SitRep: Rain World (PAX build)

Title: Rain World
Developer: Videocult
Platforms: PC, Mac
Releasing Summer 2015 (Steam)
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I've written about Rain World four times on my blog. I participate in the game's devlog regularly and update the Rain World thread on NeoGAF. Suffice to say, I'm a big fan and can say, without a doubt, that it's my most anticipated indie game. So after following Rain World's progress for months, I was very excited to finally play the latest build, which will be available at PAX and soon for Kickstarter backers.

First a refresher: Rain World is a platformer with a focus on stealth, exploration, atmosphere, and AI. It's set in a world once inhabited by some intelligent civilization; now only the local ecosystem roams and thrives in the weathered, ruined industrial landscape. You play as a slugcat, a lithe agile creature, both predator to the fluttering bats that migrate throughout the world, and prey to the beasts that hunt you such as deadly lizards and terrifying alien vultures. Rain batters the surface periodically, crushing and killing everything, so between downpours, you need to leave your den and gather food while evading and dealing with predators. Rain World's procedural animations and atmospheric visuals bring this struggle for survival to life.

The PAX build consists of four regions out of a planned twelve: the overgrowth-choked rooms of Suburban, the dank water-logged tunnels of Drainage System, the rusted machinery of Heavy Industrial, and the open spaces and heights of Chimney Canopy. Lizards roam the lower regions, leeches swarm in the sewer water, and vultures rule the skies around the canopy. Your goal in this build is simple: explore, eat bats, and return to your shelter before the rain comes.

Visually, Rain World has progressed massively since the early screenshots and videos seen on the game's Kickstarter page over a year ago. This alien world feels alive, as shadows shift across the background, water drips from above, and the sky rumbles. The game's ecosystem cements the atmosphere. Each lizard looks unique, with different body sizes, spines, ridges, tail turfs, and each species reacts to each other and to your slugcat in their own unique way. White lizards blend into the environment, surprising you with their chameleon-like tongue, while heavy green lizards charge forward with unexpected speed. Blue lizards scale walls and ceilings and pink lizards chase you down relentlessly.

Enter a room and you might see lizards of the same species fighting for dominance or hunting another lizard. But lizards pale in comparison to the vultures. These aerial creatures swoop down from above, their fleeting shadow your only warning before they descend for the kill. Using biological thrusters and their tentacled appendages as both wings and walking limbs, vultures are fast, agile, near-unstoppable apex predators. As a slugcat, your best options are to flee and hide or...better yet, lure a lizard into the vulture's waiting mandibles.

The world of Rain World isn't the only aspect that's been improved. Your slugcat is more agile than ever before, able to backflip over lizards, roll and perform high jumps, and chain these new maneuvers together. These skills are your greatest strength, allowing you to deftly evade predators and scurry out of sight or provide some breathing room to nail a devastating spear throw. Jumping and climbing around is fun thanks to the fluid animations, and using your agility to avoid or fight predators makes each encounter a tense game of cat-and-mouse.

Rain World is far from complete. New creatures and regions in development, such as the pack-hunting yellow lizards and the Garbage Wastes, promise to evolve the game even further. But even now, as an alpha with a few (albeit quite large) regions and species, it's already an impressive and engaging experience.

You can follow Rain World's progress and find many more GIFs and in-depth development updates in the game's TIGForum devlog. You can also add Rain World to your wishlist on Steam.

Q&A: Joar Jakobsson on Rain World

By now, if you've been reading my blog, you've seen my previous coverage of Rain World. The game is probably one of my most anticipated indies, besides SuperHOT, Distance, and Hyper Light Drifter. Joar Jakobsson - the man behind Rain World's concept, programming, art, and design - was kind enough to answer a few questions about the game and its development.
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What inspired you to start a career as an indie developer?

I have always been fiddling with games on the side, but it has always been more of a hobby rather than anything else. I like the game medium because of the interactivity, it’s possible to build worlds that people can actually explore, driven by their own curiosity.

You’ve been developing Rain World for three long years. How does the current game compare to your original vision?

Hehe where do you put the line for “the original version”? I remember many different versions of rain world, both from when it was a few boxes moving around in a maze and later versions as well, that also looked quite different from what we have now, save from the main character. I think the Movement Prototype* I uploaded way back is still around on the internet, if you can find that you can try your hands at a very early version of Rain World. If it really was, though, the world of Rain World wasn’t really invented back then. Short answer - pretty much everything

In your TIGForum devlog, you’ve said that the art style was inspired by graffiti and old cartoons, but what were the inspirations for the world and gameplay?

Oh, that’s a hard one. The world was actually originally intended to have more of a resemblance to the sources of inspiration you mentioned, but drifted to something slightly more realistic. You can still see remnants of those styles though - the monochromatic palette of the levels comes from the old cartoon style, and many of the plants are supposed to borrow part of their shapes from graffiti ornaments. Gameplay has never really had those influences, inspiration for gameplay would rather be something like the harshness of nature.

As a fan of stealth games, I find the AI developed for the game quite fascinating. Was this focus on AI your intention from the beginning? Has it been difficult developing such a layered system?

I have always been interested in AI, so working that into the game has come naturally. Because the game always has had stealth elements, a somewhat decent AI was a necessity. I don’t really know if it was difficult - rather frustrating. Like, there is no mind-bending mathematics going on, just a lot of glitch fixing and endless iteration.

Given the reactive and adaptive nature of the AI, have the creatures ever behaved in an emergent way that surprised you?

Sometimes they do surprise me, but it's rarely mind-blowing because their actions are so limited. The lizards' choices in any given situation are basically all about where to move - the world doesn't allow for many more interactions than that as it's not a puzzle game with a lot of doors and levers and the like. I have tried to get a few interesting interactions in there though, such as lizards occasionally picking up objects and the like. I'd love to spend more time on AI interactions, but it might be a balance where you don't want to end up with the lizards doing so much other stuff that they don't have time to hunt you.

Currently Rain World seems to revolve around a simple gameplay loop: collect bats, evade lizards, return to shelter before the rain falls. Do you have plans to expand these mechanics, perhaps introduce new mechanics, in the full game?

Yeah, followers of the devlog will know about the pups. Basically the game will revolve around the cycle you mentioned, but when you find a few orphaned pups things will get mixed up a bit.

Reading through your devlog on TIGForums, it seems like the relationship between slugcat, lizard, and bat is core to the mechanics and game’s fundamental structure, and at this point, seems finely tuned and well balanced. How would the addition of new creatures and enemies affect and enhance this core system?

This trio of creatures will always be the core of Rain World, throwing in something else might wreck the balance. I do have ideas of other creatures, but they would not be as reoccuring as the lizards and flies. Rather they would be placed in special locations on the world map, and feature as occasional encounters, to spice up and bring excitement to exploring the world.

Also, was the focus on such a small number of creatures due to the limits of your current engine or just an extension of your vision for the game?

It’s sometimes difficult to keep apart limitations and vision, especially in game making where you can only get a good artistic result if you very consciously work with your technical limitations rather than against them. That said, there has never really been a technical limitation to the number of creatures, but it has rather been a question of development time. I early on decided that I wanted few, well made creatures rather than many species with less care given to each one of them.

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You can support Rain World on Kickstarter, and follow its development on TIGForums. The game was recently Greenlit on Steam.

*Here is the download link for that early Movement Protoype (.rar)*
There are no enemies and you can't balance on poles, but you can climb around and see how the slugcat moves and animates. Player 1 controls are Arrows for movement, K to jump. Player 2 controls are ESDF for movement, Q to jump

SitRep: Rain World

Title: Rain World
Developers: Joar Jakobsson, James Primate
Platforms: PC, Mac
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I've shared screenshots of Rain World before and discussed the game back in October. It's a game I've been followed for a while and since that preview last year, it has made great progress.

Considering some of the games I've previewed and reviewed in the past, it's easy to see why I'm eagerly anticipating Rain World. Set in an abandoned world overgrown by nature and hammered by rain storms, you play as a slugcat in this hostile landscape, where you must gather food, hunt prey, and evade the ruthless predators doing the same. I've been impressed by its atmospheric pixel art, intelligent AI, and emphasis on stealth and survival since I first saw the game, but it's the gameplay that has grown in the past months. Multiplayer modes (which are also playable solo ala Samuri Gunn) have been added and honed, enemy AI has been improved, and subtle narrative elements have been weaved into the game. It's optional, but now you'll stumble upon small cubs in one of the shelters throughout the game; do you care for them, feed them? Abandon them? Protect them despite the greater danger to yourself?

After years in development, Rain World is finally set to release sometime in 2014. The game recently launched on Kickstarter, with potential additions including new and more intelligent enemies, a fleshed out single player campaign, and greater overall polish. You can follow Rain World's development on TIGForums and vote for the game on Steam Greenlight.

The Watchlist: Rain World

Title: Rain World

Developer:: TIGForum member "JLJac"

Platforms: PC

Releasing sometime in early 2014

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Rain World is set in an abandoned industrial environment that's haunted by extremely intense - bone crushingly intense - rain. The creatures are hibernating most of the time, but in the few and brief moments when the rain isn't falling they go out to look for food. The player controlled creature needs to find enough food to survive another hibernation, while at the same time avoid being eaten by bigger creatures.

First revealed in early 2012, Rain World grown from its basic concept into a stylish structured game. The premise revolves the player's character - a sleek cat-like creature unofficially called "the Bear" - in its fight for survival in an unforgiving alien environment. Across a single player campaign and multiplayer modes, your goal is to collect food and return to the safety of your hibernation spot. Sometimes gathering food mean gathering flies that flit around the stages or sometimes it mean snatching a egg from a lizard burrow, but one fact remains the same: you're always vulnerable and only stealth and smart planning will help you survive

Rain World's gameplay revolves around acrobatic stealth and platforming. The Bear is able to move effortlessly through vents, stalk along ledges, climb and balance along poles. Armed with primitive spears and rocks, you must utilize smart planning and quick reflexes to survive in this hostile landscape. The various "crocs" that roam the levels and protect their burrows are just as versatile and varied as your own skillset, able to follow you through vents, track you through line of sight and sound, wait and ambush, climb walls and ceilings, change color to blend with the environment, work together in packs, and more in their own hunt for food and the player. Thankfully you always have the option to play with up to three other friend and plan co-operative flanking maneuvers...or fight each other in competitive modes 

Perhaps what is most striking about Rain World are its visuals and incredibly detailed animations. The world just appears alien and lived in, an industrial world long abandoned by its builders and now overgrown by the planet's natural denizens. The detailed pixel graphics, inspired by such diverse sources as graffiti art and old black-and-white cartoons, give Rain World a distinctive otherworldly atmosphere and its wonderfully animated creatures only add to the sense. You can see the paws feel and grasp for leverage along vent interiors and both the player and his lizard adversaries interact with their environment and each other in a fluid tactile manner. 

Rain World's developer "JLJac" hopes to have the game released in early 2014. It will be free, with the option to donate. You can follow Rain World's progress through developer's JLJac's TIGForum Devlog.

Quick Fix: Rain World GIFs and gameplay

I was planning on doing a Watchlist preview of Rain World, but am hoping to get more information from the developer to provide a more descriptive article. So in the meantime, enjoy these GIFs and gameplay. The atmosphere, art style, and animations are some of the main reasons why I've been following Rain World's development on TIGForums for almost a year.
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Rain World is a sneaker/action platformer under construction. The gameplay consists of platforming and fast paced sneaking, both sneaking on your prey and sneaking in order to avoid larger creatures.

Fighting for survival

Showing off the movement