I only became aware of Risk Of Rain due to being signed up for alerts for a company called Limited Run. Limited Run is a company that releases games in physical form but in a limited supply, once it's gone, it's gone. I had originally signed up for alerts because of Saturday Morning RPG on the PS Vita. Unfortunately, I missed it & can now only find it on eBay for about $100, who knows maybe I will treat myself at some point. When I saw Risk of Rain was going on sale I thought it looked like a cool 8-Bit Challenge & knowing that only two people created the game (Paul Morse & Duncan Drummond) made it intriguing.
I like M & M's, more specifically I love crispy M & M's. When you start into a bag you think, 'yeah these are alright', then you eat more & think 'damn these are pretty good', before moving onto 'oh god no, the bag is empty, where have they all gone, I need more!'. While playing Risk of Rain I had asked myself was this something that started out alright & just kept getting better or was it something far less satisfying.
The story is fairly simplistic, but that is not a bad thing. You are on a transport ship passing over a planet, just chilling with your buddies, when out of nowhere a powerful, unknown enemy attacks & you end up being stranded on the planet below. Your mission, get back on board the ship & stop the unknown enemy.
The more you play the game the more you learn about the enemies on it, simply playing the game through once will not get you all the answers. If you kill so many of an enemy they will drop a 'monster log' (hehe), which gives you insight into them & provides you with more story.
Overall Risk Of Rain has an interesting if unoriginal story that helps provide you with another reason to play more of the game.
Visually the game is a cool 8-Bit style game with some interesting backgrounds, two of my favorite areas including Sky Meadows & Ancient Valley. Sky Meadows uses a nice subtle purple as the main background colour which works really well with the contrasting bright moon. Ancient Valley looked really cool, it featured snow, old pillars & what looked like a Stargate. There are many unusual & interesting enemy designs, the most notable for me were; Ancient Wisp & the Colossus Bosses.
While visually it might not be the most amazing it is an 8-Bit Style game so high end graphics were never the aim. It is also important to remember this game was created by only two people which is impressive in itself.
To say the music was good in the game is a little bit of an understatement. The sounds & styles used in the soundtrack are pretty diverse. Listening to the soundtrack I could hear sounds such as; guitar riffs, 80's music, chill out music, it also had a very spacey sound to it - I know that may not make sense but if you listen to the score I think you will know what I mean. I felt the sounds suited the tone of the game really well.
The composer for Risk of Rain was Chris Christodoulou who also worked on the games; Deadbolt (also created by Hopoo Games, Wanderlust Adventures & The Sea Will Claim Everything. My favorite pieces of music from the score included; 'Aurora Borealis', 'Cyclogenesis', 'Tropic of Capricorn', 'Monsoon', 'Surface Tension', & 'Precipitation'.
So on to the gameplay! There are 3 difficulty settings; Drizzle, Rainstorm & Monsoon. The description of each are funny, my favorite is for the 'Drizzle' difficulty - for players new to the game, weeping & gnashing is replaced by laughs & tickles. Death is permanent in the game, which at times is a kick in the low & danglies but is part of the charm of the game. Lucky enough though your health does regenerate overtime but if you are hoping to find a safe play to wait for this to happen then you are sadly mistaken.
With addition to your health regeneration there are many buffs you can collect as you go along, some offer faster health regeneration, while others help to make your attacks stronger. These can be collected & bought as you are running around each area.
The objective in each level is to; find the teleporter, activate it, hold out for 90 seconds & after that whatever enemies remain you kill & escape to the next area. The longer you play & survive the tougher the difficulty level gets, you start at very easy & go all the way up to hahaha.
There are many characters to chose from in the game that can be unlocked the more you play, my two favorite characters were the Bandit & Commando.
I only had two issues overall with the gameplay, the first was that it got very samey pretty quick, I also found the Co-Op mode to very meh & did not really make things any easier or beneficial.
So after playing for about 10 hours what did I think of Risk of Rain? If I am honest, it was so, so. The music was good & some of the gameplay was interesting but I did lose interest in later playthroughs. That being said I think it is truly amazing that just two people managed to create this game & I am now very curious to play Deadbolt due to my experience with Risk of Rain.
I have been told by a few people over the last while it would make sense to have a more standard rating system, after some thought I agreed with what they said. My overall score for Risk of Rain is 3 out of 5
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