[Introduction]
Risk of Rain describes itself an as action platformer with roguelike elements. I would add to this and also call it a wild ride, because once it gets going, it doesn't stop until you reach the end. At a certain point, depending on your character and loadout, standing still may well be a death sentence.
In any event, and in any playthrough, from start to finish, you will begin with nothing and eventually become what amounts to an extinction-level event... and that's what I love about this game.
[First Impressions]
A learning experience from the very moment you step out of your escape pod. You won't know what to expect from the locals, you won't know what each item does or which of them synergise with your character. Everything is nebulous, and this makes the game curiously immersive; you know no more than the character you're playing as. Frantically trying to make sense of everything is an integral part of your first few playthroughs, because even if you don't survive a run, your experience does.
[Development]
But before I get into the game itself, I feel it warrants mentioning that it was not only made by pretty much two guys, Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, but was essentially a student project (in fact, it received the Best Student Game award at the 2014 Independent Games Festival). With some help from Matthew Griffin (who contributed with multiplayer code) and Chris Christodoulou (who supplied a stellar soundtrack), they managed to create something that not only works but excels. And, setting the groundwork for Hopoo Games' famous willingness to positively interact with their players and fans, Risk of Rain was partially player funded. Yes, the core game was funded and created by Duncan and Paul, but every addition on top was made possible through the generous donations of prospective players.
Supposedly, it began as a tower defense game, but eventually evolved into so much more. Of course, this is not the only thing that changed during development; in fact, there's a plethora of content that never made it into the game for one reason or another. While some of this is easily explained, such as model redesigns and redundancy in relation to other elements that perform the same function, the majority really seems like it might have made for worthwhile additions to the game - if nothing else, perhaps as post-release content patches. There were going to be "Security Chests" (which is just a mimic under a different name), something called an "Abscinder" (which was a centipede-like boss creature that could reach between platforms) and a character called "Pyro" (who, naturally, was equipped with a flamethrower) to name just a few. The full list of cut content isn't hard to find, and is worth checking out; part because it's a fascinating part of game design in general, part to mourn what could have been.
Even so, although development has stopped without the cut content being added later, the game continues to be supported to a degree, even receiving an Xbox One port as late as August 30, 2019, almost 6 years after its original release.
[Game Mechanics]
Risk of Rain is pretty straightford insofar as the player's goal:
Kill enemies to get money. Use money to open chests and get items. Use items to kill more enemies. Rinse and repeat until you feel ready to activate the level's teleporter, which will spawn a boss. Defeat the boss, teleport to the next level, repeat. Keep doing this until you reach the ancient teleporter, which will take you back to your ship, where you will face the game's final boss.
Why does the ancient teleporter take you back to your ship? More on that later.
In the meantime, the game is simultaneously fairly simple and surprisingly complex.
Simple, because it involved only 12 keys on a keyboard, 5 of which are for moving and jumping, and can be described in the most basic terms as running, shooting and looting.
Complex, because your 12 characters have 4 abilities each (many of which are situational), each of the game's staggering 110 items are of wildly varying usefulness to each character, there are no less than 10 game-modifying artifacts, and there are variations to each area, so you often have to formulate strategies on the fly.
"On the fly" could even be taken literally, as one of the items available for pickup is a feather that allows you to double jump, granting an extra jump for each additional feather acquired. Other examples include a ukulele that shoots lightning; a giant snowflake that shreds enemies; a scarf that gives a flat evasion chance, apparently extending to god damn SOLAR FLARES; a mining drill that shoots lasers; a portable marble gate that can recall you to its location; a happy mask... you get the idea. There are a lot of items, and most of them have interesting or at least useful effects. Each of them come with an associated "shipping log," giving some neat flavor details in addition to describing the item's effects.
This might lead you to believe it's a good idea to linger in an area and get as much money as possible so you can open all the chests and get all the fancy gear, but this isn't always the case. Admittedly, it's a lot more interesting, and usually a lot more fun, but the game has a pretty substantial incentive for you to not do that: every second you spend planetside, the planet tries harder to kill you. The higher the difficulty, the less time you have before the game gets harder. On Drizzle, the easiest, it scales in increments of 9 minutes. On Rainstorm, you're cut down to 4 minutes 30 seconds. On Monsoon, you're at the minimum of 3 minutes. Don't think that just because the difficulty bar up in the corner has filled, it means it won't get any harder. It absolutely does, and the game will literally be laughing at you as it keeps ramping up.
The difficulty scaling is more than just an increase in numbers, too. It operates off a similar concept to the Left 4 Dead AI Narrator, in the sense that the Risk of Rain "Narrator" or Narrator equivalent is allotted a number of "points," effectively serving as a sort of currency. Each enemy type costs points, with more dangerous enemies costing more, particularly the elite variants that come with elemental bonuses, such as freezing explosions on death, leaving trails of fire, that sort of thing. The more the difficulty scales up, the more points the Narrator gets, and the more powerful enemies you have to face, eventually reaching a point where bosses will spawn without activating the level's teleporter.
Another part of the difficulty, although something of a meta-part of it, is the confusion I mentioned earlier in the review. In this regard, the game transcends the fourth wall, because in addition to the built-in elements, you also have to relearn a few things that might be taken for granted in other games. The biggest issue for many is the damage system, which could probably be described as unconventional at best. You see, where a lot of games will tell you in fairly simple terms how much damage you're doing, Risk of Rain uses a percentage system. What does "shoot twice for 2x60% damage" mean? It's not made any less confusing by the fact that damage to enemies is displayed. The explanation is deceptively simple: each character has a set base damage (say, 12 damage for the Commando), and the percentage is drawn from this number. I suspect they chose to display a percentage on character abilities instead of raw numbers because damage increases with character level, but this is a small comfort, because the base damage is not immediately accessible to the player.
Now, you could just play through the game once, kill the final boss and leave it at that. If that's what you want, good for you, but you're sincerely missing out on what the Danes call "det gode lort," namely unlocking all of the aforementioned 110 items, the 12 characters, the item logs and the monster logs. After all, what's the point of a roguelike if you aren't going to play it more than once?
And, of course, dying is part of a roguelike as well. Risk of Rain kinda takes that to the next level by not only recording how many times you've died, but also assigning you a nemesis: the monster type responsible for most of your deaths. Mine is the humble Lemurian, if you care to know. In addition, a bunch of other stats get tracked as well - total cash earned, total kills, total distance ran, highest item stack, those sorts of things. Completely unnecessary and largely inconsequential, but a neat feature nonetheless.
As a final note on the gameplay, a word of warning:
While I praise the character variety, be aware that this also means your mileage may vary. Because earnest effort has been made to keep the characters as different as possible (in my experience, none of them play similarly enough that I felt any of them were redundant), it is almost entirely unavoidable that players will find that certain characters just aren't fun to play. In my case, as the most immediate example available to me, the Sniper is at the bottom rung, because the focus on precision and lack of mobility makes me feel like a glass cannon bolted to the floor. Others have issues with the Miner for his extraordinarily short range, the Enforcer for his sluggishness or Acrid for his unique reliance on damage over time.
Granted, each character has its strength, but sometimes it feels less like a strength and more like a niche to me, and not always a niche I enjoy.
[Graphics]
There's not much to say in terms of appearance, other than that they went for a sort of retro pixel style. It does bear mentioning, however, that the spritework is excellent, because enemies have recognisable silhouettes that help quickly convey what you're up against at a glance, at least when you've gained enough experience to know what to expect from different enemy types.
It's nothing fancy, but what's there is solid and gets the job done without causing confusion to the player through visual clutter, except perhaps when shit really hits the fan - but at that point, you probably have enough killing implements strapped to your body that you won't have to worry about any particular enemies smaller than a 2 story house, and the rest should still be easy enough to distinguish from the horde of creatures out for your blood.
While it probably goes without saying, I will briefly touch on the elephant in the room: if you don't like pixels and sprites and the like, then the game will probably be an eyesore to you, and consequently not worth your time.
[Story]
It's entirely possible to play through Risk of Rain 500 times and never so much as consider there might be a story. If you're more interested in the crunch than the fluff, then nothing stops you from ignoring it, because it's almost entirely told through environment, context and logs.
To make a short story even shorter, you are SURVIVOR. Your ship, the UES Contact Light, crashes on a planet. During the crash, its cargo of strange and sometimes downright irresponsibly dangerous items get scattered across the planet surface. The locals are universally hostile towards you for no discernible reason, so you're forced to fight back. As you trek through a variety of odd biomes, you pick up the cargo from the Contact Light and decide to put it to good use. Sometimes this means strapping a gun to your gun, sometimes it means bringing along a teddy bear, sometimes it means injecting yourself with super stim packs, and sometimes it means strapping a live tesla coil to your body and hoping for the best. What could go wrong? And what choice do you have? You're only doing what's necessary to survive. You just want to get off the planet. You just want to go home.
[SPOILERS]
The inadvertent calamity is you, the player.
Remember earlier, when I said we'd come back to why the ancient teleporter takes you back to your ship? Well, if you pay attention during the intro, Providence, the final boss, doesn't just teleport onto your ship via some magical means; he uses a teleporter identical to the ones from the planet.
We've been stealing things from the planet.
That's why we have field logs studying the locals.
That's why Providence calls us monsters when we kill him.
We're the bad guys. The locals have only experienced hostility from us, so of course they reciprocate it. The player characters effectively represent an invasive and hostile force of raiders and thieves, come to pillage their homes.
[Pros]
- It's a roguelike, with all the ups and downs this entails
- Controls are easy to learn
- At 70.11MB, it takes seconds to download and install
- Substantial variety of characters, items and enemies, particularly considering the budget and team size
- Unlocking aforementioned characters, items and enemy logs provide replay value
- Solid single player experience
- Multiplayer supporting up to 4 players by default (but the game files are modifiable, so if you know what you're doing, there is, theoretically, no limit)
- Cheap, frequently on sale, has a discounted 4-pack bundle
- Unexpectedly interesting story element
- Fantastic soundtrack
- Mostly bug-free!
[Cons]
- It's a roguelike, with all the ups and downs this entails
- Controls may be difficult to master
- Damage system is confusing
- Graphics may be off-putting
- Some players may find some characters uninteresting or downright unenjoyable
- If you have no interest in unlock completion, replay value may diminish
- No item sharing in multiplayer
- Not completely bug free
[Conclusion]
If you're into roguelikes, unlock completion, pixel art and... accidental genocide, I guess, then check out Risk of Rain. Moral compass optional.
[Score]
8/10
/DUX
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