Rain World
What to Know
Average Score
- December 13, 2018
- Videocult
- Action, Platformer
Critics Consensus
- December 13, 2018
- Action, Platformer
Critics Consensus
# Reviews: 40
A summary of the critical opinion for this game will be provided after release or a minimum of 15 reviews have been aggregated.
Critic Reviews for Rain World
Reviews
Shaun Prescott (PC Gamer)
80/100
“Few will see the more remote corners of Rain World’s relentlessly dire stretch, but those who do are unlikely to forget the experience.”
Joe Skrebels (IGN)
6.3/10
“Rain World is a maddening thing, because of quite how special it could have been. Beautiful environments, incredible animations and enticingly hazy mechanics are fantastic, but the sheer cruelty of how it’s pieced out to the player transcends challenge and becomes an unwanted trial.”
Nic Rowen (Destructoid)
5/10
“I feel so badly for this game in a way. It seems so close to being something special and wonderful, but is just undermined at every turn by baffling design choices, poor controls, and frustration. Maybe some of these issues will be addressed in a future patch and Rain World will become the game it feels like it should have been. Someone else will have to let me know. As far as I’m concerned, my days of being a slugcat are officially behind me and I won’t be looking back.”
Outlet | Author | Score | Date | Quote | Read |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
3DNews | Александр Бабулин | 6 / 10 | 04-01-2017 | Incredibly difficult but nicely drawn, atmospheric and surprisingly deep platformer about long and rough journey of one small slugcat. Rain World don’t really have enough mercy, the game doesn’t forgive the slightest weakness or inattention, and it’s rules can remain misunderstood for a very long time. To go through it, you need an iron will, perseverance and aspiration. If you’ve got what it takes, it could be a lot of fun. | Read review |
BaziCenter | Kaveh Eskandari | 8 / 10 | 04-04-2017 | Rain World might suffer from poor controls, challenging difficulty level, and some bad gameplay mechanics, but if you are patient enough, you’ll enjoy it. | Read review |
CGMagazine | Chris Carter | 8 / 10 | 03-27-2017 | Think Limbo, but more haunting and with better controls, and you’ll have a basic idea of what Rain World is about. | Read review |
COGconnected | James Paley | 60 / 100 | 03-29-2017 | The monsters are vibrant and suffused with poisoned grace | Read review |
Cubed3 | Thom Compton | 5 / 10 | 04-15-2017 | Rain World has so much potential, it’s infuriating to watch it crumble under the weight of trying to be difficult. There seems to be a new mantra in gaming that the game’s not good unless it’s brutally hard, and this is clearly misguided. If it controlled better and gave the player a bit more sympathy, Rain World would have been sublime. As it stands, though, Rain World is just an angry experience, yelling at gamers for every little mistake. | Read review |
Destructoid | Nic Rowen | 5 / 10 | 03-28-2017 | I feel so badly for this game in a way. It seems so close to being something special and wonderful, but is just undermined at every turn by baffling design choices, poor controls, and frustration. Maybe some of these issues will be addressed in a future patch and Rain World will become the game it feels like it should have been. Someone else will have to let me know. As far as I’m concerned, my days of being a slugcat are officially behind me and I won’t be looking back. | Read review |
Eurogamer | Simon Parkin | Not Recommended | 03-29-2017 | Relentless and brutal, this post-apocalyptic pixel art survival quest is a gruelling, if often beguiling, challenge. | Read review |
FNintendo | Pedro Mesquita | 8 / 10 | 01-19-2019 | Rain World is not an easy game and that can only be good. The experience puts emphasis on the difficulty level and thanks to its very well designed game world, Rain World is set to quickly grab the player’s attention and become a very cherished game, despite its difficulty sometimes reaching rather frustrating levels. | Read review |
GameCrate | David Sanchez | 5.8 / 10 | 04-04-2017 | Rain World will probably establish a cult following, which is great because it deserves a fan base for its thoughtful ideas. Unfortunately, too many factors get in the way of what very well could’ve been one of 2017’s most interesting indies. | Read review |
GameSkinny | Autumn Fish | 8 / 10 | 03-30-2017 | Even though the game frequently gates off my progression, I can’t get enough of Rain World. | Read review |
GameSpew | Kyle Bradford | 9 / 10 | 03-27-2017 | Not since Mark of the Ninja have I played a stealth game that felt so impactful, lingering in my thoughts long after I put the controller down. | Read review |
GameSpot | Miguel Concepcion | 5 / 10 | 03-31-2017 | An endearingly designed creature and a captivating world in ruins cannot save this 2D platformer from its punishing gameplay. | Read review |
GearNuke | Ali Moin | 7 / 10 | 03-29-2017 | Rain World is a surprising fun game when it manages to click together. However, it also suffers from some frustrating design choices that makes it difficult to enjoy the game. Despite its flaws, the game offers a solid experience if you can overlook some of the difficulty spikes. | Read review |
God is a Geek | Dan Murphy | 4 / 10 | 03-28-2017 | Sadly, despite its pretty aesthetic, Rain World is a confusing and sluggish platformer that failed to give me any reason for what I was doing and just left me feeling bored and bewildered. | Read review |
Hey Poor Player | Kenny McKee | 3 / 5 stars | 03-27-2017 | I wanted to love Rain World, I really did, but in the end I couldn’t. Although it starts out strong, and boasts a variety of unique gameplay features, it ends up coming out a bit muddled due to the abusive limits it places on players and overbearing confusion. | Read review |
IGN | Joe Skrebels | 6.3 / 10 | 03-27-2017 | Rain World is a maddening thing, because of quite how special it could have been. Beautiful environments, incredible animations and enticingly hazy mechanics are fantastic, but the sheer cruelty of how it’s pieced out to the player transcends challenge and becomes an unwanted trial. | Read review |
Metro GameCentral | GameCentral | 4 / 10 | 03-29-2017 | One of the best-looking 2D games ever made, but the beautiful animation can’t compensate for the tediously unfair gameplay. | Read review |
Nintendo Times | Jordan Brewer | 7 / 10 | 01-23-2019 | GOOD | Read review |
NintendoWorldReport | Matthew Olivo | 6 / 10 | 01-17-2019 | The main appeal I saw in Rain World was in its art style and the design of its enemies. Its mechanics need some fine tuning for it to be the masterpiece it has the potential to be. If you’re looking for a game that’ll really try your patience and give you a good challenge, then I’d absolutely recommend adding this to your library. Otherwise, I’d recommend you look elsewhere. | Read review |
Pardis Game | Hamed Zahedi | 8 / 10 | 05-08-2017 | In the end, Rain world is a 2D crowd funded game by an independent studio and it does what it intends quite brilliantly: Showing the players the survival of the fittest. Not minding the extremely hard gameplay and puzzles, Rain World is one of the few 2D indie games that brings a new experience for platformer lovers | Read review |
Paste Magazine | Cameron Kunzelman | 8 / 10 | 03-31-2017 | Despite how much I enjoy that kind of experience on a conceptual level, it definitely isn’t my favorite kind of game to play, and I generally felt like I was solving puzzles with half of the pieces. Rain World is a beautiful, forward-thinking game that points to a form of game design that I want to see more of. I just wish it made itself a little more accessible. | Read review |
PC Gamer | Shaun Prescott | 80 / 100 | 03-27-2017 | Few will see the more remote corners of Rain World’s relentlessly dire stretch, but those who do are unlikely to forget the experience. | Read review |
PC Invasion | Paul Younger | 9 / 10 | 03-28-2017 | A gem of a platformer featuring an adorable Slugcat. Rain World is both brutal and challenging. | Read review |
PlayStation Universe | John-Paul Jones | 6.5 / 10 | 04-15-2017 | The bountiful promise of Rain World’s grim world and the assortment of cunning creatures which inhabit it are summarily undone by fiddly controls and an overwhelmingly punishing level of difficulty. Underneath it all there’s an assuredly decent effort here; it’s just a shame that all but the most masochistically inclined will ever summon the requisite determination to plumb its intimidating depths. | Read review |
Polygon | Janine Hawkins | 5 / 10 | 03-27-2017 | With core systems opaque and unnecessarily limited, all I ever felt equipped to do in Rain World was fail. | Read review |
PS4Blog.net | EdEN | 7 / 10 | 04-05-2017 | Rain World is certainly one of those “love it or hate it” type of release where the premise is either going to strongly resonate with you, or you’re going to abhor it and not want to play it again. The game’s presentation is top-notch, and its gameplay mechanics feel tight and to the point, but this might not be enough so save it in your eyes. Did I have fun with it? Yes. Is it a flawed release that could have been made a tad less difficult? Definitely. Is this a must-have game on PS4? Hard to say. But I’m sure that if you play the game you won’t forget about it anytime soon. | Read review |
PSX Brasil | Matheus Ricardo Uihara Zingarelli | 69 / 100 | 03-27-2017 | Do not be fooled by the serene music or a cute protagonist, Rain World is an extremely difficult and highly frustrating survival game. You will become part of the food chain from a hostile environment with deadly rains. Death will constantly follow your steps and progression will have a slow pace. Several secrets await to be uncovered, including game’s own mechanics and objectives. If all of this enticed your competitive spirit, go for it; buy the game and be happy. Otherwise, stay away from all the stress. Above all, have in mind that you may face technical problems that may corrupt your save file. | Read review |
Push Square | Graham Banas | 6 / 10 | 03-27-2017 | The end result is complicated: it’s a game we bounced off quite a lot but one we still greatly appreciate. The game does something new with the genre and it does it well for the most part, making the game worth at the very least giving a look. | Read review |
Reloading BR | Felipe Mesquita | 8 / 10 | 03-29-2017 | To me, Rain World is an example of how independent projects can progress some of our basic conventions of fields like animation, design, and world-building, but also how sometimes they can ward off some players with their quirks as well. It is a game that instigates you all the time to experiment but also reminds you how risky your mistakes can be, keeping you always aware and focused. At times I was extremely pissed at the game and even though sometimes it was justified, I often saw that I was guilty of my deaths and realized that I could abstract knowledge from my mistakes to conquer this world. Its subjectivity and brutality will for sure be problems for many and they have been for me too at various times, but in the end I feel that experiencing Rain World is not so much about progressing in this world to get a conclusion (something I didn’t come across after spending 15 hours on my playthrough), but is about understanding how this world works and make yourself the king of it, well, at least until the next time you die. | Read review |
Rock, Paper, Shotgun | Brendan Caldwell | Not Recommended | 03-27-2017 | There was a big part of me that didn’t want to stop playing and maybe I’ll pick it up again some day, because there is so much to love about discovering the laws of nature behind this huge, ruined ecosystem. But with each random death, each accidental roll off a cliffside, each checkpoint drought, that love turned to ash. There is so much beauty and intrigue and diversity of life in Rain World. It’s a pity the game doesn’t want you to see any of it. | Read review |
Saving Content | Evan Rowe | 3 / 5 stars | 01-08-2019 | Rain World shows up to the table with a lot of good ideas but fails to execute successfully on many of them. What should probably be a challenging but enjoyable game feels more like a directionless, unintuitive slog that, while mostly pretty to look at, is confusing and possibly overly difficult for the sake of being difficult. I can see a situation where just a few tweaks to character movement (namely improved speed and agility) would go a long way toward making this game feel like a properly balanced challenge. It’s entirely possible that the point of the game is to be really hard, but if so I find the controls, mobility and systems design is at odds with that intention, because as a player I never felt empowered to deal with the challenges laid before me so much as at the mercy of the whims of whomever is pulling the strings. | Read review |
Screen Rant | Cody Gravelle | 4 / 5 stars | 12-16-2018 | Rain World finds a lovely little home on the Switch. | Read review |
SelectButton | Kevin Mitchell | 6 / 10 | 03-30-2017 | Too often in Rain World, death does not feel warranted, as the ruthless creatures make any attempt to advance truly punishing. I felt that many times that there was simply no way to avoid dying, which in turns sets you back in your progress to locate new areas to explore. There are thrilling moments in the game, but the poor design decisions in the game hamper any enjoyment. | Read review |
Shacknews | Donovan Erskine | 7 / 10 | 12-21-2018 | Rain World is a formidable experience to fans of the survival genre, and one that you can now take with you on the go via the Nintendo Switch. | Read review |
Sirus Gaming | Kimberly Mae Go | 8 / 10 | 04-05-2017 | While working on my own review, I knew that the game received a lot of bad reviews. I did not want to read other reviews because I didn’t want my review to be influenced by others. Most people hate what they cannot understand. But for me, you can’t just hate a game simply because it’s difficult (what about Dark Souls?). When you’re playing to have fun, you need to give Rain World plenty of time to get the best out of it. | Read review |
TechRaptor | Luigi Savinelli | 6 / 10 | 04-08-2017 | Rain World is a charming and beautiful game held back by its overly punishing gameplay. Imprecise controls and cheap deaths contribute in making this survival platformer way more frustrating than it needs to be. | Read review |
The Outerhaven Productions | Veronica Ciotti | 4 / 5 stars | 03-25-2017 | Among this year’s many exciting triple-A games, Rain World holds its own for being original, exciting, and addictive. This beautifully animated indie title keeps players on their toes by facing them with threatening creatures, each with varied tactics, and imminent storms. Mechanics can be mildly frustrating at times, but there is certainly a learning curve. All in all, Rain World is delightfully weird and should not be overlooked. | Read review |
ThisGenGaming | Justin Oneil | 7.5 / 10 | 04-10-2017 | Despite my grievances with the unfair difficulty of Rain World I did enjoy my time with it but not as much I had hoped to. It’s massive, interestingly, designed world begs me to explore it but the unfairness of it all pushes me away. Rain World has so many things going for it like an awesome enemy AI system, great animation, huge world and more but the other lesser done well things like the way too slow movement speed and the moments of unfairness keep it from being truly great. I do think it is worth checking out though and judging for yourself as it is unlike most other games out there. | Read review |
Video Chums | Tyler Hall | 5 / 10 | 03-30-2017 | Developer Videocult took a brave chance with Rain World. | Read review |
We Got This Covered | Dylan Chaundy | 2.5 / 5 stars | 03-27-2017 | There are definitely some cool ideas in Rain World, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is far too unsatisfying to wholeheartedly recommend. | Read review |
About Rain World
You are a slugcat. The world around you is full of danger, and you must face it – alone. Separated from your family in a devastating flood, you must hunt for food and shelter between terrifying torrential downpours that threaten to drown all life. Climb through the ruins of an ancient civilization, evade the jaws of vicious predators, and discover new lands teeming with strange creatures and buried mysteries. Find your family before death finds you!
RELEASE DATES:
DEVELOPER(S):
- Videocult
PUBLISHER(S):
- Adult Swim
GENRES:
- Action, Platformer
SERIES/FRANCHISE:
- n/a
GAME MODES:
- Co-operative, Multiplayer, Single player
GAME ENGINE:
- -
DLC:
- -
BUNDLED IN:
- -
DIRECTOR(S):
- -
PRODUCER(S):
- -
DESIGNER(S):
- -
PROGRAMMER(S):
- -
ARTIST(S):
- -
WRITER(S):
- -
COMPOSER(S):
- -
GAME MODES:
- Co-operative, Multiplayer, Single player
GAME ENGINE:
- n/a
DLC:
- n/a
BUNDLED IN:
- n/a
DIRECTOR(S):
- n/a
PRODUCER(S):
- n/a
DESIGNER(S):
- n/a
PROGRAMMER(S):
- n/a
ARTIST(S):
- n/a
WRITER(S):
- n/a
COMPOSER(S):
- n/a