Boy, is this game interesting. Despite being incredibly unbalanced in some ways and frustrating in others, it sucked up my time in a big way these past couple weeks. And I’m still not totally sure why. Maybe it’s the fast pacing. Maybe it’s the art style. Maybe it’s the excellent soundtrack.
Well, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. I suppose first I should introduce the game, yeah?
Risk of Rain is a action platformer roguelike. I really wish I didn’t have to string these genres together like that, but if you’re familiar with the terms, it does give you a bit of a picture of how the game plays. Put very simply, it’s a sidescrolling game with a high cost for dying where you shoot a lot of stuff. Obviously, the details complicate this formula a bit, or I wouldn’t be writing about the game.
Let’s first introduce the base mechanics. There are ten different characters, but only one can be chosen when you start up the game for the first time; the others are unlocked through completing various achievements. Each of these characters has four skills. In general, they comprise a basic attack, some sort of attack that affects multiple enemies, a defensive escape move, and an ultimate attack. However, each of the different characters riff on this formula. For example, one character poisons enemies on attack in trade for a relatively weak basic attack. Another character places down turrets and mines, but trades his escape move for a damage dealing one. The variety in the characters is quite nice, and makes different playthroughs fresh.
Items have a similar unlock system, and a similar amount of variety. They don’t just give health or damage, they do it in many creative ways. Sure, you’ve got your typical “14% damage reduction”, “heal on dealing damage”, “dodge some hits” type items, but then you’ve got items that electrocute on hit, shoot missiles randomly, stop time when your health gets low, increase your critical hit chance when you fail random checks, drop spikestrips that slow down monsters when you get hit… the list goes on. They’re separated into two categories; items that have passive effects, and items that you can activate as a fifth skill. You pick up these items as you go through a level.
The trouble here with such variation is that it’s very hard to balance these characters and items. I like to get better at a game after playing it for a while. In this game, it’s often very hard to distinguish between getting better and simply picking up better stuff.__ Sometimes, it’s not hard to distinguish at all; the huntress character, in particular, seems to be way better than the rest of the characters I’ve unlocked, and is the only character with which I can consistently make it to the final level.__
Gameplay is fairly typical at first glance; you spawn on the surface of a planet, free to roam. A message tells you to “find the teleporter”. Monsters start spawning around you, and prove fairly easy obstacles to get past. They drop money and XP. If you get enough XP, you level up, granting you more health and damage. If you get enough money, you can buy items scattered throughout the level. When you find the teleporter, you activate it, and a boss spawns. You’ve got to take care of it before you advance to the next level, in which you do everything again until you get to the next level. While this is nothing new, everything feels natural. The gameplay is simple and very intuitive, and still fun.
That’s all well and great, but here’s the real kicker. At the top-right corner of your screen is a difficulty meter that’s ever ticking upward. At certain time intervals, the game gets harder; the difficulty goes from very easy, to medium, to impossible, all the way up to HAHAHA. The game starts throwing at you monsters with more health, monsters that lay down fire, monsters that electrocute you when you get too close, monsters that can teleport, and so on. There’s a limited number of items in every level, and the upgrades don’t get any better as you move on in the levels, but the costs of buying those upgrades increases. Add onto this the fact that your money gets converted into a near-worthless amount of XP at the end of each level.
These mechanics make every level an interesting choice. Do I stick around for a while, trying to find and unlock all these chests? If I do, how long do I stick around before I accrue too much useless excess money? If I don’t stick around, am I going to have enough upgrades to get through the next level? Maybe I can go around after I defeat the boss to gather all these chests. But wait - I’m not even getting any money or XP for this, and the timer is ticking up! The dilemma basically boils down to this: _how many items can I get before I’m screwed? _Every second becomes precious. The game is a race against time.
This is a really great system, but it’s not without its problems. Here is where the rest of my gripes start. Most of the items you get are completely random. You unlock a chest, you get a random item. The game does give you a small choice, here; chests that cost less money generally give you a lesser upgrade. There are also “shrines” which start out cheaper than the cheapest chest, but grow in cost exponentially as you use them. These randomly decide whether or not to give you a random item, or nothing at all.
There are various other ways to obtain items, but they are all random. In one playthrough, you may get all the items you want and make it very far. In another, you might get all health items, and reach a level where you can barely do any damage. In another, you might get all damage items, and instantly die in a level where things do too much damage. In yet another, you might not even get a chance to obtain enough items because they were scattered around too much.
I’m not advocating for the removal of all random elements in this game - it does provide a lot of variety in the way the game plays, and indeed, in the way you approach each level. Having a lot of health items allows you to approach the game in a tank-everything style; having a lot of damage items forces you to kite a lot. However, it is a problem when getting certain items basically results in an unwinnable state. For example, in the all-damage scenario, there are enemies that can teleport around. It is nearly impossible to avoid all of these, and so you will inevitably die.
This is especially strange because one of the developers’ explicitly stated goals is for players not to blame the game for losses. It’s possible that I’m just not adapting to the items I have at hand. I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. If you want to tell me off, go ahead and leave a comment.
In any case, despite these apparent flaws in the game, I’ve been having an absolute blast in the single player mode. There are so many adrenaline-pumping moments in this game it’s hard to list them. Dodging lethal blows; setting off chain reactions involving ice, fire, and ghosts; going down to 20 HP, then regaining all of your health in the midst of absurd amounts of enemies; I’ve experienced all of these moments. At $10, it’s hard not to recommend Risk of Rain - so, then, I guess I have no choice but to recommend it.
