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[More_Badass]

me too >_< every facking indie game comes with those graphics...

I like the 16 bit era, but we are in 2014...

I know, right?

Every

facking

indie

game

And of course most retro games had procedurally generated animations, 30-layer parallax backgrounds, advanced AI that can predict and adapt to player actions, so Rain World isn't very unique at all

 

[Tan]

Whoa I haven't looked at this since the kickstarter went up. Wow this game looks gorgeous, I can't wait to play it.

 

[Azure Dream]

me too >_< every facking indie game comes with those graphics...

I like the 16 bit era, but we are in 2014...

This looks nothing like almost any 2D game out there. The animation is dynamic and incredible.

 

[Magic Mushroom]

me too >_< every facking indie game comes with those graphics...

I like the 16 bit era, but we are in 2014...

People are still playing this card?

Here's one of those indie games for you;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uG6ntdrDL8

 

[KimonoNoNo]

I defy anyone to name any game past or present that looks anything like how Rain World is shaping up to be.

 

[Coffee Dog]

very unique looking game. This has a lot of potential.

 

[gingerbeardman]

I really hope these guys put as much time into designing the levels and objectives as they have into the animation and game engine.

So hyped for this game! I backed it on KS.

 

[More_Badass]

I really hope these guys put as much time into designing the levels and objectives as they have into the animation and game engine.

So hyped for this game! I backed it on KS.

Asked the devs about this. Here was the response:

I guess one of the most important things for me when trying to conceptualize the world / level design is trying to keep the balance between the open world "terrarium" aspects and the need for, uh, actual gameplay. Like, sure there are platforming challenges and puzzle-esque rooms, but its not "stage 1 complete! now go to stage 2!" sort of thing. What we'd LIKE to do is make the game playable however, rewarding whatever way you can survive within the game mechanics. Like, you could run around the map and follow the various trails of breadcrumbs, or you could just get really good at hunting bats and finding shelters and both would be totally valid ways of playing, each with their own narrative path.

Another thing we are trying to do is keep "fetch" style gameplay to an absolute minimum. With platformers, if you want to move a character around an open map there has to be a touch of that, but we want to keep it very organic. So, ideally what we'd like to do is have the progression be mostly skill level based. I dont mean "level 21 slugcat", just that as your knowledge of the world and your skill with the character improves, more areas open up to you, you know this or that trick to getting to a higher ledge, or have learned enough about how some challenging creature blocking a path behaves to be able to navigate through it. So an experienced player starting a new game from scratch would have access to a much wider area of the world from the get-go.

BUT... honestly this is just game design philosophy rambling at this point. We have it mapped out on paper, but until its actually implemented and plays well, its all subject to change. Right now we are just finishing hacking together the terra firma of region 2! Our idea right now is to get 4 regions assembled into a nice large chunk, see whats working and what isnt, then plan it from there.

 

[More_Badass]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rain-world/project-rain-world/posts/1070310
New Alpha gameplay

Hey there kickstarter friends, happy holidays! Joar and I have been working round the clock like elves to get you something special for the holidays, so first up is some really big news: keys to the first playable alpha are being sent to early-access backers! (expect an email soon from the good people at Humble, who are hosting our alpha distribution)

Now I wouldn't get TOO excited, its still pretty rough, but Alpha_141220 features 38 rooms of the first playable region of Rain World, "Suburban", plus some of the basic Rain World flora and fauna to eat and get eaten by. (Probably also some bugs of the not-so-edible kind!) Basic game mechanics and rain cycle mock-up are in as well, as is a super simple win condition, but nothing too fancy yet. Basically its just "run around as a slugcat for a bit" and see some of the progress we've made

Plus more info on the Drainage System area, water, leeches, and plushies

 

[epmode]

I didn't get my key! I'm hoping they haven't been released yet.

 

[gingerbeardman]

Asked the devs about this. Here was the response:

Thanks for posting!

 

[Crispy75]

So jealous
Can't wait for people to get good at Rain World and for stylish lizard kills to get on youtube...

 

[epmode]

I see Rain World on my Humble page but there's only an EXE download, no Steam key. I guess those come later?

edit: Humble lists it as a Linux version but it works in Windows.

edit edit: 60 FPS omg

edit^3: No video scaling options yet so fullscreen stretches stuff and looks terrible. No audio either. Still pretty awesome.

 

[More_Badass]

I see Rain World on my Humble page but there's only an EXE download, no Steam key. I guess those come later?

edit: Humble lists it as a Linux version but it works in Windows.

edit edit: 60 FPS omg

edit^3: No video scaling options yet so fullscreen stretches stuff and looks terrible. No audio either. Still pretty awesome.

*Grits teeth, continues waiting patiently*

 

[More_Badass]

Some info on the new creature being worked on

Lastly today, I started on a new creature - the first backer suggestion actually! It's a snail inspired creature, which we though would work well with this watery region we're working on. Don't know exactly what it'll look like yet, but the basic framework is up.

Snails are coming along. Now they can crawl on walls, avoid each other, and otherwise mill about. I have given them shells, and decided that for this creature I want to start trying out the idea of randomizing some features using the creature ID as a seed. So right now shell color and size are randomized ~ don't know how much of this will make it to the final game, mostly just experimenting. Randomized colors look nice, but a bit "computery" - you can sort of see that it's a computer generated color scheme. I'll bring in more weighted randomization into the equation I think, and hopefully the color selection will get more artful qualities. In either case I'm happy with having a creature that's a bit more colorful, as quite a lot of the creatures in the game have dark color schemes.

Also, the snails' niche in rain world as a game has started to take shape. When you (or any other creature) move close to the snail it'll pull into its shell, and then start to vibrate and click. The vibrating and clicking gets more and more intense if you continue closing in on it, until it finally gives a kind of super sonic click, a little sound blast or tiny explosion. This pushes creatures away a bit, and can stun them. Could potentially be fun in multiplayer as well, if you manage do throw (maybe? Don't know yet to what extent you'll be able to pick up living creatures other than bats) a snail at another player, you could possibly create some trouble for them. Snails that are affected by other snails' clicks might decide to click themselves if they slam into a wall or something, so there can be some chain reactions going on.

But the real interesting part is how this interacts with water. The snail is amphibious, moving in and out of water as it wishes. The click is waaaay more powerful under water - right now I have it set to 5 times the radius/strength, which feels about right. This means that an irritated snail that's dropped into a body of water can stun pretty much everything that's unlucky enough to be swimming in there. And this brings us to the actual utility for the player - leeches hate these clicks. I have only just started on the snail/leech interaction, so I don't know yet if the leeches will actually flee from snails or if they'll just stupidly try to attack and then get wrecked, but in either case a snail should be able to clear out leeches pretty effectively.

Plus nice screenshots of the Drainage System

 

[More_Badass]

If you missed the Kickstarter, you can now preorder the game and OST through Humble
Game
Game + OST

 

[KimonoNoNo]

But the real interesting part is how this interacts with water. The snail is amphibious, moving in and out of water as it wishes. The click is waaaay more powerful under water - right now I have it set to 5 times the radius/strength, which feels about right. This means that an irritated snail that's dropped into a body of water can stun pretty much everything that's unlucky enough to be swimming in there. And this brings us to the actual utility for the player - leeches hate these clicks. I have only just started on the snail/leech interaction, so I don't know yet if the leeches will actually flee from snails or if they'll just stupidly try to attack and then get wrecked, but in either case a snail should be able to clear out leeches pretty effectively.

Ooh, snail depth charges.

I hope they go with the brainless leeches.
It would give me so much pleasure to drop a snail into a load of leeches and go EAT THIS SUCKERS!.

 

[More_Badass]

Playing the alpha and they nailed the movement and lizard encounters. The gameplay is as smooth and fluid as you'd expect from the GIFs; just climbing and jumping around is fun by itself

When the lizards enter the picture, it's almost Nemesis-esque. They can kill you in one hit, some can climb up poles, they chase you relentlessly, so even when you have a spear and rock, your best option is to just run, get away, and try not to get cornered. A head-on confrontation usually only stuns them, giving you a few seconds to flee. It's very intense and thrilling.

There's no audio at the moment, but the atmosphere is already wonderful, from the shifting shadows to the dripping water and swarms of bats moving through the world.

 

[More_Badass]

WIP snail GIFs

 

[More_Badass]

I must have played the alpha for almost four hours now, and it's just so much fun. You can alter the set-up files to change the room you start in and spawn different lizards so I've been setting up different arena fights and seeing how long I can survive.

The game just feels alive; like when you die, the world doesn't stop, but rather the lizards get into a massive brawl over your corpse, each one fighting to bring it to their den. Not only that, some lizards hunt each other, so while some are fighting over your corpse, Green and White are fighting to chase down a Blue who's desperately trying to reach the ceiling and stay out of range from White's chameleon tongue. It all just looks so natural and fluid.

Playing as Slugcat is so much fun. You know a game's mechanics are tight when just moving through the levels and jumping around is fun. You always feel outnumbered and outgunned. Without a rock or spear, you can only evade, flee, and hide, and even with those, it's better to pin a lizard to a wall with a spear and run away rather than risk an extended fight. Your agility is your greatest strength, but even then you're facing creatures that can crawl on walls and poles, have sticky tongues, chase you relentlessly, and can take a lot of punishment before dying or retreating

And the little details. Lizards freaking out near water. The refraction and shadowy water effects. The way leeches move menacingly under the surface and move in a terrifying swarm when something falls into the water. How every movement of slugcat and the lizards just feels right, with limbs and paws reaching and clawing for handholds and heavy tails swinging due to momentum and physics. The shadows shifing in the background

It's only the first world, still limited in terms of species and moveset, and the game is already great. Of course I'm somewhat biased, because I've been anticipating and following Rain World for so long, but I think that means I would have been even more disappointed if the game hadn't lived up to all the hype I had built up for it. But it does.

 

[Crispy75]

Sounds fantastic
Regretting it more and more that I completely missed the kickstarter.

 

[More_Badass]

Co-op multiplayer?
Co-op multiplayer

 

[gingerbeardman]

WOW.

 

[Crispy75]

Concepts for new flying enemy.

Oh my

 

[UrbanRats]

Concepts for new flying enemy.

Oh my

Nausicaa?

 

[Crispy75]

I'm getting half life vibes off that design. According to Joar (lead dev)

The idea is that these arms/tentacles double as wings and it can walk/climb or fly depending on the situation.

Sounds scary as hell!

 

[Moobabe]

So this is coming to Vita right?

 

[More_Badass]

So this is coming to Vita right?

Yup

 

[More_Badass]

Awwwww....

 

[Crispy75]

Tentacles gonna getcha

 

[Crispy75]

It flies.

It haunts your dreams.

 

[More_Badass]

^^^
Graceful and terrifying, so good

Some new info and screenshots of the new region where the kraken resides

While Joar is prettying up the tentacle monster, I'm trying to build it a nice home! The first aerial region we're doing is called Chimney Canopy. It is a mess of spires, huge chimneys and scaffolding high above the heavy industry region.

Joar provided some huge chimney chunks and a pretty elaborate scaffolding set a few days ago, so i've been getting a feel for those:

As we get further away from ground level, the tangled steeplechase vibe will fade into much more exposed, sparse platforming where krakens will likely terrorize you from all angles:

The formative idea for this region is all based off of my favorite level from the old lingo build, called The Grid:

As you can see, the visuals of the game have evolved quite a bit, so its been an interesting challenge trying to develop levels highlighting that same structure and gameplay style, while still keeping the snazzy sense of depth and scale that we've been able to achieve in the new version.

 

[Necron]

So happy this is coming to Vita as well.

Love the art design and animation.

 

[More_Badass]

This is pretty cool. Polygon interviewed Fumito Ueda (The Last Guardian; lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus, Ico) and one question asked him what games have caught his eye

"Bayonetta 2 and Smash Bros. for Wii U. I have not played either game all that much, but seeing how both of these have attracted enormous amounts of praise overseas in an age where people don't pay a lot of attention to Japanese games, I want to find time for them. Also, this isn't a Japanese game, but Rain World, which I discovered via Kickstarter, is something I love personally in terms of tech and design, so I'm really looking forward to playing it, as well as Inside and Below."

When the lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus praises your game for its tech and design, you know you have something special on your hands.

 

[gingerbeardman]

Wow.

All aboard the hype train.

 

[exmachina64]

This is pretty cool. Polygon interviewed Fumito Ueda (The Last Guardian; lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus, Ico) and one question asked him what games
have caught his eye

When the lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus praises your game for its tech and design, you know you have something special on your hands.

Whoa!

 

[UrbanRats]

When the lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus praises your game for its tech and design, you know you have something special on your hands.

I'd probably go in a melt down.
(That's 'cause i think SotC is one of the best games ever made)

 

[KimonoNoNo]

Hot damn!

When you think about it with Rain World dealing with procedural animation and advanced creature AI, it's rather similar to the problems The Last Guardian devs has been struggling with all this time.

MB do you know whether James and Joar are aware of the mention?

 

[Crispy75]

Hot damn!

When you think about it with Rain World dealing with procedural animation and advanced creature AI, it's rather similar to the problems The Last Guardian devs has been struggling with all this time.

MB do you whether James and Joar are aware of the mention?

Yeah, it's on the devlog

 

[Dascu]

This is pretty cool. Polygon interviewed Fumito Ueda (The Last Guardian; lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus, Ico) and one question asked him what games have caught his eye

When the lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus praises your game for its tech and design, you know you have something special on your hands.

Damn, hats off to them. Well-deserved praise, the game looks very good.

 

[More_Badass]

Hot damn!

When you think about it with Rain World dealing with procedural animation and advanced creature AI, it's rather similar to the problems The Last Guardian devs has been struggling with all this time.

MB do you know whether James and Joar are aware of the mention?

Yeah, they are. James had posted

Dang now we HAVE to make this game good, cuz Fumito Ueda is going to be playing it O_O
http://www.polygon.com/a/life-in-japan/Fumito-Ueda-views

 

[Dr. Buni]

This is pretty cool. Polygon interviewed Fumito Ueda (The Last Guardian; lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus, Ico) and one question asked him what games have caught his eye

When the lead designer of Shadow of the Colossus praises your game for its tech and design, you know you have something special on your hands.

Damn, being praised by the lead design of one of the best games of all time... That must be an amazing feeling

 

[More_Badass]

 

[More_Badass]

Man, that slow-mo GIF is mesmerizing. The weird movement style flows perfectly. You expect the kraken to swoop in for the kill like an eagle, but then the thrusters halts its descent, allowing the wings to effortlessly shift to walking appendages. So good.

Joar talks more about the kraken biology here

As you might remember, this creature is supposed to be flying/climbing. Generally it will prefer flying in open areas and climbing in narrow areas, but I don't know yet to what degree it should prefer either way of locomotion. Maybe it'll only climb if absolutely necessary, but prefer flying in all possible scenarios.

The purple tentacles are passive, so it'd have to be the wings if any [for grasping]. It does reach with its neck though, but it's not very long.

Thrusters help the kraken manouver in some of the more tricky situations, particularly take off and landing. It can also give a quick burst while flying or even climbing to nudge itself in the right direction.

 

[More_Badass]

New kraken GIFs and info

Wow, that was a lot of work! But also probably the most fun I've ever had. Since last time, the beast has gotten a head, feather like appendages on its arms, smoke coming out of the thrusters and some kind of shell on its back.

Many things still need work, such as the head and neck being too lose and floppy when it's flying, and the smoke in general. I would like to have the smoke look cooler, but I settled for this as good enough for now. My main concern was that I really wanted the smoke to be affected by the wing flaps, and I got that in even though it doesn't perhaps look all that natural. Maybe down the line I'll do a 2D grid based fluid simulation o_0

The tusks or mandibles or whatever are probably going to have some stuff going on, I imagine that they'll hang like this, but when the creature gets into Hunt Mode they retract towards the neck, and sit there in a "charged" position. From there they can move forward quickly in a bite, and if that gets you you're stuck. If it doesn't, however, the creature needs to retract them again before biting the next time, giving you half a second of breathing space. I think that might be necessesary in order to give you the feeling that you have some sort of chance - this way you can actually save yourself from a close encounter with a bit of skill and luck. If you're caught automatically when touching the head, the creature can just kind of cheaply sweep around and get you pretty much whatever you do.

Here's the creature taking off:

A remake of the eagle landing one, now with head and all that stuff (this one took a thousand takes, because it just refused to land on the little platform...

And last, some climbing gameplay where I manage to make the beast lose track of me. It's usually not that easy, but I was lucky this time and the tracker sent a ghost off to the right instead of up the pole. Remember that it doesn't have any AI yet, only the tracker. The AI is literally two lines that say "go through the known creatures in the tracker. If they are a slugcat, tell the pathfinder to set the movement destination to where that critter is believed to be. Break the loop." Behaviour will probably look cooler once that's actually sorted out.

 

[UrbanRats]

Holy shit.
dude goes from goofy to terrifying in the span of a second.

 

[More_Badass]

And another one:

Also James persuaded me into implementing this one thing we've been talking about, having the shadow of the creature as a warning of its approach

I'm really happy with the result! Subtle enough, but still totally possible to notice if you're alert.

 

[tripskylark]

i am in love with this fucking game man

 

[KimonoNoNo]

I really wasn't sold on the Sky Kraken (name subject to change) idea, but wow this latest update removed all doubt I had.

This idle animation 100% sells the impression that it's a living breathing bird like creature.

And man that slo-mo landing gif is a thing of beauty.

 

[Crispy75]

Has there ever been procedural animation done so well?