I have been waiting to talk about this, It feel so important that I wanted to show it under the best light, not one without critique but the one that display what it's for me and why I think this game is so groundbreaking.
I'll start off saying that is more close to an expirience then a proper game, it has that feel but it's even it's weak point. I recorded the video hoping to perfom well and have some clean run to see how the game unfolds but I ended up dying almost in every possible manner, taking down the "score system" into the ground and feeling destroyed. But I think it really portrait what the game is, the bliss that it have and the failures.
The premise is really simple, you are a Slugcat a young one, separeted by your family by accident you have to keep surving till you find them again. You live in a world long abandoned where some kind of catastrophe has stopped civilization, the climate has become extremely harsh with heavy rain and thunderstorms submerging the surface from time to time. In the unfortunate event that you find yourself outside of a shelter when it comes that means the end of you.
I take this game as one of the most important milestones in gaming along side Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. The innovation that bring to the table is completely different from the Nintendo title but so inventive and new anyway. Every movement of the creatures and plants in the game is physics based, making it sometimes clunky and awkward but realistic and full of feelings and to master it is a challenge not new but it feel so fresh. The main point is to explore the industrial rotten places to find food, being an onnivore you have many choices, from fruit and plants, insects and bugs or even carcass of your hunters died in a fight at the top of the food chain or by your wit and clever usage of your sourrondings.
About the hunters, there are many(maybe way too many) and you little Slugcat are not even in sight of being safe anywhere. You are a clever agile creature and to fight is not the best option, sure you can pick up things and throw them. A piercing spear can kill many giants but it's not safe for your mission and you can make your belly full with very little food without needing to eat very big preys, lossing time to hunt and then find yourself drowing in the rain instead of having looked for a shelter isn't what your survival instinc tell you.
So what it is the thing that make me blush over this game so much? it is his roleplaying, you are in a distant future but you live in an ancient habitat where you have to adapt for survival. You have to become the Slugcat, evolution has regressed and all the hope of peace of what was probably a human kind race has gone completely forgotten. When you have interaction with the robots you feel almost is the Slugcats that have the duty to take over from where it was all lost, that what has struck me and I warmly reccomend it has an expirience.
But it has it's faults, some inherents of the structure but some I feel have been not so wise choices.
I had forgot but it happen often, way too often that you are being killed in an unfair way I get that it's survival and the other creature are in this game just has you do. A spider in real life hunt in the most unfair way it's preys and here is the same, the other animals have their own minds they go on their way, you'll never find them in a static place, they have some favourite spot but they wander around and sometimes you can't even react to what happen, while I think it's part of the game and the vision but a less populated world would have gone a long way to make the game better.
Same goes with the navigation and the helping hand that appears and try to guide you. I love it that it dosen't hold your hand in the least, but you are going into a world that you don't know anything about, into places with weird and absurd mechanichs and a bit more of clearness would have made the game much less a fatigue in it's difficulties spikes. And you being completely without knowledge is not a fair thing too, you move a young Slugcat that should know even just a little about it's world even though not having much expirience, in some new areas you go completely blind.
I hope the concepts that had started from Rain World get expanded upon and studied because it's really really a rough pearl.
▶️ 3Speak
Trolls are some of the coolest interaction with another race, with their fascination with pearls, villages and cool way of walking
Have a mice day!
