#survivor is THE slugcat in my heart. the rain world experience

[kociamieta]

okay sorry

uuuuh favorite scug GO!

[omensgate]

fav campaign and why

<this is YOUR invitation to send me asks about anything>

oh god im no good at having feelings or opinions so ill just go down a list rattling off my experiences with the campaigns

for the record from the start ive been cheating, ive Never played this game blind. id consumed a lot of rain world playthrough medias before playing it (im not good at playing games in the sense that i simply do not experience them- im a speedrunner at heart... or not competitive or intelligent, im just walking fast paced from start to end...) and when i did play i always had a map and the wiki open which i think diminishes some of the feeling. but i still had fun moving from place to place

SURVIVOR: its classic. its sweet. its fun. i played about halfway through myself, but the second half i completed with my "Boyfriend" so i remember it as being very entertaining as we both fumbled around and learned together. it serves its purpose well and i think anything i enjoy about rain world can be seen in the survivor campaign at least to start off with... 10/10 nothing special but no loss by playing it yknow. ive also done an outer expanse + baby run (ftr if you want baby fast before going to outer expanse, live in industrial for a while. cannot compete with that pup spawn rate + you can easily make the rounds to check like 5 shelters a cycle before its anywhere near over) which yes -_- did make me cry.

MONK: i.. dont like playing monk. friendliness from other creatures does not mean much to me when actively hostile creatures are near impossible to kill because my spear can travel one (1) slugcats worth in distance so i would not play this with my fairly aggressive play style... i only played it for the short time itd take to get to outer expanse and. again. yes. i cried -_- i think its very sweet, and i am like. (clinically) psychotically attached to monk where its very important to my heart BUT Its not fun as a game experience to me

HUNTER: i tried to jolly co op cheat and play as arti to finish this as i find arti the easiest to play as but i kept crashing which is. you know. very bad for the single campaign where you want to be losing the least so ive never made much progress with this one and i genuinely dont want to open hunter back up because of the crashing. i THINK This was because i was playing w the sunhat mod because ive never experienced that magnitude of crashing constantly and uninstalled it after and have not experienced that again until... well youll read later

GOURMAND: i played this one from the start with my "Boyfriend" and so again it was fun from that, ESPECIALLY because he played as artificer and so was essentially my chariot throughout the campaign... easy way to beat gourmands exhaustion: make your partner carry you. shrimple. its SO fun to beat the shit out of creatures and i do like being forced to just take a moment and walk around slowly, i havent found his exhaustion toooo terrible if youre just patient except when youre fighting creatures that have health enough that you cant kill them in one hit. but being able to just slam something to death is SO satisfying, i enjoyed it. HOWEVER, ive never actually gotten to the END (Due to "Boyfriend" availability, we've stopped just outside the outer expanse gate). and of course, yes, every single fucking time i watch someone go into outer expanse i CRY LIKE A BABY. the first i think DOZEN times i watched people go through outer expanse, id start WAILING whenever i just saw slugcat npcs, it tugs and tears at my heart strings so badly. youre not alone. youve spent a campaign or two trudging through a wasteland empty of kind relatable figures but youre HOME now, just as you left it, and everyones so happy to see you back. im crying now . (do i just cry a lot? Maybe. im at an emotional point in my life... be nice.) 12/10 above survivor def, and gourmands my most favorite to play as in expedition- cant argue with that combat system + exhaustion isnt too bad for me + i love the variety of the world, its not impossibly difficult while not being easy.

ARTIFICER: ive never finished revenge route, ill be going to a different save file to try and it now, instead ive finished the ascension route. i know arti can be... extremely frustrating to play because its hitting a wall again and again and again but i really didnt have too much trouble approaching it knowing i had to be prepared to die + using my map a lot ("WTF this game is so unfair i cant see enemies about to shoot me!" Use Your Map. use your map and slug senses) + of course... ample map skills so im not ambling and getting like im getting lost and dying for nothing. though i will say, i did nearly give up at exactly the end- i think its the camera scroll mod but subterranean made the game near unplayable. like 0.5 frames per second, computer screaming, crashing i think a half dozen times again in an area where i NEEDED the karma to the point where i had to passage in place so i could ascend, and then crashing i think thrice while i was in the depths, including not allowing me to see the end cutscene... specifically that huge room with the big pit would grind the game to a halt i think because its so large and all the enemy AI, and all the spiders and centipedes are a nightmare and i just... hated it. every other leg of the game was fine, rewarding, heart touching but dear fucking lord, subterranean isnt more difficult or intriguing its just "the games not going to play smoothly at all and heres 5000000 ridiculously enemies". i WANT to love it, you know i love arti, but its just impossible to play if you want to ascend. and of course revenge route is crazy short which feels bad. removed from my experiences though, i think its beautiful with the one caveat that revenge route is TOO short. ive watched way too many people who were interested in the lore never get to even the third dream because theres just not enough shelters if you run straight to metropolis, which makes me sad. but the story generally is beautiful and i love it (and i could talk about it later, some of the things people say about arti makes me.. insane. either that shes totally righteous in her actions, or that her pups deaths are her fault)

SPEARMASTER: playing this one while cheating both using the map to plan exactly the route you need and to go through precipice as arti for the double jump + to swallow the pearl made it an absolute dream. yes the world is very scary but you can avoid a lot of the worst parts by simply not being there <3 one part: i did forget to change back to spearmaster before going to moon and she did crash my game so . remember to do that. very good campaign both for me to have played without doing anything as intended (never touched a broadcast), combat is fun, but also a very good story. i really like five pebbles and... i cannot get into the degree of five pebbles apologist i am i genuinely cant detail this without going off the rails. regardless; much 2 think about.

RIVULET: never played this one + not playing this one very scary looks bad dont want it. no rot no underwater sections no thank you. wont touch it. wont look at it. thank you

SAINT: hesitant to play this one due to the adventure aspect though i already got all echoes with arti so it cant be that bad- of course the story aspect of it all cannot be understated and it fully shattered my world view when i got into it. rain worlds live and die messaging has really helped me through suicidal and delusional periods and im very glad for what can be gleaned from saints story so i do like it a lot. as ive said before its also so amazing how a game with little to no tutorial text or cutscenes can have numerous jaw drop moments (with max karma reveal and descent into rubicon)

SOFANTHIEL: funny haha! (Jumps around

[pikkish]

@dwellerinroots videogame exchange list for you! A handful of my favorite open world/open world adjacent games.

Hollow Knight - 2D metroidvania platformer. Metroidvanias are like, basically open world games, right? right? It’s still centered on exploration, so I’m gonna say it counts. Anyway, Hollow Knight is a very special game in that it is one of two games where, partway through, I stopped and thought, “I did not pay nearly enough for this game.”  You play as a strange little bug creature known only as the knight or the little ghost, and explore the ruins of a forgotten underground city that long fell to a mysterious disease. Very little lore is directly given to you, and not much of that given to you makes sense until much later, but the game is an excellent example, and should be a role model, of “show, don’t tell” and environmental storytelling. Beautiful art, haunting soundtrack, compelling characters, a huge map to explore, tons of secrets to find, a lore rich story, and a fast and tight combat system. It does have a reputation for being very difficult, both for combat and platforming, but less “this is a poorly designed game” and more it just has a steep learning curve. Well worth the challenge, though; the game will rip out your heart in the best way possible. I cried about at least two of the endings.

Subnautica - probably one of the crown jewels of open world exploration, tbh. Your ship crashes on an aquatic planet, and you have to survive, find out what crashed your ship, and build a rocket to escape. The world is beautifully alien, vibrantly alive, and the entire thing being underwater lends map design a unique sense of verticality that most normal-landscape open world games don’t have. There are, iirc, two timed events that happen, but otherwise you are free to ignore everything plot-related and explore as you please. I’d recommend playing in a dark room with good headphones for the full atmospheric effect. *(Due note though that Subnautica is... a little broken in some places. Reviews say it’s partially a horror game, but the scariest thing that happened to me was when one of the giant fish that wants to eat you pulled a Bethesda on me and clipped straight through a mountain to come get me. It’s a bit unpolished in areas, some mechanics don’t work quite as well as they were intended, and I suspect some areas might’ve been a victim of scope creep. There’s apparently been an update recently that supposedly fixed a lot of these, but based on my experience, it doesn’t quite feel like a complete game, and I’d definitely wait for it to go on sale before buying.)

Dying Light - This one is a bit more populated and quest heavy, but it has neat maps and fun gameplay. There’s been an outbreak of a zombie virus, and you’re a secret agent dropped into the quarantine zone to find some research on a cure. You must work with the survivors set up in the quarantined city both to accomplish your goal, and just to stay alive. The core gameplay is parkouring across the city to escape the zombie hordes, some of which are just as good at climbing as you are. Said parkour mechanics are very fast and fluid, and running around the city, chased by zombies, on a quest, or just for fun, is downright exhilarating. I did have some stuttering issues I couldn’t quite figure out how to fix, which is... a little bit of a problem when the gameplay is all about how fast and smooth you can move, but otherwise a great experience.

Rain World - ‘nother metroidvania platformer. I actually didn’t get too far in this one on account of the controls being a bit more -heh- sluggish, but that’s more of a personal preference thing than an actual problem with gameplay. You play as a little creature known as a slugcat. Separated from your family and stuck within the decaying corpse of an ancient machine, you must scavenge food to fill your belly, avoid other creatures that very much want to fill their bellies with you, and seek shelter at the end of each cycle to avoid drowning in each night’s torrential downpours. Very large map, wonderfully designed environments, and an achingly melancholic feel to the entire thing. I know there’s some pretty deep lore from watching a friend who was far better at the game play it, but if my own experiences are anything to go by, you are entirely able to scurry around and do your own thing for hours without paying the slightest bit of attention to lore.

Noita - This one’s a roguelike, but I feel like it deserves an honorable mention as an open world game, just for how dang big it is, both in actual map size, and in how much content there is crammed into that map. It’s apparently very heavily based in Finnish folklore, but it doesn’t really tell you any of that, it just kinda goes “Here’s how you move, here’s how you shoot, ok have fun!! :)”  and then just throws you into the game. Its combat system centers about building your own magic wands with different spells on them, and combining spells in different ways can have wildly different results.For as deep as the wand mechanics are, though, the real selling point is the world simulation: every individual pixel is simulated, and everything interacts with everything else. You can burn things, break things, crumble things, shatter things, melt things, freeze things, and probably do a whole lot of other things I don’t even know about. Expect to die a lot, and expect to accidentally kill yourself a lot.