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Rain World
The game cover, portraying a slugcat atop a pole next to the game's title
Developer(s)Videocult
Publisher(s)Adult Swim Games
Akupara Games
EngineUnity
Platform(s)
Release
  • PlayStation 4, Windows
    • WW: March 28 2017
  • Nintendo Switch
    • NA: December 13 2018
    • EU: December 27 2018
  • PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
    • WW: July 11 2023
Genre(s)Platform, survival
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Rain World is a 2017 survival-platform video game developed by Videocult and published by Adult Swim Games and Akupara Games. Released for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows in March 2017, and Nintendo Switch in December 2018, players assume control of a "slugcat"—an agile cat-like creature—that is tasked with survival in a derelict and hostile world. The slugcat traverses through the decaying remnants of an industrialized ancient civilization.

The game features a simulated ecosystem in which creatures act independently to the player and perpetually wander through the environment. The slugcat uses debris as weapons to escape from lethal predators, scavenges for food, and tries to reach safe hibernation rooms before the deadly torrential rain arrives. Rain World uses procedural animation and conveys much of its worldbuilding through environmental storytelling, adopting an adaptive lo-fi and electronic soundtrack. Other game modes also include local multiplayer. Beginning in 2011, Rain World was in development for over six years and funded through Kickstarter. The game's developers intended to simulate a real ecosystem and give players little explicit guidance on how to survive so that they would feel like "a rat that lives on subway tracks,"[1] learning to survive in an environment without understanding its higher-level function.

Rain World received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its art design and procedural animation, but expressed significant frustration and apathy towards its brutal difficulty, inconsistent checkpoints, and imprecise controls; some of these concerns were addressed with later updates. Despite the mixed reviews, the game garnered a cult following and modding community. In January 2023, a downloadable content pack titled Rain World: Downpour, which was adapted from a popular community mod, was released for PC and ported to various consoles on July 11, 2023, receiving generally positive reviews from critics. A second content pack titled Rain World: The Watcher was released on March 28, 2025.

Gameplay

[edit]

Rain World is a survival-platformer where the player controls a "slugcat", a white creature visually similar to a cat and slug. The slugcat uses spears and debris to defend itself from predators in the ruined and obtuse ecosystem, where its animation is generated in real time through procedural animation.[2][3][4] As part of a two dimensional and nonlinear game,[5] the slugcat freely crawls through pipes and passages that span across over 1,600[6] screens shown individually; each screen spawns various creatures that wander around the region.[7][8] The slugcat can jump, swim, and climb poles to avoid enemies while foraging for sparsely placed food, which must be consumed to hibernate in scarce, designated safe rooms.[3][7][9] Hibernation spots serve as checkpoints where the player returns to after death; If the player does not reach a shelter before the end of the cycle,[a] rain will come, crushing the slugcat or causing them to drown in the ensuing flood.[3][7][8]

Upon returning to the last checkpoint, the slugcat loses one "karma" level. Karma is gained upon successfully hibernating, and the player can prevent one loss of their current karma level by eating a yellow karma flower. The flower appears in set locations around the map and is re-planted wherever the slugcat dies while under its effects. The slugcat must meet a specific karma level to pass through karma gates, which lie at the borders of the game's regions, allowing further progression.[2][9][11]

Predators range from camouflaged carnivorous plants to large vultures and Komodo dragon-like lizards. Many enemies can kill the slugcat in one attack, and some species have different variations, such as the different colors of lizards, which all have unique characteristics. Creatures spawn from dens and can move freely throughout the region, meaning the player is sometimes faced with problems that they cannot avoid.[3][7][8][9][12] All creatures in the game possess dynamic behavior and exist in the game's world perpetually, even when not on the same screen as the player.[1][4][13] Players are mainly expected to evade predators[14] but are able to injure and kill them by hitting various weak points with spears;[8] this is heavily encouraged in the game's hardest campaign, Hunter, where the slugcat is a carnivore and must eat other creatures to obtain meaningful amounts of food.[15][16] The slugcat, if holding an object in each hand, can swap their places by pressing the grab button twice.[8] Some foods grant status effects when eaten,[3] such as slowing down time.[2]

Along with the default slugcat, the player can choose the Monk and Hunter. As Monk, creatures are less aggressive and the slugcat needs less food to hibernate. Hunter, a carnivore, must also compete with more powerful and hostile creatures as well as a larger appetite. Other game modes also include a local multiplayer arena mode, where players battle each other, and a sandbox mode, where players can freely spawn objects and creatures from the game.[16][17][18] Rain World offers very little to guide the player[2] aside from a worm-like creature who gives some hints about where to find nearby shelters and lore-related events. The player can also view a map to check their location in the vast in-game world.[7][3][8][19]

Downloadable content

[edit]

Rain World has two downloadable content packs (DLCs), the first being Downpour and the second being The Watcher. Tripling the game's world's size, the Downpour expansion adds five new campaigns, which are set during different points in the timeline, and ten new regions. Each campaign features a new slugcat with new abilities.[20][21][22] The Spearmaster can create an infinite amount of spears at will, though penetrating other creatures with the spears is the only way that it can eat. The Rivulet, a semiaquatic slugcat, has an overall increased agility, but must deal with more frequent rain. Gourmand requires a tremendous amount of food to survive, but has access to a crafting system. The Artificer can jump twice and create explosives, but is constantly plagued by tribes of ape-like scavengers that hunt them. The Saint has a grappling tongue that gives them large amounts of mobility, but is unable to throw spears or eat meat.[20]

Downpour also adds three other game modes: Safari allows players freely spectate the ecosystem without worry and control any living creature within it. Challenge mode provides 70 unique scored challenges with preset conditions. Expedition is a semi-roguelike mode with random missions that award experience points upon completion.[21][22][23] Downpour's release was also accompanied a local-coop mode and the free Rain World Remix upgrade, which added accessibility options, ways to customize game difficulty, and better modding support.[21][22]

The Watcher DLC adds the eponymous slugcat, multiple new regions, and creatures.[24][25] The content pack's additions are significantly larger than the original game.[26]

Plot

[edit]

Much of Rain World's worldbuilding is communicated through its environment as a form of environmental storytelling,[1][10]: 9:19  dreams, and holograms from a worm-like creature that guides the player.[3] The Monk and default slugcat—called the Survivor—follow the same outline; when a group of slugcats is caught off-guard by the rain, the Survivor is flushed into a pit, becoming separated.[9][27] The Monk is the Survivor's sibling and chases after the Survivor.

Eventually, the slugcat stumbles upon Five Pebbles, a massive, infected, semi-biotic supercomputer called an "iterator". After climbing above the clouds and traversing through the bulk of his megastructure, the slugcat meets his avatar. Pebbles explains that, like all organisms, the slugcat is trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth and infers that the slugcat wants it to end. He directs it to a place where it can free itself from the "great cycle". Following his guidance, the slugcat travels underground and enters a sea of "Void Fluid" where it can ascend, escaping the cycle.

Information about the setting can be obtained by bringing pearls—that contain logs and other information—to another damaged iterator named Looks to the Moon, whose structure had collapsed and submerged into the shoreline.

The Hunter's narrative is a prequel. In-game, the Hunter starts with a pearl, a "Neuron Fly", and a 20-cycle time limit, caused by an infection which is slowly killing them. The Hunter delivers the Neuron Fly to Looks to the Moon, reviving her from the collapse and restoring some of her basic functions.

Downpour

[edit]
Promotional art for Downpour. From left to right: Spearmaster, Rivulet, Saint, Gourmand, Artificer

Although Downpour's story is not told in a sequential fashion, this section is in chronological order.

  • When a cancer-like collection of cysts infects Five Pebbles' structure, Pebbles increases his water intake and angrily ceases communication with other iterators. Another iterator sends Spearmaster to carry a pearl to Pebbles, telling him to reactivate his communication and lower his water intake. However, the message is refused and they are expelled. When shown the pearl, a functional and standing Looks to the Moon overwrites the message and orders Spearmaster to reach the nearest communications array. The message states that, because Moon shares a water source with Pebbles, his actions have made her collapse imminent.
  • The Artificer witnesses their children's death to a tribe of scavengers. When meeting Five Pebbles, Pebbles sees use in the Artificer, permitting them to enter the ancient city atop his structure to wipe out the scavenger population that has overrun it. Artificer massacres the scavengers within the city and defeats their chieftain. Lacking water to prevent overheating, Looks to the Moon's structure collapses, leaving her in a comatose state.
  • Gourmand's campaign takes place after the Hunter's. While scouting for food, Gourmand meets Five Pebbles, who infers their unwillingness to ascend. Pebbles unlocks the exit to another region and allows them to leave.
  • The Rivulet's campaign takes place after the Survivor and Monk campaigns. The Rivulet, a semiaquatic slugcat, must survive through incredibly short rain cycles.[20] When the Rivulet enters Pebbles' barely functioning structure, they take the "rarefaction cell" that sustains his power. Without the cell, Five Pebbles accepts his eventual death, and requests that the Rivulet deliver the cell to Looks to the Moon.[b] Travelling through Moon's submerged superstructure, the Rivulet activates the cell, causing Moon to regain further functions and communication. Moon initiates a broadcast to the local iterator group and Five Pebbles, communicating her revival.
  • The Saint's campaign takes place many cycles into the future, when the rain has given way to snow that permanently envelops the world. After emerging from the Void Sea and awaking on the surface, the Saint visits multiple "echoes", the ghosts of the ancient civilization that have failed to ascend. The Saint eventually gains the ability to ascend creatures. It attempts to ascend itself, but is instead transported to the hell-like region called Rubicon, full of now-lethal void fluid. Once it reaches the top, the Saint enters the Void Sea; wings branch off of the slugcat resembling that of an echo, and it wakes up again at the starting location.

Development

[edit]

Before creating Rain World, Joar Jakobsson was a graphic designer in Sweden who taught himself how to animate sprites. He had played few games with little industry experience[14] when development began in 2011.[1] He started with a sketch of an unnamed creature and posted development updates on his YouTube channel, with one YouTube commenter dubbing the creature a "slugcat".[14][28][29]: 4:25  Jakobsson had a previous interest in abandoned environments and what they reveal about the people who previously occupied them.[14] Partly inspired by his feelings of foreignness while living as an exchange student in Seoul, South Korea, a core idea of the gameplay was to recreate the life of "the rat in Manhattan". This rat understands how to find food, hide, and survive in the subway, but does not understand the subway's structural purpose or why it was built.[1][23]

Originally, Rain World was conceived to be a one-room multiplayer platformer where the player would hunt one prey as they run from one bigger predator.[30]: 5:05  The game strayed from that initial vision as it was developed and expanded, taking many "unexpected twists and turns," but had always retained the concept of the slugcat[31] and the "grimy, wet industrial environment".[5] Jakobsson and his development partner, James Therrien (also known as James Primate),[32] hoped that players would similarly feel as if they were close to making sense of the game's abstraction of an industrial environment without fully understanding.[14] Jakobsson did not intend for the game's extreme difficulty which resulted in its mixed reception.[33]: 12:00 

Jakobsson designed Rain World's enemies to live their own lives, in which they hunt for food and struggle to survive, rather than serve as obstacles for the player. Enemies dynamically wander around without a set path,[34] and in final playtests a week before release, the developers noticed how some players became more or less interested in the game based on how lucky they were with enemy behavior.[1] When inquired, Primate explained that he disliked traditional enemy behavior that solely acted as an adversary to the player, preferring the predators act like hungry animals in a real ecosystem likewise to that of the slugcat, eliciting empathy in the player.[1][35] In a Playstation Blog post, Jakobsson added that the creatures in the ecosystem "are also individuals that can learn to recognize you." He took this concept into account when developing the scavengers in particular; they are initially distrustful of the slugcat, but eventually ally with it once trust is established.[36][37]: 8:28  Placed near the bottom-middle of the food chain,[1] the slugcat is intended to avoid combat while evade enemies through stealth and flight.[14][38]

Jakobsson served as the game's artist, designer, and programmer. The game was initially written in the Lingo programming language before switching to C# early on with its own independent game engine.[5] Jakobsson's levels are made by hand in a standalone level editor. The designer brushes recurring, cloned elements, such as plants and chains onto the map, as well as combining and processing shadows.[14] At one point, the original release of Rain World was planned to include a multiplayer mode with separate story and custom modes.[14][39]: 7:14  The development team crowdfunded some development costs via Kickstarter in early 2014 and quickly surpassed its goal, being greenlit in five days and picked up by Adult Swim Games;[38][40][39]: 0:45 [41]: 2:14  By early 2015, about four years into development, the team had switched to the Unity game engine and released a test version of the game to its Kickstarter backers.[42] A seven minute trailer was released by the end of the year.[43]

Music and sound design

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Primate wrote Rain World's soundtrack, handled the indie studio's business,[14] and designed levels, becoming his first experience in directly developing gameplay.[1][5] Primate first found the game on an indie game Internet forum and sent Jakobsson 12 tracks as a successful pitch after experiencing a nightmare where "the game came out and was filled with garbage music." Though Rain World's soundtrack was originally chiptune,[44] Primate felt that "Arcade bleeps and bloops and retro concepts" did not fit with the naturalistic mood of the game, and instead aimed for a more "moody, immersive atmosphere".[14] The final product resulted in a lo-fi and electronic soundtrack. He and his musician partner Lydia Esrig turned to field recordings of urban ambiance for both the soundtrack and sound design, along with litter and metal for otherworldly sounds.[44][5] Primate aimed for the music to approximate the game's eclectic visuals, which mix industrial, science fiction, jungle, and various architectural elements.[5]

Without the use of traditional character dialogue and narration, Rain World's story was partly communicated through its soundtrack to contribute to its environmental storytelling.[5] The soundtrack of the beginning of the game uses primitive drums based on the slugcat's feelings of fear and hunger, while eventually transitioning to describe new areas.[14] Rain World has over 3.5 hours of recorded music across 160 tracks. When the slugcat is chased by a predator, between eight and twelve tracks will simultaneously layer to create ambiance and respond to the slugcat's in-game context, which Primate names "threat music".[44][5][45]: 0:24  Although, while the creatures of Rain World are simple animals like the slugcat, the torrential rain was designed to represent "oblivion incarnate", a threat that no creature could survive against. To contribute to this, a collection of sampled rainstorms with varying intensity layer up as the rain develops. The storm's climax introduces pipe organs that give a "totally biblical wrath-of-god vibe."[5]

Release

[edit]
The slugcat swims through water to escape from a predator.
Rain World received early attention for the "uncanny fluidity" of its animations

The team announced that it was in the last phases of development in early 2016[46] and posted another trailer on December 5.[47] The animation of Rain World was popularized on social media[48][49][50] in praise of what IGN attributed to its "uncanny fluidity", contributing to the game's popularity pre-release.[3] Primate specifically noted one GIF that was posted on Twitter and retweeted over 15,000 times, though this popularity didn't contribute to Rain World's sales.[51] A final trailer was posted on March 8, 2017, revealing its release date to be later that month.[6] Rain World was developed by Videocult, published by Adult Swim Games, and released for PlayStation 4 and Windows on March 28, 2017.[7][52][53] Previews compared Rain World's design elements to other games, including the difficulty of Super Meat Boy, the environment and soundtrack of Fez,[14][27] and the puzzle-platforming of Metroid and Oddworld.[54]

After its release, the game received an update to alleviate its high difficulty in reaction to the game's reception.[55] Videocult also announced another series of major content updates which were planned for release later in 2017. The update was slated to include the local multiplayer arena mode, featuring over 50 new rooms, and the Monk and Hunter, which make the game easier and harder respectively.[17][18] The update eventually released in beta on November for PC[56] and finished officially on December 11, 2017;[57] the update was also ported to PlayStation 4 on December 21, 2018.[16] Following speculation in January 2018,[58] Videocult and Adult Swim Games ported Rain World to the Nintendo Switch platform on December 13 in the United States and December 27 in Europe.[59] Limited Run Games released a physical edition of Rain World for the PlayStation 4 later that month.[16]

In January 2022, Videocult announced that due to conflicts with Adult Swim Games, Rain World would be published by Akupara Games from then on after a prolonged legal dispute.[60][61] On March 28 of that year, the first DLC was officially announced, to be published by Akupara Games.[62] Titled Rain World: Downpour, it adds five new slugcat characters with their own storylines, over 1000 new rooms across ten new regions, and three new game modes.[63] Downpour is an expansion of the "More Slugcats" mod and was developed by 40 community modders over the course of 5 years.[20][60][64] It was released for PC on January 19, 2023[65][66][67] and for consoles on July 11, 2023.[68]

According to lead programmer Andrew Marrero, development of Downpour had started a few months after the original game released. A major theme of the DLC was the passage of time and how the hostile world transforms as new catastrophic events occur, placing the campaigns across a timeline. Regarding the new game modes, Marrero intended for the Challenge mode to teach players the game's mechanics. The structured challenges with pre-determined tasks act as an easier practice than the "spontaneous challenges" of the unpredictable campaigns. Lee Moriya, the creator of the Expedition game mode, said that the given quests encouraged players to do things they wouldn't have done normally and rewarding them with experience points. Marrero created Safari mode to allow players to observe the simulated ecosystem without the stress of surviving or being pursued.[23]

On March 28, 2024, the development of a second DLC titled "Rain World: The Watcher" was announced with a teaser trailer, featuring multiple new regions, creatures, and a new playable slugcat named the Watcher, also being dubbed the Nightcat.[69][70][71] The DLC released on March 28, 2025[72][24] with some content also adapted from multiple community mods.[25]

Reception

[edit]

The game, before obtaining cult status[20][80] and a modding community,[60] received mixed reviews on its release, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.[81][82] Reviewers praised the game's art design and criticized the harshness of its gameplay mechanics,[2][3][7][9] particularly its unpredictable deaths, ruthless enemies, and time-consuming hibernation requirements.[9][76] Eurogamer compared its savage, survival elements to Tokyo Jungle.[8]

Rain World's punishing gameplay frustrated reviewers,[2][3][7][9] who often descended into apathy.[2][9] Considering the random enemy spawns, one-hit kills, infrequent game saves, frequent repetition, crushing rain, some inexplicable enemy movements, and sometimes clumsy controls, IGN wrote that any of the game's challenging elements taken alone would be "tough but fair", but when considered together, "the odds are stacked so high against the player that it risks toppling the entire structure of the game".[3] Reviewers were bored by the repeated navigation of rooms with random enemies after each death, which tempered their strong urge to explore.[3][7] Polygon's reviewer was miserable following the loss of her multi-hour progression. She wrote about futility as a central tenet of Rain World, and felt that she was not given the proper tools to survive.[2] Reviewers lamented, in particular, how the slugcat's jerky animations and imprecise throwing mechanics led to many unwarranted deaths.[2][3][8][7][13]

Multiple reviewers concluded that while some hardcore players might enjoy the tough gameplay, Rain World excluded a large audience with its design choices,[3][8][7][11] as its choice of emergent enemy strategy would feel unfair to most players.[13] Regarding the game's controls, Paste Magazine compared them to Devil May Cry due to their required specificity which would've frustrated even the most experienced of gamers, especially in partnership with the game's checkpoints.[11] Rock, Paper, Shotgun called the game's checkpointing among the worst in modern platformers, and its challenge, unlike the similarly punishing Dark Souls, without purpose.[7] Rain World's karmic gates, which require players to have a positive hibernate to death ratio, were arbitrary goals "disrespectful" of the player's time, according to GameSpot.[9] Making players trudge through an area a dozen times, IGN argued, is "antithetical" in a game in which exploration itself is the reward.[3] In contrast, PC Gamer's reviewer, with time, began to see Rain World's cumbersome controls less as "bad design" than as "thematically appropriate", given the game's intent to disempower the player.[13] Paste Magazine concluded that Rain World was a "beautiful, forward-thinking game" that should've been "a little more accessible" in regards to the game's "puzzles" that gave only "half of the pieces."[11]

Some reviewers fondly recalled serendipitous in-game encounters as they learned the game environment's unwritten rules.[7][9][83] Not knowing how foreign figures would react, Rock, Paper, Shotgun's reviewer treated new encounters as puzzles. This experimentation led to moments of fearful scrambling across a room to avoid a new, encroaching enemy type, and discovering that other enemies are harmless if left alone.[7] Rain World was abundant with opportunities for a player to demonstrate ingenuity and improvisation, according to GameSpot's reviewer, whose highlights included making a mouse into a dark room's lantern, using weapons as climbable objects, and luring enemies into battle to distract from the slugcat's presence.[9] PCGamesN, praising this element, believed it was lacking in many other games.[83] Nintendo World Report, who reviewed the game in January 2019, believed the unique creature behavior deserved its "own level of praise" which differentiated it from the "typical goombas" of other video games.[79] Those critics considered these mysterious, perceptive interactions to be among the game's best features,[7][9][83][79] though far outweighed by Rain World's other punishing game mechanics.[9]

During development, Rain World animations became popular on social media for their "uncanny fluidity", which reviewers continued to praise at release. IGN described slugcat's animations as beautiful and reactive to the angle and physics of movement, from clinging to poles to squeezing through ventilation. The reviewer said it was among the best aesthetics in a 2D game, with each screen showing abundant detail and meticulous craft.[3] Likewise, Eurogamer described the "naturalist movement" of both the slugcat and predators as pleasing.[8] The graphics were more interesting than beautiful to Polygon's reviewer, who also praised the limited color palette's role in distinguishing the slugcat, prey, and enemies from the environment.[2] While some journalists compared the game's aesthetic to that of Limbo, Rock, Paper, Shotgun's reviewer felt that Rain World had more in common with Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee's aesthetic: both featured similarly dark yet attractive worlds, scary yet fascinating characters, frequent inter-enemy conflict, and frustrating or masochistic controls; Oddworld, though, had more frequent saves.[7] Rain World successfully depicted "the cruel indifference of nature", according to GameSpot. Its imaginative and compelling landscape—surreal inhabitants in a bleak, alien atmosphere—recalled the spirit of games like BioShock and Abzû, in which the reviewer was too attracted to the artistic detail to contemplate the credulity of the man-made environment.[9] Calling it one of the best games of 2017, PCGamesN was also pleased with the game's narrative, describing how Rain World's "gruelling survival story" turned into "a sci-fi epic that has you meditate on both the futility and beauty of life".[83] In a review of Downpour, PC Gamer summarized the original game as a "truly daunting game, but a mesmerizing one to inhabit".[20]

Downpour was well received by Rock, Paper, Shotgun and PC Gamer. Rock, Paper, Shotgun said the gameplay experience was less confusing than the original game due to the build-up of guides, as well as enjoying the new game modes which allowed new ways of approaching the game. Comparing the expansion to the 2022 video game Stray, they enjoyed the immersion of the new slugcats and their struggles to survive, but still considered the gameplay unfair. The reviewer recognized that the unexplained gameplay elements was one of Rain World's core elements, and concluded that Downpour reintroduced Rain World as "one of gaming’s most fearsome and unpredictable beasts".[65] PC Gamer's reviewer explained how the DLC's easier accessibility made the game "finally click." According to them, the new content was a "monstrously huge package" and a "new beginning" for Rain World in prediction of future community mods.[20]

Accolades

[edit]

Rain World was nominated for "Best Platformer" in PC Gamer's 2017 Game of the Year Awards,[84] "Best Platformer", "Best Art Direction", and "Most Innovative" in IGN's Best of 2017 Awards.[85][86][87]

It was also nominated for the Statue of Liberty Award for Best World at the New York Game Awards 2018,[88] and for "Excellence in Audio" at the Independent Games Festival Competition Awards.[89][90]

Notes

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  1. ^ Days are called "cycles".[3][10]: 1:45 
  2. ^ The player may meet Five Pebbles before taking the rarefaction cell. If this is the case, Five Pebbles will request that the Rivulet take it, knowing he will die.

References

[edit]
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  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Hawkins, Janine (March 27, 2017). "Rain World review". Polygon. Archived from the original on March 29, 2017. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Skrebels, Joe (March 27, 2017). "Rain World Review". IGN. Archived from the original on March 29, 2017. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
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  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Caldwell, Brendan (March 27, 2017). "Wot I Think: Rain World". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on March 28, 2017. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Parkin, Simon (March 29, 2017). "Rain World review". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on April 18, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
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  11. ^ a b c d Kunzelman, Cameron (March 31, 2017). "Rain World is Unique and Beautiful, But Inaccessible". Paste Magazine. Retrieved March 29, 2025.
  12. ^ Caldwell, Brendan (March 30, 2017). "The deadly creatures of Rain World - a bestiary in GIFs". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
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  15. ^ Prescott, Shaun (June 30, 2017). "Rain World expansion will usher in difficulty options and multiplayer". PC Gamer. Retrieved March 29, 2025.
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  17. ^ a b Prescott, Shaun (July 30, 2017). "Rain World expansion will usher in difficulty options and multiplayer". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on December 13, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2017.
  18. ^ a b Caldwell, Brendan (June 30, 2017). "Rain World expansion to bring easy mode & multiplayer". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved April 2, 2025.
  19. ^ Purslow, Matt (December 31, 2015). "Rain World trailer reveals slugcat's memory map". PCGamesN. Retrieved April 2, 2025.
  20. ^ a b c d e f g Dominic Tarason (January 19, 2023). "Fans of survival sim Rain World have spent 5 years making an expansion so big, it's practically a sequel". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on April 1, 2023. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
  21. ^ a b c Smith, Graham (October 27, 2022). "Rain World: Downpour will bring co-op, mod support and new slugcats in early 2023". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved March 29, 2025.
  22. ^ a b c Ollie, Reynolds (June 16, 2023). "Rain World: Downpour DLC Promises More Brutal Gameplay This Coming July". Nintendo Life. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
  23. ^ a b c Couture, Joel (April 13, 2023). "Channeling calm and creating new ways to play in Rain World: Downpour". Game Developer. Retrieved April 3, 2025.
  24. ^ a b Allsop, Ken (March 29, 2025). "Masterful, unique Metroidvania Rain World is back with a brand new DLC". PCGamesN. Retrieved April 2, 2025.
  25. ^ a b Bolding, Jonathan (March 31, 2025). "Cult classic Rain World has dropped a new expansion about its most mysterious slugcat yet". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 2, 2025.
  26. ^ Peachey, Jack (March 26, 2025). "Rain World Developer Says The Watcher DLC is 'Significantly Larger Than The Original'". Game Rant. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  27. ^ a b Peel, Jeremy (March 13, 2017). "Survival platformer Rain World is coming out like umbrellas in a downpour on March 28". PCGamesN. Retrieved April 2, 2025.
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Further reading

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Media related to Rain World at Wikimedia Commons

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