Nestled in the playable demo floor at E3, we found an interesting indie game backed by Adult Swim Games. Rain World is a very somber, quiet game that attracts attention through its "world moved on" demeanor. Players control a white...animal (the name of it is a slugcat) in a world where there's no levels, power-ups, or armor to gain. It's survival horror without the horror--an environment where tangled weeds and mysterious creatures thrive on the survival game.
We spoke to a developer of the game about it's nature. "During the day cycle, you hunt for food and try to find your way into shelter. During the night cycle, heavy rains come--hence the name Rain World." Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see how the rain affected the world around us, but we were pretty certain it would involve a lot of water. Our play demo took us into grungy burrow holes and ghost cities that once thrived. We could tell there was a lot of variety in the creatures and environments just in the few rooms we explored, and the developer commented over 1600 rooms were coded into the game, almost as large as my humble abode.
"We're trying not to force too much narrative onto the player. Any way you can find to survive is supported by the game, so if you want to farm bats that's cool," commented the developer. There was more to the game that we could see up front, however, as small camera-like devices popped up randomly to watch the slugcat feast on bats. Our guess is narrative is a huge part of the game, but the game caters to people by letting them play how they want.
The developer compared Rain World to Metroid-vania-like games--if a player starts out in such a game, they're very cautious about survival since weapons aren't powerful and health is rather low. That's almost the constant state of Rain World, where choosing your battles wisely is the law of the land. There's no carapace to evolve and players won't break down a hidden door to find a massive megaton-launcher-3000-TX-deluxe-RPG with kill count meter. If you survive, you can unravel the narrative behind the game.
There's a world to explore here, even if the narrative content seems a little light at first glance. The game is slated to release on PS4 and PC some time soon (we're hoping this year) so we can see how the rain changes the world of Rain World.