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Rain World - Hunt prey, evade predators, survive as a Slugcat (March 28th, PS4/PC)

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RY3IuDT.png

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Kickstarter
Steam Greenlight
Official Site
Trailer
TIGForums Devlog
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Funded and Greenlit!

Stretch Goals:
$50,000
  • Rain World on Linux!
  • Migration to a more modern programming language! (with all the technical improvements that brings with it)
  • Freedom from current limitations!
  • Significant polish and an improved game experience for all
  • A.I. enhancement, for smarter prey and even more cunning enemies!
  • Expanded future possibilities!
Adult Swim!
- Rain World is being published by Adult Swim Games
- The game is officially coming to PSN and PS Vita

Latest footage/GIFs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVWPtsSPhzk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhppIJDWOgM

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Early alpha gameplay
"The Roof"
"Slugcate Life"
"Pups"
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Rain World is set in an abandoned industrial environment scourged by a shattered eco-system. Bone-crushing intense rain pounds the surface regularly, making life as we know it almost impossible. The creatures in this world hibernate most of the time, but in the few brief dry periods they go out searching for food.

You are a lonely nomadic slugcat, both predator and prey in this land. You must hunt enough food to survive another cycle of hibernation.

Other - bigger - creatures have the same plan.

Inspired by the aesthetics and simplicity of 16-bit classics, the gameplay consists of platforming and fast paced sneaking; both sneaking on your prey and sneaking in order to avoid larger creatures. A large focus of the development has been on enemy AI: they are cunning, vicious and they are always hunting you.


moving.gif

  • Sneak, climb, and pounce your way through a unique alien landscape of hidden secrets and undiscovered dangers.
  • Nimble controls and physics-based animation gives characters intuitive weight and momentum for lightning quick high-wire action.
spearFight.gif


rockFight.gif

  • Intense, primal predator encounters will challenge your reflexes. Limited resources and the constant impending threat of rain will test your nerve. This is not an easy game!
  • Open-ended, sandbox-style narrative lets you make the choices... and deal with the consequences.
  • Co-operative and up to 4 player competitive gameplay: deathmatches, endurance, waves, custom challenges, etc.
  • Currently being developed for PC and Mac.
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Lizard types
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Green: A slow and dumb creature - easy to avoid but tough to take down.
Pink: A quick and intelligent hunter that will use vision and hearing to track you. Try to not let it spot you to begin with!
Blue: This one can climb walls and ceilings. Nowhere is safe.
White: A passive but deadly hunter. It blends into its environment and ambushes you when you're passing by.
Yellow: Alone they're not much of a threat, but most often they hunt in packs - intelligently cooperating to track and kill you.
Red: A fast, strong and smart hunter with excellent vision and hearing. But what makes it most deadly is its persistance. Once it spots you it will never give up the hunt. Be aware!

Current State
We have been developing Rain World on our own for almost 3 years now, and have a pretty solid playable alpha in place: game engine, AI, art assets, levels, and music are functional and exist in some stage. All of the content on this page, the trailer, gifs, screenshots, etc., are taken from actual gameplay of the current alpha build of Rain World and could be considered representative of typical gameplay.

Future Plans
We want to present to you a rich, dynamic world brimming with secrets to uncover, engaging narrative choices to be shocked by, and a lush eco-system of interesting creatures to kill and eat (or be eaten by). The vast majority of funding will go towards further development of the nuts and bolts of the game: art assets like level design, new terrain and new characters; expanded AI for terrifyingly intelligent predators; a lengthy well-written single player campaign; more music, more hidden secrets, more Rain World for you to experience.

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These four videos are from early in the game's development (like 2012 early) but even at that stage, the footage gives an idea of how gameplay works, the possible tactics you can use, and also demonstrates how the game developed and evolved over time

First is an early prototype of the lizards and ends with a battle between lizards over the player's corpse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnthCU1P1Ow

Second shows a bit more of stealth and evasion and better animated lizards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QnWjkKgwdw

Third is some slightly more complete gameplay with two players evading various kinds of lizards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV7HNKWeHVQ

Fourth is two players working together to trick, ambush, and kill a lizard with spears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYTIxHQ3jk

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Indies doin' what the big boys won't. I sure do miss the risky decisions by devs to try new and innovative forms of gameplay. Thirsty for it. I like what I can see of the feature set and the concept. Will play
 

Gsnap

Member
This looks really cool. The animations are great. The character looks to have really fluid controls. Seeing it pounce on those little flying creatures was fun. Looks like the game has a "food chain", so that's cool. Platforming and movement looks unique with the poles and tunnels.

I have no money to back it, but it's definitely on my radar.
 
I'm probably not the only one who expected some first person DayZ-inspired game.

Starred it and will see how it develops in the coming days.
 

Maedhros

Member
Neat idea but man I'm getting real fatigued of 16bit inspired "indie" games.

I remember this argument some year ago. Change the 16 with 8 and it was incredible similar.

Why not... just appreciate the game and not try to judge it from it's looks. Being 16bit is probably won't be a problem if the gameplay and other ideas are interesting enough.
 
I'm probably not the only one who expected some first person DayZ-inspired game.

Starred it and will see how it develops in the coming days.

I am expecting a Isometric-Online-32 bit pixel survival game like DayZ one day that looks like ultima online/fallout on steroids that will sell millions of copies
 

Miletius

Member
I wonder how the co-op will work. I might back it if it looks like a promising game I can play with others.

If it's been in development for 3 years, that means that it's got some meat on it's bones, eh? Hopefully it's got a decent release window.
 

kulapik

Member
I expected a awesome 3D game, but nope, another retro-style game. I'm not tired of them, but there are a lot of very good ideas that aren't completely exploited because of retro-style.
 
I expected a awesome 3D game, but nope, another retro-style game. I'm not tired of them, but there are a lot of very good ideas that aren't completely exploited because of retro-style.

Expecting that from an indie team is a bit unfair. There's only a rare example of Overgrowth but that's taken many years and still not up for funding yet. Also, that hypothetical is presumptuous of what ideas it's missing if it's not in 3D. Tokyo Jungle is fairly limited in its animal interactions, so not sure what other 3D animal fighting games are we comparing it to.
 
Very well animated, and I like the presence of ancient graffiti throughout the environments. Adding multiplayer modes must mean they feel confident about what stages and mechanics they've come up with, but I hope the single-player play structure isn't infested with checkpoints. No pledge from me because of that!
 
Very well animated, and I like the presence of ancient graffiti throughout the environments. Adding multiplayer modes must mean they feel confident about what stages and mechanics they've come up with, but I hope the single-player play structure isn't infested with checkpoints. No pledge from me because of that!
I asked the devs on Twitch and they said the structure is interconnected rooms that you travel between. Essentially an open world/Metroidvania-esque setup, but kind of small at the moment. KS funds will help expand it

Also here's the Greenlight link:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=213453611
 
The fluidity of the animation of this gif reminds me a lot of the very first, very terrific, Karate Stickman.swf animation that did the rounds on the internet some 15 years ago. It's wonderful to watch.

Speaking of, One Finger Death Punch is pretty much that.

iboTAjxLwGjvTT.gif
 
Check out these four videos. They're from very early in the game's development (like 2012 early) but even at that stage, the footage perfectly illustrates why I had been following the game so closely and anticipating it so much.

First is an early prototype of the lizards and ends with a battle between lizards over the player's corpse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnthCU1P1Ow

Second shows a bit more of stealth and evasion and better animated lizards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QnWjkKgwdw

Third is some slightly more complete gameplay with two players evading various kinds of lizards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV7HNKWeHVQ

Fourth is two players working together to trick, ambush, and kill a lizard with spears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYTIxHQ3jk

None of it is scripted
 
Do you think they'll still get this out there should they not get funding?
Originally the devs were going to release the game as freeware but the scope and their plans for the game got larger and thus the Kickstarter. So I imagine if it doesn't get funded, the game would be released as originally planned, without all the expanded and improved features they want to add
 

sn00zer

Member
I was gunna rag on it for using '16 bit blah blah blah' but that animation and the art in general is league above most indy games that just try to look like Super Nintendo instead of exploring pixel art with todays knowledge
 

Slixshot

Banned
Im in.

I was gunna rag on it for using '16 bit blah blah blah' but that animation and the art in general is league above most indy games that just try to look like Super Nintendo instead of exploring pixel art with todays knowledge

haven't seen animation that great since Hyper Light Drifter's update:
gaming-sword-vs-rocket-hyper-light-drifter.gif
 

Ra1den

Member
I'm disappointed with all the whining about the retro look. It's an indie game that was gonna be freeware for chrissakes. Save the whining for shit like mega man 9 from major publishers.

Anyway this game looks fantastic and I love the concept.
 

Riposte

Member
Yep, I expected a dark screenshot with dripping water and/or rain when I saw the word atmospheric in the title lol

EDIT: Oh wait, is that an electric charge running through things actually? No idea.

I think indie was the only word in that sentence that didn't need quotes.

"Neat" "idea" "but" "man" "I'm" "getting" "real" "fatigued" "of" "16bit" "inspired" indie "games"?
 

sn00zer

Member
Im in.



haven't seen animation that great since Hyper Light Drifter's update:
gaming-sword-vs-rocket-hyper-light-drifter.gif

Yep this was anothe game I will eventually get...its not trying to emulate anything...its just pixel art instead of trying to put some sort of weird SNES hardware boundaries on itself
 
Someone asked about the level structure before, right? From Eurogamer:
When I asked about Rain World's structure, the two-person development team e-mailed me to explain that it's "Metroidvania but... even more open world." It then added "The different areas, 'levels' if you will, are more based on the players actual skill than some 'find red key, find blue key' sort of thing."
 
Pretty cool concept and execution. Strange seeing a prairie dog wielding a spear, but whatever. Something about that last gif reminds me of Dark Castle for the Mac...I guess it's the bats flitting about.
 
Yeah man I don't understand why these tiny indie teams of like a couple dudes don't just make awesome 3D models and worlds like the 100+ 3-year-dev-time multi-million dollar projects do.
 
Neat idea but man I'm getting real fatigued of 16bit inspired "indie" games.

Very true. I read the title and the description and I got excited.

Then I saw the art...an immediate turnoff for me. It's done well...I'm just sick and tired of the aesthetic.
 
Yeah man I don't understand why these tiny indie teams of like a couple dudes don't just make awesome 3D models and worlds like the 100+ 3-year-dev-time multi-million dollar projects do.
Yeah, I mean this is practically a one man production. There are two devs. One does the music. The other does everything else. The coding, the art, the AI, the animations, everything other than the music is by one guy
 
This looks incredible. I've been dying to have more games in this style. (Like Another World and Abe's Oddysee.) This looks incredibly fluid, too.

I didn't expect so many people to be sick of 16-bit 2D games. I haven't seen any games similar to this, though.
 
I backed this with unlimited fury and will keep myself polite and simply say I like the aesthetic and will continuously support games that feature said aesthetic.
 

Oublieux

Member
The animation is ridiculously fluid, definitely some work of love put into producing that kind of smoothness. The motion of the animal actually reminds me of some Studio Ghibli films.
 

DrNeroCF

Member
Yeah man I don't understand why these tiny indie teams of like a couple dudes don't just make awesome 3D models and worlds like the 100+ 3-year-dev-time multi-million dollar projects do.

Looking at those gifs, the way the tail never teleports and the way the legs are completely grounded, I'm pretty certain that the animations aren't actually sprite animation. Though I'm not sure if it's a 3d model or a bunch of little 2d parts that blend together because of the solid color.

Either way, the there's a lot of effort going into making the game look like that, making a straight up 3d game would probably be less work, depending on a person's expertise.
 
Looking at those gifs, the way the tail never teleports and the way the legs are completely grounded, I'm pretty certain that the animations aren't actually sprite animation. Though I'm not sure if it's a 3d model or a bunch of little 2d parts that blend together because of the solid color.

Either way, the there's a lot of effort going into making the game look like that, making a straight up 3d game would probably be less work, depending on a person's expertise.
It's the latter. If you guys are interested in the technical stuff, I can dig through the Devlog and found the post where the dev discussed how he does the animations
 
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