. Still fun to make though 👍
10:44 Thank you SO MUCH for including that shot. I'm in this exact area right now and would have never figured out that I have to ride the deer to get across the plants.
I think Noita, although a very different game, has a very similar deal, Its tutorial literally is: on this rock is written that awsd, also mouse, Switch item slots like this, and this button does something, look its a kick, What you got to curios, switched wands, shot and did not run from the bomb you produced, get gud scrub, I like the fact that the game introduces itself this way, it is hard yes, but also rewarding when you figure something new out.
@@funguy398 try killing the fire wizard with the starting wand, Also I would argue that a lot of the danger in noita comes from the envoirment, fire hydrants and regular fire for example, deal a lot of damage, in addition, in noita it is really easy to be a danger for yourself, by for instance using any electricity or explosive spell its real easy to end your whole career.
Crypt of the Necrodancer is a game who could fit, but different from the games on the list, the game is not hard because you need to learn everything alone, but is because the game is just very hard. Most of the people who played it didn't played much, and said they recommend the game because the ideia is cool (almost half of the players haven't the zone 1 achievement). I still love it though, but sadly most people didn't got so far on the game
I have like 3 hours on Rain World so far, and it has clapped my ass unfairly so many times already, it takes effort to launch it again. I remember leaving the outskirts, looking around at the new place I just discovered, and just before I went to sleep there, a lizard has dropped 3 stories, right onto my head, and killed me instantly. Ofc I had to go back grinding the Outskirts again.
Honestly, I think Rain world is really cool. I like the story a lot and I like it's design philosophy, everything. But I just can't play it myself. I don't have the attention span for it, and I'm just not good enough at games in general. I feel like it would frustrate or bore me long before I ever got good enough at it to make significant progress. But I still appreciate the game itself, and I REALLY like the story and the way the mechanics of the game tie into the interesting narrative the game tells.
Hyper demon looks like it was designed to Trigger people's epilepsy. I don't have that but still it hurts my eyes and I can barely comprehend it at least devil dangers is comprehendable
Despite not being able to sink my teeth into these games, I adore them for being what they are. Hard arcade games like devil daggers showcase mastery at a level which i could only dream of achieving, and worlds such as rainworld are immensely fascinating. Yet despite that, when I tried those games I gave up rather quickly, and thats ok. Those games werent made for a casual audience like me, they where made for those who relish having a challenge. I think what I love most about them is that indie devs make these types of games knowing full well that consistent player counts will rarely ever go above double digits, and this really showcases the developers passions for their projects.
thanks for spoiling part of the discovery you were gushing about 🤣 for real though, great video, I just wish I hadn't clicked on it before finishing my first playthrough of Rain World
Another really great game like this that I’ve found is Noita. It’s a 2D pixel art rogue-like where every pixel is simulated. I only just started playing it with about ten hours, but it immediately caught my interest with its seemingly deep gameplay features that are really well designed for players to figure them out. It tells you about as much as Rain World does in its tutorial (basic movement and shooting/melee binds), leaving essentially everything to be discovered. In most rogue-likes/lites that I play, I can beat the initial difficulty in a few tries, but this game is sooooo much more unforgiving, and is more like a puzzle than anything.
Rainworld couldve been Hollow Knight, both games got me into indie games in general and both captivated me with both gameplay and atmosphere but while games journalists chose to adore HK, treating it like the Dark Souls of indie games, they chose to say ''rainworld too hard'' and doom rainworld to be a niche game, its odd how sometimes difficulty makes people like a game ''its the dark souls of whatever genere'' ''this game doesnt hold your hand, it respects the intelligence of the player'', Rainworld couldve gone mainstream, thats what pains me the most, its not so wierd that its necesarily forced into being obscure.
Song name is "Out of Whose Womb Came The Ice?" By Chris Christodoulou. It's part of the OST for Risk of Rain 2. Another masterpiece of a game, this one is.
Honestly, fuck being kind to the player, you get a much better experience when you figure things out yourself. It's like cooking, it's fun to eat the cake, but it's more exciting to bake it.
heres the thing i used the wiki for rain world a lot to help me get into it, and while my it may have made the game worse overall, im very glad i did bc now i actully enjoying this game and play it and its a great game
I think a good compromise is the easy implimentation of mods into the game. The developers are very open about that and gives a lot of accessability-functions
It's not that you suck, the game can just be really unfair. Don't listen to people who say it just requires mastery- A lot of the mastery involves techniques you wouldn't know unless you looked it up, and there's still a lot that can trip you up. There's a reason the dev plans on updating the game to add QoL changes.
I personally love the game because of the unique ai, so fascinating to watch them route and move throughout the environment, even when buggy I like the way it glitches, so unnatural
Haven't even watched the video yet, but if we're talking about Rain World, I gotta hand in my 63 minutes of playtime and say it. Too difficult, I've been raised on high-octane shooters so of course I like hack n' slash and light strategy games. Rain World attracted me initially due to it being a Metroidvania, but I never actually expected the game to have such a high skill floor that'd need a significant amount of time to actually get past to start properly playing. Controls were a bit annoying but isn't as big of a reason as what I already mentioned. I'm still wondering if I should give it another try any time soon...
to be honest rain world really isn't a metroidvania; it doesn't share any of the common characteristics besides non-linear regions. Honestly I feel like the metroidvania comparison is detrimental to the game, because If you go in expecting that hollow knight-esque experience, you're bound to be disappointed. However, if you treat it as an exploration game, where you experiment and are rewarded for your own discoveries, it can be an incredible experience. Personally it's my absolute favourite game, the complexity of both the enemies and movement make it very rewarding to get good at. there's a DLC coming out pretty soon, that will also include a free update which adds optional tutorials and other improvements to make the game more accessible to newcomers. So if you're still interested, maybe give it another try after Jan 19!
I had the worst experience playing the game, and I wanted to enjoy it. I entered Drainage and the Sky Islands early, and was told I was "going the wrong way." You're told to follow the yellow worm but, the yellow worm doesn't appear in EVERY room, and the second you veer off track as a result, it stops appearing, meaning you can go hours without realizing there's even a hint system at all. And complex movement sounds fun, but you're not gonna figure out speedrun strats without looking up all the complex moves you can do, so as cool as that is it's not something everyone can appreciate. The game also goes VERY long periods of time without rewarding you with anything, but it CONSTANTLY throws dead ends at you to waste your time. Thankfully the game is getting a QoL settings menu as a free update to go along with the release of the DLC. So people can stop saying "The game being hard to get into is a good thing, it's the nature of the game and it can't be changed."
@@vixian3127 Oh yeah, definitely not a Metroidvania. Instead, I like to think of it as a "Metroidbrainia" (not my term but I forget where I got it from). Basically, instead of gaining mechanical upgrades, you’re building up a base of knowledge as you progress. The end effect is similar in that you expand your toolset over time, but with a Metroidbrainia, you take that toolset with you into future playthroughs. It’s why you can only truly experience a game like Outer Wilds once.
I actually found Rainworld thanks to some artist i followed, and as soon as i saw how the game sort of worked, i decided to play it myself all blind. I'm still on the learning but uff, gotta say this game was exactly what i've been looking for.
I think there can be games that can't be popular but the "brand" they come from can be like Touhou where the games aren't that popular but the property is actually quite popular.
The good old times.... I remember when I first played RW and at some point I was totally lost and ended up almost exactly the same steps as a let's player, LOL.
i looked at the rain world wiki when i played i remember that i still learned a lot by my self but still this game "hyper demon" seems to fit my bill quite well i might try something new and this time avoid my previous mistakes
I mean, I compare rain world to darkest dungeon and subnautica to some point since I'm a new player, and I love both of them, learning, getting crushed because the AI and RNG didnt like you sometime in darkest dungeon, are experiences that make you learn how to deal with defeat, games now are just "win" to psicologicaly manipulate the player, they dont teach you about defeat, learning from your mistakes or deal with problems. For example what is in the video about learning from the enemies in rain world, I compare it to subnautica when I started to learn how to fight and deal with reaper leviathans because I was afraid and angry at them.
This is how old school games did it no tutorial you just had to figure it out yourself and sometime you talked to other kids about it and helped each other out.
dark souls exists tho and that game alone can make this entire video unvalid but i honestly agree with everything you said in this video, when i first got into rain world it was honestly the most confusing game ever but by time i got used to the mechanics and learned to adapt to the nature by watching the creatures intaract while i sit in a pipe and there was a time where i figured out that scavengers interact by hand signs in my first playthru and i thought i was so slick but turns out when they hold the spear up you shouldent approach :)) this is why games that throw you without holding your hands are so fun and this is why rain world is honestly the best survival game ever made
Rain world holds a place in my heart, despite starting to play recently. Also, i don't understand how people say that artificer's easier than Gourmand. i've litearly made no progress in artificer, while i litearly got to chimney canopy as Gourmand. Also, my main food are lizards now...
I feel you. I’ve completed the game multiple times and I still have to be in a particular mood to play it. If I can offer you an unsolicited tip, try to take your time and pay attention to the little intricacies of how different creatures behave, both on their own and around each other. You just might be able to use that knowledge against them.
The new update, Remix, released a bunch of difficulty-altering and accessibility options, perhaps try playing around with those until the game feels more comfortable
On my first playthrough it took me 14 hours and around 100 cycles until i reached the end, in the process i felt like giving up sometimes but im glad i didnt lol
Full disclosure, I came into the game on recommendation for a game to explore and get lost in, and I can only speak for myself since I dropped it around the halfway mark; the skill ceiling was not the hard part for me. All it took was doing some searches for guides to fix any misunderstanding. My main issue with the game was the map was gigantic but had no incentive to explore it, the only things you got were unlocks for the Arena. Going off the beaten path was cool, but it was kinda dumb that the path they wanted you to follow was the first that had silkworms, something fun that used its silly physics to their advantage. It also didn't help that their version of a fast travel was locked behind in game achievements and was limited to like.. 8 uses; so you have a colossal map that you have to go through by foot. I get that it would lessen the harsh survival aesthetic but that also makes it less fun to explore personally. A lesser gripe was that if you held a spear, other spears wouldn't be highlighted if you passed them which means you had to really pay attention to the pure black foreground for something that could just be a random pole shape and not a spear. It also means you'd have to go in to pick up and stab the creature you just hit with it, leaving yourself open to instant death, lowering your meditation level and having to grind that back up if you wanted to pass any roadblocks. And the final nail in the coffin was that because the AI was either smart or so stupid it was smart, the damn things would camp tunnel exits. Or you'd come out of a Shelter to dreadfully get back to the new area you were figuring out just for a centipede to hog a narrow corridor to the quickest route. Or worse case, I'd have a big centipede in a Shelter. A Shelter. I think the final nail in the coffin was getting to the top of The Leg just to get rained on, or it was reaching the very bottom of the map just to have no clear exit. I remember both of those experiences leaving me very defeated.
Personally I didn’t like how it pretty much tells me to go to drainage system because it is a lower cycle, I get all the way through it, get to subterranean, get all the way through it, get to depths, and pretty much the game just says this was all pointless and I need to go across the entire map to get more karma then go all the way back. That thoroughly killed the experience for me honestly
I want to like Rain World really hard. I also (normally) like exploration and finding stuff out by myself. I played through fckng Bleak Faith: Forsaken and liked it, so my patience and my resistance to junk clearly isn't the problem. I'm now 100 min. into Rain World. I like some parts of it, found some stuff out, but am mostly just frustrated. At the beginning area the most important things seem quite understandable to me. After the gate also shown at 8:16 in the video i'm now in an area where my best option seems to be suicide running in random directions until i find a way onward. (It's not fun after half an hour.) Half of the yellow hologram-creatures doesn't make any sense to me or flicker to brief to be readable to me. And when i actually tried to not die a few times, i enter a pipe from an empty room, that leads to an other empty room, but as soon as i am in the second room a purple lizard just spawns into me, like it followed me through the pipe (even though there was nothing in the room before). Another time i jump somewhere down and find out, that there is fall damage, when you fall out of some (inconsistent) screens. So i slide down the wall and ... just die anyways, because the killbox don't likes me, even hearing the sliding-audio while dying. Like, ... i know, some stuff surely makes sense after further observation, but the stuff that feels just like bugs, or inconsistent design breaks the experience quite a bit. It's so sad, i genuinely believe, there is a good game behind all this and i want to experience that, but i don't know if it's worth the effort. Sorry for complaining so much. I'm just a bit frustrated.
Gotta admit the game has a very steep learning curve, like, in the beginning its really-really hard since you don't know nothing about: the surrounding location, what hazards are to be awared of, what enemies exist and what can they do, hell, even what your slugcat can do wont reach you from the start 😅 Once you get used to this dangerous world and what to expect from it, you really start to enjoy the game since you're prepared and have tools to manage your journey go on. My problem with such games was always a fear for my character, too afraid to loose it - and that's why my progress at the beginning was thaaat slow, I was just scared to risk and learn stuff. Tried to collect as much karma as I could in hopes to keep it like that. But a better strategy was to stay level 1 karma and just explore what are limits of my char and enemies, die a lot of times, but to learn not just about the game, but also to overcome the fear. Remember how I was scared AF those flying noodles but turned out those were just an easy prey 🙃
youtube compression really does Hyper Demon dirty, doesn't it
Yeah a little
holy shit i was wondering how anyone played the game when it looks like a drug trip and not in a good way... it's always damn youtube compression
@@42carlos Oh no, it DOES look like a drug trip even in the game. It just looks like a really ugly drug trip with youtube's compression
can i point out that your name is Htwo, but your prof pic is Double H to the second power. which would mean Hfour
this is an interesting video and it kind of reminds me of games on the opposite end of the spectrum with the exact same problem. which if i had to give a name to would be "open world survival sims." games like Dwarf fortress, Kenshi, and project zomboid to name a few. games that have comprehensive tutorials but are so big that they can be overwhelming to new players who just want to jump in and enjoy the game without having to research how not to die for 5 hours. all before they even get what's so fun about the game.
that’s why rain world is the best survival game i’ve played. it literally tells you how to jump, move, and pounce. the rest is to be found out by yourself. 11/10 game
anybody remember *that* feeling you got when you accidentally backflipped for the first time and tried replicating it for just so long?
@@znoopsy yes!! i remember when i accidentally whiplashed😭
@@znoopsy Back flipping was like the first thing I did when I first got control over my slugcat for the first time. I couldn’t do it again until the wiki taught me.
@@znoopsy YES. i lost many minutes until i figured how i did that.
I can consistently do back flips, but struggle so much with wall jumps......XD
Rain World is frustrating, but it taught me a lot about patience and perseverence when playing games
Rain World is something special. I think the main problem is that the barrier to entry is quite high due to the nature of the game's difficulty and people who just want cool, fast action aren't willing to put in the time to learn all the mechanics. It's just the way things are, but atleast it's getting appreciation here.
As someone who wants cool fast action, i agree. But this game still has a chair in the committee of my heart.
@@mythmakroxymore1670 Nothing wrong with that, there's a reason why games like Doom are so popular. I meant that it's difficult to attract most people to your game when your game is difficult to access for someone unfamiliar with it.
I am planning to get into rain world, it seems really fun
Rainworld doesn’t completely feel like a game but like a Buddhist exercise honestly. It’s a test of perseverance and patience. Work really really hard and get little reward, or just straight have that progress erased.
@@stoneforest2639 Indeed, and if you've learned at least 20 movement strats, you become a god.
"Games that will never get popular!" *Makes the games popular*
If I could make Rain World a popular game I would truly be a happy man
@@htwo1 Go for it lad lol
if devil daggers and hyper demon become popular from this video, I'd be happy
@@htwo1 wait is it not? I haven't gotten around to playing it yet but I've seen quite a few videos talking about it and how it has some of the best ai in gaming so I always assumed it was relatively popular for an indie game
@@htwo1 same dude, I've been looking for new gameplay during 3 years and I'm seeing the same gameplays, and still waiting to own a pc to buy it
Rain World's actually gonna get a free update to coincide with the upcoming DLC, which adds a ton of quality of life options to give the game more of a broad appeal.
I couldn't finish it because of how long, frustrating and punishing it was, but this update might get me to finally pick it up again, maybe even buy the DLC.
As a rain world fan, I would say a big reason that the game isn’t more popular is that it isn’t quite fair. You can near the end of a cycle in an area such as sky islands that has very far apart shelters, and a gang of vultures just decide to chill in a room that you need to go through. Some people are into this though. It’s definitely a flawed game and nowhere near perfect, but it’s a pretty damn good ecosystem sim.
I was told to play the game blind, that there's "Nowhere in specific you have to go", just to end up in drainage early and be told "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO GO THERE", and that apparently this happens to a lot of players. There was a part in sky islands where, if I went as fast as I could, I could reach a 3-way split that, no matter what, I'd only have enough time to explore one of before it would rain. Several attempts later, I learn the hard way the third path I took is the one with a shelter. Felt like I was playing Mario Maker and I was presented with a level you can only beat by picking the right door and praying you got it right.
I think I made it pretty far into the game (where gravity starts turning on and off), but spending 20+ hours exploring and feeling like you haven't been rewarded for it yet, only punished, is very exhausting. I'd have loved to finish it, if not for the fear of sinking more hours in only to be rewarded with a dead end because I didn't know any better.
Thankfully the game is actually getting a free update alongside the DLC that adds a ton of QoL settings to customize the experience. So at this point, I think sweeping these problems under the rug by saying "It's just not for everyone, that's the appeal of the game" is just silly.
@@dailydelphox it’s a great game tho. I recommend exploring that zero gravity area that you are in a bit more. That’ll give a much better understanding of what you should do. Just be prepared for quite the struggle.
@@cryobyte2170 Nah I'll just wait for the QoL update to drop, I think it'll make the game nicer for me lol. I don't have a deep appreciation for the unfair design like some people do, I'm more interested in the world and exploration, so I don't mind the game being easier.
@@dailydelphox probably for the better. The area after the zero gravity area is an absolute hell
Also I always figured that the game had a very set path it wanted you to follow. That path for me was always outskirts, industrial, wastes, shoreline, citadel, exterior, pebbles, chimney, sky islands, farm arrays, and subterranean. This places sky islands very far into the game, which I think explains why it’s so difficult. I won’t lie, I actually love the challenge of sky islands, the only issue is the karma gate into it.
The fact I never heard of rain world until one of my friends (who has been into the fandom for a long while) basically dragged me into playing the game in co-op with her. We also made me a puppy-sized slugcat and oh boy... thats exactly how I felt like. A helpless child following my parent and constantly bringing myself in danger.
I was so incredibly lost and if I had not had my friend with the knowledge I would have given up on the game due to it being too frustrating for me. But after we finally reached the end of the game I kind of was down this rabbit hole and two years later now I am still in this rabbit hole called rain world.
Since this day we kinda invite all of our friends into the game this way and our small sluggie friend group has turned pretty big by now.
If I'm gonna be honest, I was in this same similar situation about 7 months ago. My friend introduced me to rainworld with having slightly higher knowledge than me of the game. When we began playing together, we had a blast. But once we beat survivor, we sorta drifted off into our own thing. She slowly drifted away from rainworld, while I stuck to it like the grapple worms from underhang sticking to you. I guess once you actually get the mechanics down, it's only by that time you truly admire the game only after the fact that the one that introduced you to it has long moved on to another...
Seen you comment on other rain world videos and recognised you profile pic
@@monkymode2777 u mean me or sleepyboi?
@@boizer4399 sleepy boi, do you also comment a bunch?
@@monkymode2777 kinda, maybe soon you'll see me in other rw vids
Hi! Ex World Record holder here, thanks for showing Hyper Demon to more people!
On the topic of why some games are niche is due to target audience - all games shown are made for very specific type of people who enjoy challenge and improvement through experimentation and discovery. Especially with Sorath titles, the games are inherently arcade titles, with no story nor clear goal - the gameplay loop revolves around trying to improve your score, so do source movement games where the goal is to get the best times. But I usually think the games being niche works in their favour; HD and DD communities are small yet dedicated it's always exciting to check the leaderboards whenever someone gets a new PB, and in case of HD, the top is REALLY contested with new scores being set in top 10 almost daily.
In the end, good games don't have to be popular, rather, good games will easily amass dedicated yet small playerbases. And their size even works in their favour, where every community member gets to know eachother, and in case with HD it makes the competition that much more exciting considering everyone from the top knows one another. I recon the same magic wouldn't be here were there too many players to count. It applies to many communities, even the mentioned Source movement games and Rain World, where people share their progress, experiences and discoveries in their enthusiastic circles.
The niche titles will remain niche since they weren't made with intent of being a hit or an approachable experience, but rather something one-of-a-kind that's targeted to a very specific group.
Thank you for showing both DD and HD to more people, I can't wait to see more people join the cult of the dagger :)
👍
Rain world will forever live rent free in my brain regardless of popularity
Jan 19th is gunna be a hell of a day tbh
@@htwo1 that damm orange fat cat
Rain world will forever live rent free in my heart regardless of popularity, too! 👍
It already lived rent free in my head and now with the dlc ill be paying it to stick around.
@@htwo1 you should make a video on the DLC after you play it
I did a community service by getting four younger children into rainworld and they loved it! Somehow they got over the difficulty and one of them that was seven years old got to shoreline by himself without my help.
Oh boy wonder what their reaction to a leviathan was
@@VoidWorldGaming that's a funny question considering I walked in on that exact situation of them getting chased by a vulture, and then out of the depths came a leviathan that then ate the vulture barely missing them. they were screaming.🤣
@@jeremyfitzhugh2897 lol that must a wild first encounter I can imagine it already, getting chased by what you think it the biggest creature only for a bigger fish to show up and devour it leaving you speechless as you didn't know that thing existed and you could of been devoured alongside the previously thought to be biggest creature
@@jeremyfitzhugh2897 That sounds like the perfect inroduction to a leviathan you could have, other than getting eaten by one as you cross a screen border
I am currently playing Rainworld, and I have to say: it´s easily one of the best games I EVER played! The gameplay is absolutely unique, and you get addicted even when you just have little progress. You get better and better no matter how much you are stuck. And the further you get (you WILL get further, even at the hard places), the more you are fascinated by the incredible world! Poeple say its very hard, that is true - but its also very balanced, since there are ALWAYS noumerous ways to get further, you just have to EXPLORE! The game is an absolute MASTERPIECE!!! 😍😱🤯 (I even bought the soundtrack on Vinyl!)
About rain world, i spend all day in the discord helping new players and there is something interesting about expectations.
These "hard games" games which let players figure things out by themselves are often experienced better by "non gamers" since they dont have expectations about how things should work or be taught, while "gamers" have experience with other games and generalize the way they should play in a game into the genre the game is.
The clearest example is the encounter whith LTTM which is a massive "attention check", everything is designed to be as confusing as possible while giving enough information to know what is happening if you stop to think for a second, this is the moment where rain world tests if you are playing the right way and observing reactions and behaviour rather than being impulsive.
-ppl who didnt harm moon saw the first check: shaking hand and making noises loud.
-ppl who just harmed moon didnt see the first check but saw the second: painful scream and violent seizures.
-ppl who just ate 4 neurons didnt see the 2 first checks but saw the 3rd (since you can only eat 4 before being full): retuned to the shelter and saw the stolen enlightment screen and overseer threats
-ppl who actually killed moon arent actually blind, they usually
A: play the game the wrong way by not having enough food even after finishing LTTM which is full of food and managing to have more than 4 hunger points
B: they are expecting "something" to happen, they came here and "there must be a reason" so they come back to eat the last one and see if they unlock some double jump skill or something, because they have the expectation that "there has to be something here, this cant be a dead end" very common if you played other metroidbanias and came thinking this was a metroidbania.
This is never the case with ppl who are starting to play videogames, they dont have much expectations about anything and are more willing to learn the rules and use common logic rather than following.
In fact, i must say i see lots of stupid behaviour, some ppl is extremely blind, after killing lttm i ask them if the overseer showed some images (the big ass red cross with dead slugcat images as a threat) and since they dont pay much attention to anything they often go like "ah yes yes, the yellow worm showed some random images, i didnt understand them".
Also saw ppl extremely stubborn, rain world is a game that rewards playing smart and punishes stubborness, but since they learnt from otehr videogames to "persevere" they spend 8 hours in unfortunate development even if you tell them than there is a different way which is safer, prettier and faster, same thing with the garbage wastes to drainage system gate, a gate designed to have all odds agains the player which ppl decide to bash their head agains for hours instead of catching the hint and leave, or the useless red pearl farm arrays room where i saw ppl thinking there must be something when is just a dead end.
New gamers usually just do whatever they want or think, while gamers very rarely want to actually learn and quit very early these types of games, or play it while blaming the game for "not teaching them how to do that" when nthey just didnt see the hint.
Remember when everyone/the media blew up about how hard the Souls games were/everything got compared to Dark Souls?
Then you play it and it's just a medieval combat sim; you get through 9/10s of it with common sense.
Common sense is rarer than gold in these times.
Drainage system is one of the only times where I'm like "fuck this game" because even the devs have said the area is hard as hell. I just question the placement of a 2 karma gate that leads there, especailly since thats where the game guides you towards. So many people i've seen on 1st playthru including myself getting stuck in drainage, not able to get past the flooded tunnel but not wanting to give up 'progress' because backtracking feels unintuitive.
Aside from that though it's a good game n one i absolutely love.
The thing is is that perseverance can pay off a lot. Yes, I was stuck in Unfortunate Development, but that showed me one of my key strategies for when I'm stuck: try this way a few times, now that way, and see what could work. That's gotten me out of a lot of places that got me very discouraged, and now that I did that basically *all on my own,* I'm not willing to give up again. And if the game rewards exploration, why not just try anyways? Bad things are expected to happen, although they are, well, bad. Sorry if this is a ramble its 1am and idk what I'm doing so I hope this made sense. This is just my take on the comment, everything about it is very good and thought provoking.
Agreed! I made the illustrations for RW and I noticed this a lot when we were demoing the game.
@@miimows Holy, is that Miimows, aka Del Northern, the great artist who made the rain world ilustration scenes and slugcat redesign? :0
your style is the best
Rain World and Noita are the perfect examples of why sometimes it's better to let your players struggle and suffer in the short term to give them a better pay off later.
Yes, noita is also SUCH a good example of this philosophy. I love noita so much, like the fact tha most people probably never see farther than kolmi and might not even know the orbs exist
I like my games to be hard to learn. When I play a triple A title, 9 time out of 10 I just turned my brain off like I'm watching TV.
Thanks Rain World for helping me to take care of these 2 neurons I've left.
it also helps by allowing you to eat more neurons from other people, too!!!
@@MinhNguyen-ti5yb "Double your neurons today with this simple trick! Moon hate him!"
I disagree with the take about the barrier to entry being part of the charm. I think games like Outer Wilds, Portal, and Antichamber do a great job of not explicitly teaching players mechanics, but placing them in a controlled environment where they can learn about them. I played Rain World, and learning mechanics either felt incredibly obvious, like spiders being stunned by flash plants, or hidden to the point where it should have been told, like throwing an object in the air violates newton's second law and gives you forward momentum. When you learn about the storms on Giant's Deep in outer wilds, you're not only placed in an environment where you can focus your attention on it, but you're also able to recover from dealing with it incorrectly much easier.
Rain World is also getting a QoL update too, so people who keep saying "The unfairness is part of the appeal" can finally stop saying that. Like sure, maybe it's part of the appeal to SOME people, but you can 100% fix that for others.
The barrier to entry doesn't give the charm, it's that the methodology of not teaching both gives the game charm and creates a barrier to entry. While the games you mentioned (and The Witness) are about executing teaching better, the games in the video are about games that don't teach at all, and still choose not to compromise by lowering the difficulty. They're two different types of games for two different tastes, of which a person might possess both, none, or one.
Rain World is a unique case where the people who originally got into the game liked it for the latter appeal, but as the game spread via word of mouth and countless artworks, the game became "indirectly accessible". Now the game will introduce a QoL update which internalizes the information that surrounded the game, begging the question, will the de facto new player experience actually change? Is it possible to have an experience that appeals to people who prefer to teach themselves for more than a few years?
(and, for what it's worth, I'll specify that I enjoy both niches, and even games that do teach directly sometimes)
To this date Rain World is the game that has ofered the most original and immersive experience. I wish more people knew the game because it is a true gem.
There are games that have a sort of progressive tutorial. It Steals is probably the best example, because while it gives you an objective, it remains vague about how to play against the monsters. You have to either rely on clues in the map itself or, after dying a few times, resort to the “hint unlocked” page, which gives a detailed explanation. It’s a step in the right direction, made by a horror game which got some massive popularity after its first year of quiet existence. It doesn’t always tell you outright, not if you don’t want the help. You can figure it out for yourself if you want, but it also allows you to stumble through figuring the game out on your own. It Steals is a game that will try to respect your decision to stay as blind as possible, and i highly recommend you give it a shot.
Coming back to it after the update and DLC I can say that the new player experience looks a bit better. For starters the prompts between hibernation cycles giving you hints about mechanics that would be hard to discover alone work really well without feeling like a huge dump of information. The way the yellow overseer works seems to have been tweaked too since the prompts directing you to the right regions appear more often and seem to immediately try to direct you out of an area if you're going the complete wrong way (hopefully less players wandering into wrong regions early on and quitting). I also noticed that the suggested path away from Moon to FB has changed entirely and is much nicer to follow.
Overall I'm not a fan of wiki games and having to search for answers online definitely takes away from a game for me. I'm glad to see that rain world has added QOL improvements while still requiring a lot of patience to work through. I'd be more hopeful of new people picking it up now than I was in the past.
rain world was one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had. The fluid gameplay and seeing the world and creatures interact with each other is incredibly satisfying and I honestly doubt Ill ever get so see something like that ever again. Cannot wait for the DLC
Another fun thing in Rain World is that if you master the controls you can get past more or less any creature, regardless of their position, spawn rng, etc. It makes mastering the game feel so rewarding because the movement rewards you by never showing you the death screen, and giving you some high adrenaline clutch escapes.
I tried to backflip a lizard and it catches me in the air
@@HYDROCARBON_XD yep we all do be like that 😂 youtube tutorial vs you do it
Great video, I completely agree. I don't think my Rain World experience would have been as good if the game held my hand all the way through like a lot of other games do.
It just adds to the uniqueness of the game and the feeling of being lost in an unknown and hostile world.
Although I think a few accessibility options that didn't mess with the experience too heavily wouldn't hurt, honestly.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a free update called Remix coming out in February that does exactly that. It has a bunch of optional difficulty tweaks that can make the game easier or harder depending on what you’re looking for. I’m sure it still won’t be easy, but hopefully it’ll allow more people to enjoy the game.
@@B_Skizzle Yeah, I saw that, but I'm not sure of what these options will do exactly, I remember one of the toggles being something like "extended tutorial", maybe? Which is a bit vague.
Either way I'm glad there's efforts to make this incredible game more accessible to a wider audience!
@@sunx2d Yeah, that’s one of them. There’s an announcement on the game's Steam page that explains a lot of the options if you want to learn more.
Rain world is genuinely one of my favourite games, I’m so happy I decided to get it when it came out despite all of the negative reviews it got! The movement took me about an hour to get used to the basics but when I noticed I could boost off of corners in pipes and would randomly do backflips when turning to run in a panic I began to realise how deep the movement actually was. Then when I started to catch onto what my goal was and seeing all of the new creatures I was completely hooked. The hardest thing I’ve ram into with this game is recommending it to friends and getting them to actually play it.
I also have devil daggers and found that quite fun.
Nice video!
oh he is talking about rainworld again isn't he
Devil daggers & Hyper Demon are two of my absolute favorite games. I love them so much, and I am so glad that I found them. Went out on a limb grabbing DD when I seen it on sale for like $5. I thought “Ah man, that looks kinda like the original quake, I’ll give that a try” oh boy was I wrong. Devil Daggers is one of the most hardcore shooter arena survival games I have ever played. Hyper demon, well, that’s a whole other game I have yet to wrap my head around. As for Rain World, I have heard of it but, I have yet to grab it and play it. It looks absolutely incredible, and like I could sink countless hours into it. This was a great video my man, keep it up! Stay gaming!
I really like these games for how they just drop you in and say "good luck" makes me feel special when I figured out the mechanics
Rain world is exhausting, yes, and I’ve gotten really frustrated with it, yes. But it is a spectacular game. The nuances of the AI, the attention to atmospheric detail, the story, the layers of unlocking, the movement progressively getting more rewarding and second nature- y’all, listen.
It’s hard. Like you have to want it. You have to have that confounded gamer determination. If you’re not those things, then it might not be fore you. I wanna say “just try it!” But I know how hard it is, and don’t wanna sway people to try something they might hate.
But.
If it sounds remotely interesting?
Like even just watch someone else play on TH-cam then go get it yourself. Or get it partway through a play through. Or just jump in blind. Death isn’t a setback, it’s a chance to learn something new. To make it a few steps further each time and slowly become a master. And this game has also made me cry.
It’s rewarding when you finally get it, and my stars, I wanna be so good at this game. I’m gonna stick with it. It gets like 8.5/10 stars from me for real, deductions simply for that initial learning barrier being so hard. But it’s worth it.
I enjoy all of the games you have mentioned and I think part of the charm is the obscurity of the games. I started playing among us the week it came out in early access on mobile years ago and it was fun until it became popular. The community of smaller games is much better than the community of bigger games, imo.
The lack of a tutorial is also crucial to some games. If you need to learn how to get good, then you need to learn.
I would rather have no tutorial than a god-awful one (looking at you TF2, i have seen many many engies turtle and i know damn well they played the shitty tutorial)
Clicked because of devil daggers left with the impression that rain world more than likely took inspiration from this one game called Tokyo jungle
I don't fully agree with the wording of the games "not telling you anything", because these games put a lot of effort into telling the player what is happening. The catch is that these games don't tell you what's going on in English or any other human language. They tell you how the game works through the language of gameplay, which is not a language everyone speaks fluently. I think Hyper Demon and Rain World are much more complex and nebulous with the way they present information to the player, perhaps not in a good way imo. There's dozens of tech in those two games you'd have no chance of understanding without reading a guide, watching footage, or stumbling upon it through experimentation. Devil Daggers, on the other hand, is simple and there's plenty of people who learn all the mechanics without any help. If you pay attention to the sound cues, visual cues, enemy behaviors, read the key config menu for controls, it's all there.
One thing I love about this design approach is that it forces players to talk to eachother. There's something very nostalgic about having to actually interact with other people to understand how to improve at the game.
Fans: "Rain World FUNDAMENTALLY cannot have mass appeal, the unfair design is what makes it great!"
Dev of Rain World: "'By the way I'm gonna add a quality of life options menu to go with the DLC, I understand the unfairness isn't for everyone and I hope this is a good compromise that lowers the barrier of entry."
The reason why I won't beat Rain World (for now) is not because it doesn't hold my hand, it's because it's so gruesome and gutteral. It made me more paranoid of bugs than ever, it really feels like an ecosystem where there is no rest ever and it made me more stressed than any horror game, and I'm literally scared to play.
Oh gosh, I too share this feeling. Even baby centipede scared me before I learned of their nature. And that's just one creature, because when you catch sigh of a new not-gentle-looking creature, it's natural to be scared of them. The first time I crossed path with a monster kelp, it was one in the drainage system, guarding a couple of passages, I immediately turned back and didn't return; there was the jetfishes too who seemed very dangerous at first.
Then one area I got past, the Shaded Citadel... Oh gosh the nightmare. I somehow managed to get one lantern from a scarvenger (by pure luck, simply that. It passed there, I crouched and let go of my spear, he dropped one lantern, and left.), and even then it was incredibly, utterly terrifying. The spiders. Oh god. And the centipedes. I do not want, nor WILL come back there. It's dark. It cramped. It will awake your inner arachnophobia and turn it to eleven.
It scared me a lot at first but after I powered through it I got used to it
Literally prey animal simulator
I had that on my first playthrough. It kinda went away after I completed first playthrough. If you can make it to the end, I highly recommend it, the end is spectacular and the DLC game modes are awesome! Also, I recommend avoiding Shaded Citadel the first time around, it is a cool area but pretty tough. Chimney Canopy and The Wall are a lot easier.
@@big_sis_moon I think my first playthrough of Rain World was one of the wakiest of them all. I went everywhere BUT the iterators, to the point I didn't visit the wall (I upgraded my karma only with the echoes).
It went like this: outskirst > drainage system > garbage waste > industrial complex > shaded citadel > shoreline > subterranean > drainage system > outskirt > farm array > sky islands > chimey canopy > sky islands > farm arrays > subterranean
Hollow knight introduced me to these kind of hard, single player 2D story games. I never really understood how much I cared about a games appearance until I was fascinated with hollow knights graphics. Recently got Rain world and it is the most beautiful pixel art I’ve ever seen.
SURF
Also good take thnx for showing momentum mod some love
you've actually sold me on Rain World now, i've known about it & watched your other vid on it but i actually do want to play now. time to wait a year so i forget all those mechanics spoilers
I think another game falling into the “excellent and difficult game, but not too popular” genre would be Don’t Starve or Don’t Starve Together. It’s either you die countless times to learn how the game works, or you constantly peruse the wiki finding out what does what.
when I saw rainworld AND hyperdemon in the same frame my brain throbbed a little at the idea that someone else on this crust had a sense of good taste
on january 19th, there will be a free update with sort of accessibility settings like "extra turorials" or "loading screen tips"
i just hope they wont be toggled by default, but if not, it might just solve a part of the issue
I believe that's also the release date for the DLC
@@polytanksan5761 it is
I paused this video so I could go buy Rain World without any more being spoiled. Everything about it sounded so intriguing. I'm enjoying it a ton so far. I actually found the beginning pretty easy to understand, now that I'm in the second zone it's quite a bit harder.
Are you in Industrial complex?
I play the game too. And to give a peace of my mind: I wanna explore, I love it when I find the new shelter, the cheer relief of it. But I'm also terrified of exploration. For how simple they look, to me, deaths are absolutely gruesome (even more for the carnivorous plants, and god forbid, the coalescipedes). The Shaded Citadel is, in its own way, worse that a AAA horror game.
And yet I continue to try.
@@lukasprazak7362 I thought this exact thing. I accidentally wandered back to industrial complex several times during my playthrough and the fact of the matter is that Industrial Complex is mf *fulla* lizards, it's a terrifying hellscape to be sure.
@@shoug6555 Actually, I was wondering that the op may have wandered into drainage system. That happened to me.
When I finally got back on track and to industrial complex, it was basically a cakewalk (the industrial complex (and garbage wastes and shoreline), not the game as a whole; in fact, I haven't finished it yet, I just don't have the nerves right now).
I assume you didn't have the displeasure of stumbling into drainage system, or you were already pretty skilled at the game. Believe me, if you are new, that place is the true hellscape.
this video made me play rain world and now its my fav game. Thank you
i feel like Dwarf Fortress fits into the category of "obscure complicated hard game that has little to no handholding" as well. I mean it has a wiki but it's not much help
I like that Hyper Demon's leaderboard has motion blur lmao
I wanted to play rain world for myself, and im a very impatient person so i looked up longplays, and ignored spoilers just to see what the game was about. And i regret that decision so much, because now i know everything! How Karma works, what echo's are, how each slugcat plays, etc. I still plan on getting and playing the game one day, but the experience will be very simple now that I've ruined the challenge for myself. If anyone reading this wants to get into rain world, don't make my mistake and go in blind.
Everything about Rain World is incredible. I highly recommend it to everybody. Even if you're not one for difficult games, I still recommend it, because you can at least play the Monk, which is the "easy" mode. If you have to look up some tips and tricks or guides or whatever, then do that. It's a one of a kind experience.
Absolutely agree with the second point you made, about community content using one program to do something it's not meant for. As somebody who's (trying) to make a parkour map in Raft, an open-world survival game with not-so-great physics and basically 0 ground for writing text, teaching advanced tech that actually makes the gameplay fun is so fruiting to work around. Still fun to make though 👍
10:44 Thank you SO MUCH for including that shot. I'm in this exact area right now and would have never figured out that I have to ride the deer to get across the plants.
You're a legend for bringing more attention to these wonderful games 👌
gotta love how half the video is about source movement (I FUCKING LOVE RAINWORLD)
I think Noita, although a very different game, has a very similar deal,
Its tutorial literally is: on this rock is written that awsd, also mouse,
Switch item slots like this, and this button does something, look its a kick,
What you got to curios, switched wands, shot and did not run from the bomb you produced, get gud scrub,
I like the fact that the game introduces itself this way, it is hard yes, but also rewarding when you figure something new out.
yeah i love how noita's tutorial is just three rocks
But in noita you can kill anything you encounter basically with the first "weapon" and in rain world i struggle with green crocodiles
@@funguy398 try killing the fire wizard with the starting wand,
Also I would argue that a lot of the danger in noita comes from the envoirment, fire hydrants and regular fire for example, deal a lot of damage, in addition, in noita it is really easy to be a danger for yourself, by for instance using any electricity or explosive spell its real easy to end your whole career.
Crypt of the Necrodancer is a game who could fit, but different from the games on the list, the game is not hard because you need to learn everything alone, but is because the game is just very hard. Most of the people who played it didn't played much, and said they recommend the game because the ideia is cool (almost half of the players haven't the zone 1 achievement). I still love it though, but sadly most people didn't got so far on the game
I have like 3 hours on Rain World so far, and it has clapped my ass unfairly so many times already, it takes effort to launch it again. I remember leaving the outskirts, looking around at the new place I just discovered, and just before I went to sleep there, a lizard has dropped 3 stories, right onto my head, and killed me instantly. Ofc I had to go back grinding the Outskirts again.
A game that would enter perfectly in the video, (and that i never see anyone talking about) is OneShot
Rock n Stone!!! I love your videos and would love seeing you talk about another unknown game deep rock galactic.
Honestly, I think Rain world is really cool. I like the story a lot and I like it's design philosophy, everything. But I just can't play it myself. I don't have the attention span for it, and I'm just not good enough at games in general. I feel like it would frustrate or bore me long before I ever got good enough at it to make significant progress. But I still appreciate the game itself, and I REALLY like the story and the way the mechanics of the game tie into the interesting narrative the game tells.
Hyper demon looks like it was designed to Trigger people's epilepsy. I don't have that but still it hurts my eyes and I can barely comprehend it at least devil dangers is comprehendable
That hand went from demon fire to full psychedelic
Despite not being able to sink my teeth into these games, I adore them for being what they are. Hard arcade games like devil daggers showcase mastery at a level which i could only dream of achieving, and worlds such as rainworld are immensely fascinating. Yet despite that, when I tried those games I gave up rather quickly, and thats ok. Those games werent made for a casual audience like me, they where made for those who relish having a challenge. I think what I love most about them is that indie devs make these types of games knowing full well that consistent player counts will rarely ever go above double digits, and this really showcases the developers passions for their projects.
The first time i heard rainworld is from game maker toolkit explaining about the enemy's ai
Please do more rain world content! It's such a fascinating game!
I like how more then half the video is not about rain world despite being in the title
thanks for spoiling part of the discovery you were gushing about 🤣
for real though, great video, I just wish I hadn't clicked on it before finishing my first playthrough of Rain World
Another really great game like this that I’ve found is Noita. It’s a 2D pixel art rogue-like where every pixel is simulated. I only just started playing it with about ten hours, but it immediately caught my interest with its seemingly deep gameplay features that are really well designed for players to figure them out. It tells you about as much as Rain World does in its tutorial (basic movement and shooting/melee binds), leaving essentially everything to be discovered. In most rogue-likes/lites that I play, I can beat the initial difficulty in a few tries, but this game is sooooo much more unforgiving, and is more like a puzzle than anything.
Rainworld couldve been Hollow Knight, both games got me into indie games in general and both captivated me with both gameplay and atmosphere but while games journalists chose to adore HK, treating it like the Dark Souls of indie games, they chose to say ''rainworld too hard'' and doom rainworld to be a niche game, its odd how sometimes difficulty makes people like a game ''its the dark souls of whatever genere'' ''this game doesnt hold your hand, it respects the intelligence of the player'', Rainworld couldve gone mainstream, thats what pains me the most, its not so wierd that its necesarily forced into being obscure.
Song name is "Out of Whose Womb Came The Ice?" By Chris Christodoulou. It's part of the OST for Risk of Rain 2. Another masterpiece of a game, this one is.
hyper demon is just, epilepsy : the game. Yet i feel so intrigued by this puke of radiant colors
I finished the survivor and hunter campaign and didn't know the bit about the centipedes. Thanks.
Pleasant surprise hearing some Rivals of Aether music in the intro
Honestly, fuck being kind to the player, you get a much better experience when you figure things out yourself. It's like cooking, it's fun to eat the cake, but it's more exciting to bake it.
propsurfing in garry's mod
very very fun, and it provides a use for surfing mechanics in a competitive environment
heres the thing
i used the wiki for rain world a lot to help me get into it, and while my it may have made the game worse overall, im very glad i did bc now i actully enjoying this game and play it and its a great game
Rain World is great, I really love that game. The way the developers manage to simulate this dynamic, natural world is really great.
I think a good compromise is the easy implimentation of mods into the game. The developers are very open about that and gives a lot of accessability-functions
I love rain world! I just really really really suck. I would love to learn more about how to survive.
It's not that you suck, the game can just be really unfair. Don't listen to people who say it just requires mastery- A lot of the mastery involves techniques you wouldn't know unless you looked it up, and there's still a lot that can trip you up.
There's a reason the dev plans on updating the game to add QoL changes.
local AAA slave perplexed after discovering indie games and source gamemodes, more at 9
Once I figured out how to play this it became the 1 survival game I ever enjoyed
I personally love the game because of the unique ai, so fascinating to watch them route and move throughout the environment, even when buggy I like the way it glitches, so unnatural
Haven't even watched the video yet, but if we're talking about Rain World, I gotta hand in my 63 minutes of playtime and say it. Too difficult, I've been raised on high-octane shooters so of course I like hack n' slash and light strategy games. Rain World attracted me initially due to it being a Metroidvania, but I never actually expected the game to have such a high skill floor that'd need a significant amount of time to actually get past to start properly playing. Controls were a bit annoying but isn't as big of a reason as what I already mentioned.
I'm still wondering if I should give it another try any time soon...
to be honest rain world really isn't a metroidvania; it doesn't share any of the common characteristics besides non-linear regions. Honestly I feel like the metroidvania comparison is detrimental to the game, because If you go in expecting that hollow knight-esque experience, you're bound to be disappointed. However, if you treat it as an exploration game, where you experiment and are rewarded for your own discoveries, it can be an incredible experience. Personally it's my absolute favourite game, the complexity of both the enemies and movement make it very rewarding to get good at.
there's a DLC coming out pretty soon, that will also include a free update which adds optional tutorials and other improvements to make the game more accessible to newcomers. So if you're still interested, maybe give it another try after Jan 19!
I had the worst experience playing the game, and I wanted to enjoy it. I entered Drainage and the Sky Islands early, and was told I was "going the wrong way." You're told to follow the yellow worm but, the yellow worm doesn't appear in EVERY room, and the second you veer off track as a result, it stops appearing, meaning you can go hours without realizing there's even a hint system at all. And complex movement sounds fun, but you're not gonna figure out speedrun strats without looking up all the complex moves you can do, so as cool as that is it's not something everyone can appreciate. The game also goes VERY long periods of time without rewarding you with anything, but it CONSTANTLY throws dead ends at you to waste your time.
Thankfully the game is getting a QoL settings menu as a free update to go along with the release of the DLC. So people can stop saying "The game being hard to get into is a good thing, it's the nature of the game and it can't be changed."
Immersion is the key, to enjoy Rain World you must act like a cat, stealth is your best friend and don't worry about dying!
@@vixian3127 Oh yeah, definitely not a Metroidvania. Instead, I like to think of it as a "Metroidbrainia" (not my term but I forget where I got it from). Basically, instead of gaining mechanical upgrades, you’re building up a base of knowledge as you progress. The end effect is similar in that you expand your toolset over time, but with a Metroidbrainia, you take that toolset with you into future playthroughs. It’s why you can only truly experience a game like Outer Wilds once.
I actually found Rainworld thanks to some artist i followed, and as soon as i saw how the game sort of worked, i decided to play it myself all blind.
I'm still on the learning but uff, gotta say this game was exactly what i've been looking for.
That momentum mod thingy looks sick hope its playable soon
You should have titled this video hyper demon... and rain world
I think there can be games that can't be popular but the "brand" they come from can be like Touhou where the games aren't that popular but the property is actually quite popular.
just got rain world today, and i want to watch this but i dont want spoilers
The good old times.... I remember when I first played RW and at some point I was totally lost and ended up almost exactly the same steps as a let's player, LOL.
i looked at the rain world wiki when i played
i remember that i still learned a lot by my self but still
this game "hyper demon" seems to fit my bill quite well
i might try something new and this time avoid my previous mistakes
I mean, I compare rain world to darkest dungeon and subnautica to some point since I'm a new player, and I love both of them, learning, getting crushed because the AI and RNG didnt like you sometime in darkest dungeon, are experiences that make you learn how to deal with defeat, games now are just "win" to psicologicaly manipulate the player, they dont teach you about defeat, learning from your mistakes or deal with problems.
For example what is in the video about learning from the enemies in rain world, I compare it to subnautica when I started to learn how to fight and deal with reaper leviathans because I was afraid and angry at them.
hyper demon could've just been an ultra seizure mode for devil daggers
Ha! Already played hyper demon and Devil Daggers, still grinding them to this day
This is how old school games did it no tutorial you just had to figure it out yourself and sometime you talked to other kids about it and helped each other out.
It teaches you skills that your can use and refine outside of the game.
8:11 don't do it!
Ive seen someone play hyper demon on stream I had no idea what I was looking at
dark souls exists tho and that game alone can make this entire video unvalid but i honestly agree with everything you said in this video, when i first got into rain world it was honestly the most confusing game ever but by time i got used to the mechanics and learned to adapt to the nature by watching the creatures intaract while i sit in a pipe and there was a time where i figured out that scavengers interact by hand signs in my first playthru and i thought i was so slick but turns out when they hold the spear up you shouldent approach :)) this is why games that throw you without holding your hands are so fun and this is why rain world is honestly the best survival game ever made
Rain world holds a place in my heart, despite starting to play recently.
Also, i don't understand how people say that artificer's easier than Gourmand. i've litearly made no progress in artificer, while i litearly got to chimney canopy as Gourmand.
Also, my main food are lizards now...
I remember I heard about rain World this yeah, and I thought it was relatively recent.
Then I looked up the release date.
I like rain world, but I rarely touch it because the difficulty and risk and all that intimidates me too much ):
I feel you. I’ve completed the game multiple times and I still have to be in a particular mood to play it. If I can offer you an unsolicited tip, try to take your time and pay attention to the little intricacies of how different creatures behave, both on their own and around each other. You just might be able to use that knowledge against them.
@@B_Skizzle thanks for the tip! This video sort of gave me some motivation to play this game a bit, so I’m hoping to play more of it soon.
The new update, Remix, released a bunch of difficulty-altering and accessibility options, perhaps try playing around with those until the game feels more comfortable
On my first playthrough it took me 14 hours and around 100 cycles until i reached the end, in the process i felt like giving up sometimes but im glad i didnt lol
Full disclosure, I came into the game on recommendation for a game to explore and get lost in, and I can only speak for myself since I dropped it around the halfway mark; the skill ceiling was not the hard part for me. All it took was doing some searches for guides to fix any misunderstanding.
My main issue with the game was the map was gigantic but had no incentive to explore it, the only things you got were unlocks for the Arena. Going off the beaten path was cool, but it was kinda dumb that the path they wanted you to follow was the first that had silkworms, something fun that used its silly physics to their advantage. It also didn't help that their version of a fast travel was locked behind in game achievements and was limited to like.. 8 uses; so you have a colossal map that you have to go through by foot. I get that it would lessen the harsh survival aesthetic but that also makes it less fun to explore personally.
A lesser gripe was that if you held a spear, other spears wouldn't be highlighted if you passed them which means you had to really pay attention to the pure black foreground for something that could just be a random pole shape and not a spear. It also means you'd have to go in to pick up and stab the creature you just hit with it, leaving yourself open to instant death, lowering your meditation level and having to grind that back up if you wanted to pass any roadblocks.
And the final nail in the coffin was that because the AI was either smart or so stupid it was smart, the damn things would camp tunnel exits. Or you'd come out of a Shelter to dreadfully get back to the new area you were figuring out just for a centipede to hog a narrow corridor to the quickest route. Or worse case, I'd have a big centipede in a Shelter. A Shelter.
I think the final nail in the coffin was getting to the top of The Leg just to get rained on, or it was reaching the very bottom of the map just to have no clear exit. I remember both of those experiences leaving me very defeated.
Personally I didn’t like how it pretty much tells me to go to drainage system because it is a lower cycle, I get all the way through it, get to subterranean, get all the way through it, get to depths, and pretty much the game just says this was all pointless and I need to go across the entire map to get more karma then go all the way back. That thoroughly killed the experience for me honestly
I want to like Rain World really hard. I also (normally) like exploration and finding stuff out by myself.
I played through fckng Bleak Faith: Forsaken and liked it, so my patience and my resistance to junk clearly isn't the problem.
I'm now 100 min. into Rain World. I like some parts of it, found some stuff out, but am mostly just frustrated. At the beginning area the most important things seem quite understandable to me. After the gate also shown at 8:16 in the video i'm now in an area where my best option seems to be suicide running in random directions until i find a way onward. (It's not fun after half an hour.) Half of the yellow hologram-creatures doesn't make any sense to me or flicker to brief to be readable to me. And when i actually tried to not die a few times, i enter a pipe from an empty room, that leads to an other empty room, but as soon as i am in the second room a purple lizard just spawns into me, like it followed me through the pipe (even though there was nothing in the room before).
Another time i jump somewhere down and find out, that there is fall damage, when you fall out of some (inconsistent) screens. So i slide down the wall and ... just die anyways, because the killbox don't likes me, even hearing the sliding-audio while dying.
Like, ... i know, some stuff surely makes sense after further observation, but the stuff that feels just like bugs, or inconsistent design breaks the experience quite a bit.
It's so sad, i genuinely believe, there is a good game behind all this and i want to experience that, but i don't know if it's worth the effort.
Sorry for complaining so much. I'm just a bit frustrated.
how's your experience after 6 months?
I wish it was more popular 😞
This video introduced me to Hyper Demon
Thank you for the video game I like it alot :))
Very colorful and I like having eyes in the back of my head.
Gotta admit the game has a very steep learning curve, like, in the beginning its really-really hard since you don't know nothing about: the surrounding location, what hazards are to be awared of, what enemies exist and what can they do, hell, even what your slugcat can do wont reach you from the start 😅
Once you get used to this dangerous world and what to expect from it, you really start to enjoy the game since you're prepared and have tools to manage your journey go on.
My problem with such games was always a fear for my character, too afraid to loose it - and that's why my progress at the beginning was thaaat slow, I was just scared to risk and learn stuff.
Tried to collect as much karma as I could in hopes to keep it like that. But a better strategy was to stay level 1 karma and just explore what are limits of my char and enemies, die a lot of times, but to learn not just about the game, but also to overcome the fear. Remember how I was scared AF those flying noodles but turned out those were just an easy prey 🙃