00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog play it and discuss my guest today is a friend of the show. Professional slug cat Wrangler soccr welcome to the show. 00:21.48 soccr Thanks! Very much Dave, it's a pleasure to be here. Let it be known that Dave is an equal opportunity co-host. You can be a content creator, a successful youtuber or podcaster or you can just be some guy. 00:34.36 Dave You can just be some guy exactly yeah I was I mean I still am some guy. It's not like I'm a famous podcaster or anything. But yeah, it's great to have you on the show. We've obviously you're a valued member of our Discord Community. We've been talking about games in various servers for a long time. So. Good to have you on the show for a really special game today you and I are going to be talking about rain world which is a 2d platforming adventure survival game developed by video cults published by adult swim games and Akapura games for ps4 and pc in 172 and then again on switch in 2018. This was the product of primarily a 2 person team programmer Joar Jacobson and level designer James Therion I hope I'm pronouncing those halfway correctly apologies. If not, if this is your first time listening to the show. The way this podcast always works is no different today is we're going to hold back on spoilers for quite a while. So if you haven't played rain world and rain world is one of these games that I think a lot of things about it are best discovered for yourself without spoilers. So we're going to do our best to talk about the game but not. Spoil those you know, wonderful, beautiful discoveries that you make and of course story stuff as well. So you can check down in the show notes for when the spoiler section will begin for rain world if you don't know what rain world is soccr and I have prepared some elevator pitches for it. 02:09.77 Dave I Say at the top this is a game where you play as the cutest little Prey animal in nature is metal Colon The video game soccr. What about you? 02:22.76 soccr Ah, I wrote that rain world is a vibrant and complex ecosystem. Originally I was going to write I was going to say that doesn't care if you die or that wants you dead. Ah, but it's more. It's more that it doesn't care if you live or die right. 02:39.12 Dave Right? Kind of like ah kind of like nature. That's where that nature is metal comparison came for me. It is basically indifferent to you as the player. Um I played this on pc it took me 24 hours to beat. This was the base game. I didn't play any of the downpour dlc because I didn't know that you had to beat the game twice to or beat the game and play new game plus to do the downpour stuff so I beat it on the version I got for free on Amazon. And then I bought it again on steam because I wanted to play the dlc but I couldn't because I didn't have completed save data on steam and yeah I don't want to like transfer save data across different places and onto my steam deck and shit I was just like no forget it I'm just not playing it apparently. Um. Where did you play this? How long did the playthrough take you? Yeah nice. 03:34.74 soccr I originally played this on ps four because I just like my ps four controller. I had 23 hours. I also haven't played downpour. Guess well, it's on the same system. So probably I could pick it up. 03:52.10 Dave Um, you probably could use your clear game data to ah to jump into downpour I I want to get there someday. Ah I mean we'll get into it. But I think this game is worth replaying and discovering and seeing all the content that it's got. But for now. 03:59.22 soccr Yeah, yeah. 04:10.58 Dave Let us start with our histories with rain world and in our little chronology of the both of us playing rain world. You came first. So what was it that made you want to play Rain world. 04:25.34 soccr I'm pretty sure that my entry into the game was seeing either a screenshot or a clip posted by moon on the Discord. Ah I I'm not 100% on that. But I think that's where it started. There was something. 04:32.61 Dave Um, right. 04:41.83 soccr So compelling just about the visual presentation that I made a note to check it out for later. I have several tiers of vetting that I do when I'm deciding whether to play a game. Ah sometimes knowing that it's a good developer or ah seeing a really good game play trailer is enough. 04:41.91 Dave Listen. 04:59.30 Dave Mm. 05:00.39 soccr Ah, sometimes I check Metacritic to see the general consensus which by the way is basically the worst way to vet rain world because user and critic reviews are just so dichotomous. Um I actually ended up watching multiple full-length review videos. 05:06.20 Dave Um, yes, yeah, um. 05:19.44 soccr Of the game before deciding it was something that I had to try but it was intriguing enough that I went for it. 05:25.60 Dave Nice. And yeah, so for me, it was kind of that same process. It was not a game that I'd ever heard of like I said came out in 2017 I first heard about it maybe last year because it was it was like me like you said it was moon posting in our Discord server and then you talking about your playthrough and then another um friend of ours Joe from new dawn games talking about his playthrough and ah so shout out to everybody involved who was talking about it and. For everyone who played it moon and then you and then Joe, it was one of those games that like you know, sometimes people jump into Discord servers and they're like I'm playing this game. It's cool and then you'll never hear them talk about that game again. Rain world is 1 where people are jumping in like every day this like. Man this is what happened in rain world this time I can't stop talking about it so it like pushed it up a little bit more on my list. Um I got it for free on Amazon prime at some point I think it was also given away for free on ps plus or something like that. Um, and then it won a Patreon Poll ah for all the supporters of tales from the backlog we do polls every month and this game was in a poll a couple months ago it like demolished the competition a lot of the patreon polls end up being ties because I think people like the way I do tiebreakers on the Patreon. 06:54.66 Dave But rain world people weren't fucking around. They were just like now play rain world. It demolished the competition. So ah I think I think streaming it was like a spur of the moment thing after it won and I was like I think this would be a fun game to stream. 06:59.10 soccr Did you offer to stream that before or after you did the poll? 07:11.68 Dave So I did end up streaming the entire playthrough over on Twitch. 07:12.93 soccr Um, because I mean that's a big selling point because watching somebody play Rain world is very entertaining. Yeah. 07:20.95 Dave Yeah, and I heard the same thing from a lot of the people who watched the streams but didn't um, like didn't play it themselves where they're like I wouldn't want to play this but I am loving watching you play it. It's ah it is that kind of game. That's ah, a good little segue into some quick. Opening thoughts here at the top of the episode. Um, so I did beat this I did stream it people said this is a game that I enjoy watching more than I would actually playing but I really loved this game really really loved it um not just watching other people play it. I loved the experience of playing it. It is. It's one of those games that I played and every time I played it I my respect for it grew until like I got to the end and I was like holy shit what a game? Um, it's incredible. It's brutal. It's unfair. It's rewarding. It's all of these things. It's like this I came out of the game and I'm glad I actually beat it like three weeks ago or a month ago now because I I came out of it with like a complex ball of ah like different emotions and I needed some time to kind of sort them out but came out of it thinking this is one of those games where if I ask someone what their favorite game of all time is and they say rain world I would be like yeah it makes sense I get it. Um, kind of in that same conversation I've had on the podcast about stuff like tunic and outer wilds. 08:50.83 Dave Ah, games that really really leave a really strong impression on people and it left that impression on me. It's a totally one of 1 type of game. What would you say? 09:02.10 soccr It Definitely does leave a strong impression I wouldn't directly compare rain world to outer Wilds or Tunic. Ah personally I think mostly because the core experiences of Outer Wilds and Tunic. At least tunic for Me. We're about ah Discovery and piecing together puzzles that are ah that are hiding in plain sight whereas rain world at its core is about getting bodied repeatedly. Ah I um. 09:19.82 Dave Yeah, um. 09:36.37 soccr There is a sense of I don't think I would say wonder but more like intrigue it has an air of mystery but I don't think the focus is necessarily on interrogating that mystery um rain world is the most brutal game I've ever played. Ah. 09:48.38 Dave Um. 09:54.41 soccr Not necessarily the hardest I don't think but just like cruel and unfair brutal I do and I would go so far as to say that it would lose something if it were more fair than it is which maybe you know maybe we'll talk about more. 09:58.51 Dave With her. 10:05.86 Dave Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we will yeah. 10:12.76 soccr Ah, juxtaposed with that. The game is also strangely serene like something that I notice is that the world is so quiet. Um, even when it's violent. Ah, it's there. 10:29.10 soccr It's very peaceful, especially when you find yourself alone in the world. 10:32.20 Dave Absolutely so yeah, it is not that I didn't expect this but we have a lot to dig into with rain world. So we're gonna take a music break when we come back, we're going to set up the story and move on from there. So in Rainw world you play as a slug cat. That's the name of the little animal that you play as um, people always say you know there's the joke online. There's a subreddit called cats are liquid and the slug cat feels like a kind of um, ah next step of that kind of thing. It's kind of got a feline shape. It's very squishy. It can walk on 2 legs though you can use its hands to pick up and grab and throw stuff so kind of ah, a mix of a lot of different animals that we've got while also being alien in a kind of way. How would you describe the slug cat as an animal? 11:33.70 soccr Ah I don't know what I would say other than what you said already. It's kind of a sticky slug cat is a good description. Um, because you're sneaking around but there's also like ah. 11:39.39 Dave Ah, yeah. 11:50.44 soccr I Don't know how to explain it better than that. You kind of stick to tunnels and cling to walls and um, not very effectively. 11:50.62 Dave Yeah, yeah. 11:58.35 Dave A little bit though. Yeah, Um, so it's a cute little mascot animal which makes some of the deaths that you go through in this game all the more brutal just from how cute the little things are like I'm not um I'm not a gaming merchandise guy. But I would love to have a slug cat plushy just kind of chillin in my gaming area . they're that cute. Um, at the beginning you can select which type of slug Cat. You want to play as different characters. The base 2 in the base game are the survivor which is white. And that signifies the regular difficulty for the game and then there's the Monk who is patched in later and the monk is yellow and the monk is kind of like an easy mode in quotes if there is an easy mode in rain world. It's the Monk. Um. Rain The downpour dlc introduced a lot of different new characters that I didn't have a chance to play but they're all ah pretty different as far as like unique skills that they have whereas the survivor and the monk are just like your base slug Cat. So I played as their survivor. Which one did you play as? 13:09.27 soccr I Also played as the survivor that was the recommended option I think ah I think also a hunter is in the base game. Um I've only played as the survivor. I've played the game twice all the way through. Ah. 13:11.21 Dave Um, okay it is after you beat the game once. 13:26.57 soccr I think I have too much pride probably to play as the monk and um and I don't have the courage to play as the hunter So ah, survivor all the way. 13:36.80 Dave Yeah gotcha. Okay, yeah, we'll ah we'll talk about the gameplay differences between them a little bit later um in the beginning you have a cut scene that kind of sets up the story and this is the cutscene for the survivors the one that I played. Ah, the slug cat is hanging out with a group of other slug cats kind of catching some bugs to eat going on an adventure and then the rains come. This is Rain World. So The rains come and the slug cat is separated from its family and falls down. It's very reminiscent of the opening cutscene of Stray if anyone has played Stray. Ah you are separated from your buddies and you fall down into this world below and you need to journey through these ruins and find your way back home through a dangerous world full of things that want to eat you. 14:26.90 Dave Um, so this world that the game takes place in looks very human, but it is definitely I I don't want to say post apocalyptic, but it's abandoned it's ruined you know nature reclaiming industrial areas stuff like that but still full of. Obvious signs of human activity industrial stuff signs buildings all of that um a couple of anecdotes from the developers here. The players experience in rain world is kind of inspired by developer Yari Jacobsen's time as an exchange student in South Korea um overwhelmed by language that he couldn't understand and signs that he couldn't read and culture that he didn't know and so you're as the player you're plopped into this really unfamiliar world and then from the slug cats perspective. This was a really interesting thing to read. Ah, another core idea in the game's development was to recreate the life of the rat in Manhattan so like the rat understands how to find food, how to hide how to live all of that but doesn't understand what the subway is and what its purpose was. It's just there living day to day. 15:37.27 soccr I Love that. 15:40.64 Dave Yeah, it's really nice and I mean that aspect they absolutely nailed like this the environments that you're going through. They're not slug cat environments. They're not built for slug cats. They're not built by slug cats. You're just kind of trying to survive there. 15:46.28 soccr Yeah, hundred percent 16:02.63 Dave And the last thing worth pointing out about like this story set up and we've we've brushed on it before but this is not a game where you are playing as an apex predator. Um, Unlike. Basically every other video game that you play where whether you play as an animal or most often as a human you are the most dangerous thing in the room. No matter. What's going on and that is not the case here in rain world. It doesn't really matter how good you are. Maybe with some of the other characters but with the survivor and the Monk It doesn't really matter how good you are at the game you are never the strongest thing in the room when surrounded by these other Animals. You're pretty low on the food chain and this all kind of sets up. 16:41.40 soccr Yeah. 16:47.50 Dave If We think about it from a story perspective of the slug cat trying to make its way through the ruins to reunite with its family through this intensely Hostile World. It sets up like a really interesting challenge. Will say. 17:10.67 soccr Ah I well was I going to say that ah you did an episode on weather games needed to be fun, not too long ago and I think that Rain world is an example of a game that. 17:20.33 Dave Yes. 17:28.50 soccr Does kind of subvert. Ah, the expectation of fun because it's um, it's not a game that gives you control. It's actually a game that seems centered around taking that control away from you. 17:46.78 soccr Um, so I think that ah one of the fundamental parts of the game is ah feeling helpless and that ah I think that ties into. 17:56.71 Dave Yeah, yeah. 18:04.42 soccr You know your overall objective and exploration. 18:05.93 Dave Yeah, absolutely. Um and this really kind of starts to pretty naturally go into gameplay so we'll touch on that here in a second but um to kind of wrap up the story section. This is not a game with a super strong moment to moment narrative and like. Ah, strong I mean as in like in your face as the player you're not finding out new things about the story. Maybe even every time you sit down to play you might play for 3 hours and not really get any plot. That's not really what the game is about. There is I think a pretty clear story but you. You won't find it out for a while a lot of what's going on is either indirectly told it's optional it'smissible um I missed a lot of story stuff because I fucked up some quest that I was trying to do um. 18:59.66 soccr Oh man. 19:00.10 Dave A lot of it is like environmental storytelling Story Flavor world building stuff like that along the way. 19:10.90 soccr Yeah I didn't have a good idea of the story at all coming out of it. Even um I ended up looking a lot of things up after just to see what other people thought it gives you very very little. There are ways to get lore nuggets in the game I know. 19:12.47 Dave M. 19:26.50 Dave Um. 19:28.78 soccr Um I I didn't do any of that. So I Basically you know I had the really bare Bones Narrative experience. 19:35.73 Dave Yeah, it's tough like there are ways I'm trying to tiptoe around like what you discover, but there are ways to get a very direct story in the game but they're very hard to accomplish those things to find that. If that makes sense like there are quests to do to get that story but those quests are like from software levels of obtuse to figure out how the fuck to do them and I messed up everything involved with it. So 1 time I messed it up and I purposely died and reloaded so I can try again. But there was other stuff that was like I thought I was doing it correctly and I wasn't and it was just way too late to try Again. So I just moved on and finished the game. 20:28.73 soccr Yeah, and it's also just a track. I mean doing anything that isn't optional feels like so much in this game because even just getting through a single area is a single room. It's like ah a gargantuan task sometimes. 20:33.83 Dave Yeah. 20:42.10 Dave Yeah,, there's I can't really think of another game where maybe let's say I had an idea of something that might help me figure out like some story stuff or like any reason I guess to go across the entire map I can't think of another game where I. Felt more discouraged from doing that than rain world. 21:05.70 soccr Um, yeah, agreed. 21:10.46 Dave So um, so ah, we're going to put a pin in the story for now we'll have some things to talk about in the spoiler section. So Let's listen to a little bit of gameplay music from Rain world. Some of that you know high tension music and when we come back, We'll just. Go straight into gameplay. 21:34.79 Dave So the gameplay discussion about rain world is obviously going to focus on the survivor the ah the character that soccr and I both played the other slug cats have different play styles. But I I didn't play with them. So I don't really want to talk about them with any you know level of expertise. Ah, so gameplay and rain world is mostly 2d platforming. Um the goal of each kind of cycle as they call it each day is to collect food and find a safe place to wait out the rain that comes at the end of each day and um, when we say like wait out the rain. We. We don't mean like oh go inside because slow cattle get wet and get cold. No the rain in rain world is no joke and it is ah I mean you have to experience you will experience it for yourself. It. It is something to behold but also get the fuck inside. 22:27.37 soccr Yeah, get out of the rain. 22:38.77 Dave along the way when you're trying to collect the food and find a new place to sleep. Um, you are going to be spending a lot of your time either finding food or avoiding predators. Ah the. I think that the key thing about this setup in rain world is that this world is simulated but not like simulated in the way that a lot of other video games are the levels and the layouts the order of the levels. That's all. Handcrafted set up. It will be the same every time you play it. It's not procedurally generated Levels. What is simulated are the animals that populate the levels so they all have their own. Behavior patterns that are programmed in they have their own interactions with other animals and the developers just kind of place them around the map and then they just kind of let them go and so what's interesting is that things are happening around the world. 23:29.59 soccr Yeah. 23:47.80 Dave Regardless of what you are doing as the player. So let's say you're in a room. It's empty. You go into the next room. There might be an animal in there. It might be hiding in weight trying to find food. It might just be walking across the level it might encounter another animal and it will have. 24:05.76 Dave Behaviors program for how it reacts to that other animal does it try to eat it does it try to run away. How does this all work and there are lots of different animals and there are lots of different subtypes of each animal that have slightly different behaviors and it really feels like. A living environment that you are traversing through which makes it sometimes all the more difficult and frustrating and defeating because there's not a whole lot. You can do about the like the layouts of the enemies and stuff like that. 24:38.20 soccr Yeah, they also Spawn randomly every cycle so you never know where anything is going to be. I think it's also difficult to know how things behave. A lot of this is still so obscure to me I know that there are. 24:56.47 soccr There are places online where people have done really in-depth analysis of the creature Ai in rainworld. But I ah I don't understand I mean I played through the game twice I still don't understand why some animals sometimes. 25:14.14 soccr Have a beef with me and sometimes don't ah some animals. I would occasionally walk into a room with something in it that would consistently kill me and for some reason it's just it just can't be bothered even though I'm. 25:24.47 Dave No. 25:32.88 soccr Like spawning right next to it or something and it's just walking away. Maybe it ate something else. It's ah it's not ah, it's not clear. It's unknowable and I think it emulates nature really well in that way. It's just you don't know. 25:49.72 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's unpredictable in that way and it's also just sometimes because they are random to a degree and they do kind of act on their own. You can do little things to distract them. 25:52.40 soccr It's not predictable. 26:09.60 Dave Or something like that. But it's let's let's just say I walk out of my front door and there's like a bear in my driveway like I can try to do something to you know scare a bear away or some whatever the fuck they teach you to I live in Ohio we don't have bears. So um, like. I don't know you see a black bear. They tell you to yell and scream and bang on pots and pans so you can get in your car or something like that. But like you don't know how that bear is going to react and rain world kind of feels the same way like I can pick up a rock and throw it and hope that the noise distracts the enemy that didn't know I was there. 26:45.15 Dave But it might not, it might just be like oh I heard someone walking around up there I'm going to go check that out instead. So I think it's that like unknowable nature combined with the random and simulated environment. That together creates a lot of situations and a lot of deaths for the player that are just unfair and I think that this is a really rare thing and in a video game where the scales at least like if they're if they're. Secretly tipped in the player's favor. They did a really good job of hiding it because this is the game that I think feels the most indifferent to whether the players succeeds or fails. Yeah. 27:31.57 soccr I would be surprised. Ah I mean you know clearly some of the rooms like they have to design the room in such a way that there has to be some way through it. Ah, but outside of that it's hard for me to. 27:43.26 Dave Um, yeah. 27:51.26 soccr Imagine I I can't think of anything that the game ever gave me made me work for every little scrap just to walk ten feet 28:01.73 Dave yeah yeah I think that like there are some rooms that I think that enemies are not supposed to spawn into but they can follow you into those rooms there. There are some like calm rooms. Um like the rooms. That have like the gates between the big levels. There's not going to be a crocodile thing in those rooms waiting for you. But if 1 one's chasing you. It can follow you in there I suppose. Um, so that's the big thing here. The big question is since this is. 28:21.44 soccr Yeah, yeah. 28:38.13 Dave Kind of unfair and there's a lot of deaths where you're just like there's nothing I could have done Absolutely nothing I could have done to avoid that and this is what we would know in a lot of games. We just be like this is fucking bullshit like I have they have to give me some way to overcome this rain world says? No, we don't have to give you a way to overcome this. The way to overcome this is to try again. Um So how do you feel about this after 2 full playthroughs? 29:07.20 soccr Oh man. Ah you know I wanted to say that I'm actually really glad that you gave me an excuse to replay this game for a couple of reasons and some of those I'll get into in the spoiler section. But first and foremost. 29:23.34 soccr I Forgot how much I hate this game. I mean I do love it. It's an incredible one of a kind experience and I absolutely recommend it. But also I also hate it. It's so mean. 29:29.12 Dave Yeah, yeah. 29:39.27 soccr I think I think the more distance you get from it the rosier the Rose Rose colored glasses get because all of the Rage Headaches fade and it just seems funny in retrospect and you've got clips of you dying in unpredictable in terrible ways. But when you're playing it. It's just infuriating um like. 29:59.22 soccr You were describing earlier. Ah sometimes you'll be in a room and there's just one way forward and there's just something waiting there at the exit not moving ready to kill you and ah, you can go. You can do attempt after attempt. 30:10.76 Dave Yep. 30:17.99 soccr Like with the bear you know, ah the game forces you to try and throw a rock and see you can get it to react and then you've got to react in just the right way. Um, eventually you have to take a risk but um, you can really be hitting your head against the wall. Ah. 30:25.00 Dave Um, yeah. 30:37.72 soccr Attempt after attempt just trying to get through just trying to get through 1 thing or waiting for a fortuitous spawn. It definitely plays out that way. 30:47.67 Dave Yeah there's like you said so many times when let's remember distinctly at least 2 times when like I'm making a mad dash toward. I'm just running and I like I have a feeling like there hasn't been a safe room in a while. There's probably 1 nearby and the rain will be here in like 30 seconds and I'm just making a mad dash and I see the safe room icon in one of the exits to the room. 31:10.90 soccr Ah. 31:18.73 Dave And there's just one of those fucking Lizards just sitting right in front of it and I can't I can't get past it like there's no way to get past it and you just die. There's nothing you can do and ah we're laughing about it now and this is a game where like I was playing it. It's easy to laugh. So like. 31:35.90 soccr It's easy to laugh now. 31:37.96 Dave I was playing it and I clipped some stuff. Um I sent it to you. I sent it to Moon and other people I know that played rain world and everyone had the same reaction. They're just like lmao. Oh yeah, that's about right? That's what happens. So like I feel like overcoming it gives you that? um. 31:56.87 Dave Like that kind of secondhand sympathy for other people that are doing it for the first time because like let's we're we're talking about how difficult it is and how unfair it is but I beat the game you beat the game 2 times like it's not impossible by any means but it is just a game that sometimes. 32:16.45 Dave Shit is just not going to work out for you and you can either turn it off and never play again or you can keep trying but I think that like that persistence and learning a little bit each time about so maybe is and try a new maneuver. Um, maybe try a different way around like different rooms to try experimentation is rewarded in a way that I think you know contributes to that feeling like when you do make that progress and get to that next safe room you sit back in your chair you let out a deep breath. 32:36.57 soccr Maybe. 32:53.84 Dave And you go all right I did it. It's time to press forward again. 33:01.30 soccr Yeah, there is a way around. I think that is worth noting there almost always is another way. Sometimes it's way too far to bother and it's just going to be more trouble than it's worth. 33:19.25 soccr Ah, the game is truly open. There was one part. Another reason I was really glad to play the game is I think I played it wrong. The first time some of that is a spoiler but I kind of just ran through the environment and didn't. 33:26.70 Dave Okay. 33:38.53 soccr Really try things out. Didn't really explore very much on my first playthrough and when I ran into a wall I would if it seemed like too much I would turn around and I would try going another way. Um, and that paid off I was able to. 33:56.35 soccr Circumnavigate A lot of things that I think you're kind of supposed to do um which almost detracted from my sense of accomplishment at the end. But um, yeah, there's a way around. There's always a way. 34:12.27 Dave Ah, yeah. 34:15.25 soccr Sometimes it feels like it's a lot of luck and you definitely have to take risks. But there's a way. 34:16.32 Dave Well, yeah, that's a good point, like you're going to have a lot of shit luck in rain world. But you're also going to get lucky a lot of times like there were plenty of times when like. Let's say that same situation. The rain is coming. I'm kind of in a desperate scramble to find somewhere safe to wait out the rain and instead of there being one of those Lizards there's 2 of them. But they're fighting each other. 34:43.19 soccr I am. 34:43.83 Dave So They're not paying attention to me so I can just kind of run past them unbothered because they're too busy fighting with each other and this is all again. This is simulated behavior on the part of these animals in their ai code that if they see each other then they're going to fight over territory or whatever the hell. They're fighting about but that means that I can just run past them unbothered and those moments there are enough of those moments that like you do get good luck to offset some of the bad luck that you get. 35:17.37 soccr Yeah, absolutely. 35:19.10 Dave I was thinking about like this game's version of that like an insurmountable challenge because there are some areas in rain world that are so so difficult. The last couple of levels are 2 of the hardest levels I've ever completed in any video game and it took every ounce of strategy that I had every bit of like things that I've learned about the game and its systems. And also it took just some dumb luck to get through it and I was thinking about this game's version of that you know challenge that you beat your head up against there's so many games that do this with boss fights like they'll throw up like a really hard boss fight and you're. You're going to fight it like 25 times and then when you beat it. You're going to have that moment of relief and also the thrill of victory and all of that but I had that kind of feeling that yeah, ideally, yeah, that's. 36:18.81 soccr Ideally, ideally I think yeah, it depends on now it depends Sometimes I've gotten through a really brutal gauntlet and felt more bitter than victorious. 36:26.15 Dave Yeah. Yeah, in the wrong game and if they laid on you know, too much. You can come out of that being like you know what fuck this I hate this game I I don't I don't feel good about that I just feel like okay finally I can live again you know? um, but I had that. 36:46.11 soccr Yeah. 36:48.84 Dave Intended feeling of relief and joy and exhilaration like really often in rain world and sometimes it was just like I've died 5 times in this one room and I made it through that room and now I'm in the next room. 37:04.90 Dave And who knows what's in the next room but I made it through that first room. 37:09.68 soccr Yeah, absolutely and I mean there's always going to be things thrown up in your way. But I think it is possible to get a little more consistent. Um, you can kind of learn a way to get through a room like a good 80% of the time. 37:18.88 Dave Um, oh yeah. 37:27.24 soccr Maybe you know one? That's really dangerous and it's not as bad as when you first encountered it? yeah. 37:32.41 Dave Yeah, and you also like gain more and more mastery over how the slug cat moves as you play because it is a pretty unique movement system. It doesn't feel like any other platformer I've played. 37:40.81 soccr Oh yeah. 37:51.54 Dave Once you really get to terms with that. You can really start pulling off some good maneuvers and on my streams I had a couple of really good moments where I was kind of yakety saxing these ah these predator animals around you know, jumping over their heads and feeling good juking them out. 38:04.80 soccr Um, yeah, juke em 38:10.48 Dave Moments like that. But like I think this is a game that unless you were like a a speed runner. You're always going to get humbled at some point. 38:21.60 soccr Yeah, ah humbled. That's yeah, that's almost too mild a word for it. But I agree. 38:27.20 Dave After I beat the game I started a new playthrough on my steam deck because I was like oh maybe I'll just go the hard way and try and beat the game Real fast. So I can play downpour and I was doing pretty well like I made it pretty deep and I was having one of those runs where I was like. I'm a fucking master at this I'm juking out these Lizards I'm climbing I'm jumping I'm wall jumping and I see the safe room and I I jump and I grab onto a pole right in front of the safe room to make a quick you know double thing and it was one of those fake pole monsters and it's just fucking ate me and I was like that's what I get. 39:03.25 soccr Ah, no. 39:06.25 Dave My hubris got me again. 39:08.17 soccr Oh man see I I almost didn't want to talk about the poll mimics because it feels almost spoilery because it's a special thing encountering a poll mimic for the very first time. 39:14.42 Dave Well. Yeah, well someone playing rain world for the first time even if you know that they exist you're not going to know what they look like until they get you for the first time so it's um, yeah, it's just ah I think it's a game that creates a lot of anecdotes like that like. 39:26.88 soccr True. 39:39.56 Dave You know, close escapes or brutal deaths I'm thinking about 1 time when like I had just made like a really incredible escape from a couple of lizards that were chasing me around and I really like gave them the runaround and I finally got onto a place above where they could reach. Because they can't climb and a bird just fucking came out of the air and snatched me up. 40:01.13 soccr Um, no ah I have to resist the urge every time somebody describes or shows me a death in rain world to just say ah classic because that's how it feels. 40:11.89 Dave Yeah, that is how it feels but because everyone has moments like that when you do score those victories or. 40:18.20 soccr Like we all know exactly how that feels. 40:28.59 Dave When you just get to like kind of a transitional area between levels that are like they're obviously calmer they don't have predators that spawn in there or there's some really nice vistas that you come out and see in this game when you get those moments they are hard earned. They feel deserved. 40:36.75 soccr Me: Oh yeah. 40:46.95 Dave They feel great. 40:50.37 soccr Yeah, and that ah those are definitely the rare moments of serenity that you feel you're just ah I'm out look at this vista. 40:56.11 Dave Yep. 40:59.39 Dave And I get look at this and I get to enjoy this for about 20 seconds and I know the next screen I go on to is going to have some bullshit that I'm going have to deal with yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about like the mechanical stuff when you're playing rain world here. 41:09.60 soccr Now it'll be fine. 41:16.26 soccr Yeah. 41:17.75 Dave Um, you are mainly driven by again finding food and finding safe places to sleep. So your hunger gauge if you're playing as the survivor has 7 little pips on it most of the food you find will fill one of those little pips. Ah, these slug cats eating animation is incredibly cute. I love it so much. Um, these survivor needs to eat 4 things to successfully rest and to save the game. The only way to save the game is to go to sleep with a full stomach. We'll say. 41:39.58 soccr Adorable. 41:53.50 Dave Um, the monk only needs to eat 3 out of 5 little pips. This is one of the ways that the monk is kind of easy mode. Um I think that they wrote that monsters are slightly less aggressive toward the monk. Although I played a little bit as the monk they still want you. So it's not like they're indifferent to you. Um I mean maybe maybe that's why I was doing a little bit better. Maybe that's why I was, you know, making quick progress. 42:13.20 soccr Did you notice any difference at all? I am curious about it. 42:27.23 Dave But I still had stuff chasing me. Basically everything that saw me was chasing me so not a huge difference there. Um, how do you generally feel about hunger and survival meters in games? 42:43.14 soccr Meters You know I'm not. I have a very limited experience with survival games. Ah I I mean I don't know how often a meter comes into it. Ah but like game games where survival is the main focus I haven't played a lot of them. 42:46.20 Dave No. 42:58.67 soccr Even something as relatively simple as minecraft gives me a lot of trouble. I haven't survived more than a day in minecraft which seems pathetic to say out loud. Ah, but 1 of the things I think sets rain world apart is it has very distinct checkpoints. 43:15.14 Dave Yeah. 43:18.25 soccr Um, even if they don't offer a ton of Sanctuary. It gives you an objective. It gives you a sense of progress. Um, but as far as Hunger Systems Hunger Systems Go I mean I guess I can't really. I don't know if I can think of a direct analog. I mean I would argue that most games have resource management of some kind, even something like a health bar or a Stamina bar I think count as resources that you have to manage if this game were just about moving from checkpoint to checkpoint and avoiding. Ah, ah, avoiding predators and you didn't have to eat at all. 43:55.13 soccr I Think you would be a lot less incentivized to take risks or to test out the environment. Um, you'd just kind of turn tail and run. Ah yeah, and you would lose the risk reward. 43:57.40 Dave Yeah. 44:11.11 soccr That you get from seeking out food. 44:13.60 Dave Right? There are a lot of situations where um, maybe you're in a room that has a bunch of food but there's also a predator animal in that room. So you're just constantly gauging the risk of like okay well I can go try and catch some of those flies. But. If I jump around and make a bunch of noise that thing might hear me and come up and and try and grab me or like you're making a mad dash away and you just happen to jump by some of those like fruit and you're just like okay well I'm just going to grab a fruit on the way and when I find you know a moment I'll I'll eat or something. Ah, yeah, yeah, true. Um, so did the ah it sounds like the hunker system I would assume caused you some frustration sometimes. But overall you think it benefits the game. 44:49.77 soccr Ah, relatable. Yeah. 45:05.40 soccr Sure.? Ah yeah I mean you know the um, it's the hunger system by itself I don't think I have any ah, any trouble with really I I don't think I got frustration directly From. Needing to find food. You know the time limit definitely adds some pressure but you know the worst thing that happens is you know you die and you go back to where you were and you give it another shot I think that I think it's really the karma system that um, that adds the pressure. 45:30.59 Dave Right. 45:37.75 Dave Yeah, so going to bed with a full stomach will raise your karma by 1 point and dying will lower your karma by 1 point and this is important because there are some gates throughout the game. 45:40.40 soccr Um. 45:55.10 Dave Where you need to be at a certain karma level to pass through basically to make progress through the game. Um, this sometimes I was just doing great with karma like I had more than enough food. Karma was at Maximum life was good. And there were times when things were bad. Karma was at the absolute minimum and this was the thing that like there were sometimes when I was frustrated by the karma but you can never drop too far below. What I felt like was a manageable situation I thought. Like you can bottom out for sure. But it's never like they won't just let you keep going Forever. You know there's a lower limit to your karma. Yeah. 46:32.87 soccr Yeah, yeah. 46:38.88 soccr Right? Once you get to the bottom you're at the bottom you don't have to worry about yeah, you don't have to worry about surviving more than you die which is I guess a small blessing. 46:47.72 Dave Right? Yes, because yeah, you will die more times than you rest in this game. 47:00.98 soccr Spoiler Alert you will die. 47:01.99 Dave Yeah, um, if you don't eat enough. You can still go into a safe room and sleep. But you will not get proper rest and the game won't save and the slug cat will go into starvation mode where you'll be really sluggish moving. 47:18.70 Dave And in order to rest. You'll have to completely fill your hunger gauge which is difficult to do in a lot of places so this felt like a well fuck it. We'll see if we can get out of this but I'm not going to assume that this is going to work out. 47:38.19 soccr Ah, yeah, throughout both of my playthroughs I could never figure I guess it didn't occur to me that um it was a way to sort of save your karma I never did the starvation thing. 47:52.50 soccr Because I couldn't see the point of it I was like well it doesn't save your game. So I mean like you'll just go back to where you were before that. But my friend shout out to Andrew he pointed out to me that the main advantage is the bump to your karma. It's a way of locking in your karma. Um I can think of a point where it might have been advantageous when there was a gate that I needed a certain amount of karma for um, if I had forced to hibernate right before that to get into the starvation state and just done that every time I went through it would be a way of like. 48:30.83 soccr Saving my karma and not having to go and try and find food before I give it another go. Um I never did that though it might have been useful though. 48:36.91 Dave Yeah, there were a couple times when I was able to like make it back fill up the hunger. Gauge go rest again and all was well and there were a couple times when I did it and like the slug cat like gets super sluggish and like can't barely jump and sometimes can barely walk and like. Shit just comes and eats you because you can't run away so sometimes it works out sometimes it doesn't probably more often not than when it does work out but hey that's rain world for you. Baby? Um, ah the movement like we mentioned is a little bit different. Um, the slug cat can do a couple of different types of walks. You can walk on all fours. That's kind of slower and I presume a little bit quieter or you can stand upright and run. Um I heard an anecdote from the developer that they wanted to create a platforming game where you didn't. Walk on to two feet basically like every human character so there we go. We got that um the slug cat can jump. It can wall jump. It can climb up and down poles. It can do a balance beam type walk on top of poles again. Another super cute animation. When you do the balancing. Um, yeah, all the animations are just really great balancing eating squeezing through little tunnels. It's just super well animated for a pixel art game. You know. 49:53.60 soccr Just adorable all the time. 50:11.15 soccr Yeah, yeah, it somehow manages to feel very alive. Um, which I think is a part of what's so striking about it is um, it's pixelated but if it doesn't it doesn't feel digital. 50:13.43 Dave Yeah. 50:28.40 Dave Yeah, um, another one of those cute animations is your other kind of special move that you can do where if you are crouched on all fours and you hold down the jump button the slug cat will. 50:28.77 soccr I guess. 50:41.75 Dave Like prepare to do a long jump and it'll like stick his little butt up in the air and then if you let go the Button. He'll do the long jump and this felt essential to master like you will master it. But it's difficult to get the hang of at the beginning or at least it was for me. Um, and then. Putting all of these pieces together. There's a little bit of Jank to the movement I feel like where sometimes it was like I hit that wall jump. Why didn't he wall jump. You know there was some stuff like that. But it does feel very masterable after that. 51:18.39 soccr It's an interesting thing about the movement is that it feels inconsistent when you first start out but I think it's actually that the inputs are just really precise slug cats. Movements are. 51:31.87 soccr Are consistent but the game is just like really exacting about your inputs like if you fall from a particular height and you're holding a particular directional input. You might just roll off an edge and it's trial and error the game gives you just the basics. It's like here's how you jump. 51:33.43 Dave Yeah. 51:50.31 soccr You know here's how you climb um but there are all these other kind of hidden mechanics which I still don't know it's consistent though. If you can figure it out. 51:51.77 Dave Um. 51:59.49 Dave Yeah, yeah, there are some there like the movement set that we've described. You know a couple types of um, running jump wall jump climbing squeezing through tunnels and doing that standing long jump. 52:17.75 Dave Is pretty simple. It doesn't take you long to remember all of the tools in your toolset. But this game is full of hidden ways that things interact with each other. There are a bunch of items around the world. A lot of them. You can pick up and throw there's spears. There's rocks. There's all kinds of stuff. There's miscellaneous. You know trash that you can pick up. Um, aside from Spears. There's no real weapons in the game. There's a couple but they're very situational. Um. 52:49.38 soccr Yeah, yeah. 52:51.33 Dave Like there's there's one I'm thinking of that you you pick up and you throw it and it makes a fuck ton of noise. So like you might take care of the 1 thing you throw that at but everything else nearby is going to know you're there. It's going to come eat you so good luck. Um other than spears. You don't really have weapons. 53:05.56 soccr Yeah, yeah. 53:10.28 Dave And Spears themselves are not that powerful unless you're playing as one of the different characters. I think that are like spear based. Maybe the hunter has better spears or the hunter can craft spears or something like that. Yeah, but the point being like. 53:22.35 soccr Ah, gosh Yeah I don't know it I think I heard something like that. Yeah. 53:29.51 Dave There are weapons around but I think a basic enemy like the lizards might take like 3 spears to kill. But you're never going to find 3 spears in the same place. So it's not. It's effectively not a killing weapon. It's a distraction. 53:45.67 soccr If you can Yeah, it's much better as a distraction if you can pull your spear out of the lizard before it gets you ah you can get another shot at it I have seen people take out really? ah really buff Lizards by just using the same spear. 53:59.56 Dave Damn I didn't even know you could pull them back out. 54:04.58 soccr Yeah, yeah, um, and I actually got a chance to play this game. Ah co-op recently because my friend got the downpour dlc and um changes the game dramatically because if you've got each other's backs I mean you can You can just keep pulling that one spear out and take out. 54:08.82 Dave Oh nice. 54:21.92 Dave Nice, Okay, and so that's a good example of like there are a bunch of mechanics like that. The game will never tell you you can go pull a spear out of an enemy and there are so many more examples of things. The game will never tell you. 54:23.66 soccr A lot of things. 54:40.30 Dave But if you experiment, if you know take note of what works and what doesn't um, there is a lot of stuff that can help you you just have to figure it out first. 54:52.22 soccr Yeah, good luck with that, I mean you have to play around. It's a little playground. 54:53.11 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you might be tempted to like I don't know you if you pick up an item. You try to throw it at an enemy. It doesn't do anything so you're like okay well that's just trash. It doesn't help well there there might be lots of other different applications for that thing if you keep trying. Basically um Spears are not just used as weapons. It is really really crucial. 55:21.16 soccr Yeah, yeah. 55:28.15 Dave Um, well the game teaches you so I don't really feel bad about saying this but you can throw spears into walls to create things to climb on to help you know reach new areas. So that's just an example, there's so many more of these. 55:30.15 soccr 10 Yeah. 55:45.40 Dave I Think we can talk a little bit in the spoiler section about some of the stuff we discovered but this is a game that's like much deeper than meets the eye as far as the mechanics and the items and stuff go to which is on top of like the very deep and meaningful experience of just making it through the world. 56:04.83 Dave Finding out these discoveries along the way that then help you make that progress that's like Chef Kiss video game shit. 56:19.82 Dave Um, was there anything else about the gameplay that you thought noteworthy to mention. 56:25.94 soccr Um, and I saw that you had ah in your notes that there is no fall damage. Ah you didn't bring it up. Um I discovered because I'm awesome that there is a certain height where there's fall damage. 56:35.36 Dave That's true. Yeah. 56:45.60 soccr There aren't very many places where you can fall far enough to die. I think you have to fall like 3 full screens and land on the ground but both playthroughs I managed it at least once? Um, but in general you can survive a fall so a lot of times it is um. 56:52.82 Dave Ah, okay, okay, fair enough. 57:04.64 soccr It is advantageous to just like if you know there's ground below just jump off an edge to get away from something. 57:10.65 Dave Yep, that for sure was one of my survival strategies is if something is following me close to an edge just jump. You know, Maybe you can survive that fall. Maybe the enemy can't one way to find out. 57:31.50 soccr Um, no, but I think we covered everything that I kind of had in mind. 57:36.87 Dave All right music so we've kind of touched on some of this stuff here and there but we can talk about how this game looks and sounds to wrap up this non-spoiler part. Um I mentioned it is pixel art 2d pixel art. With a very strong like nature reclaiming industrial areas aesthetic a lot of the places that you're going in are um, you know old factories and sewer systems and stuff like that again that that kind of recreation of that rat in the subway tunnels. 58:11.61 soccr Yeah, yeah, that's perfect. 58:13.10 Dave Ah thing which I think was once I read that I was like oh man, that's great. They really had that um the animations we talked about. But again, they're just fantastic across the board. Um, mostly from the slug cats. But the enemies are all great too. They're all very readable. 58:32.31 Dave I Think part of it is like a lot of the enemies' heads, especially the Lizards. Their heads are kind of like they have this bioluminescent look to them that really makes them stick out. Ah when they want to be seen. We'll say um. 58:51.35 Dave And um, yeah, all those animations of the slug cat balancing and climbing and squeezing through little burrows you can go into a burrow backwards and then you can press your button and he'll Like. He'll like wiggle around and then write himself and start going, you know, the front way forward and it's like the cutest little animation. It's so good. 59:12.10 soccr Ah, you know that's another thing gosh it's embarrassing. That's just another thing I didn't figure out on my first playthrough is that you could turn around so whenever I was desperately getting away from an enemy I would enter a little narrow passageway. But first I would just have to go. 59:17.51 Dave Yeah, yeah. 59:29.90 soccr Wiggle backwards the whole way which is not which you can do. It's only a little slower. 59:31.24 Dave To be fair, yeah and to be fair that wiggling backwards. But first is very cute as an animation. Um, yeah. 59:41.20 soccr Yeah, yeah, everything he does? Yeah. 59:46.50 Dave And I think I figured out that you could turn around in the tunnels at like hour fifteen at the earliest you know I had gone through hundreds of tunnels before then. So um, if you're playing with a controller of the game signals when the ah. 01:00:03.73 Dave Day cycle is coming to an end with this slowly increasing vibration. Um to signal that the rain is coming and first it's like it's a vibration that could be anything almost and then it gets stronger and stronger and then when the rain finally comes it is this It's it's this intense controller vibration this thunderous sound the visual of the rain coming is ah the first time I saw it my jaw dropped I couldn't believe what the rain was in this game. 01:00:39.62 Dave Yeah. 01:00:40.59 soccr It's overwhelming. Um, you know it's like it is. It is like a heavy rain but somehow they've managed to make it feel much more intense from ah from like the perspective of a little. Helpless animal. 01:00:58.29 Dave Yeah, yeah, I would say that yeah think of like the strongest rain that you've ever experienced in your life and then imagine that you are 10 times smaller than you are you know Um, the music in rain world to kind of. Like wrap this non-spoiler part up here kind of saving one of the best qualities for last the music has kind of transcended the game. There are a lot of people I know who have never played Rain world and have no plans to play it but they're like I love this soundtrack. I listen to it when I work. It's really. Beautiful soundtrack. But you mentioned earlier in the show that a lot of the time there is no music and a lot of the times it is. It's one of those quiet solitary games and I really love it when games do this and then use music to punctuate moments or situations. 01:01:52.26 Dave And this game nails that I think. 01:01:58.57 soccr Um, yeah, it's It's a quiet game even um, even in moments of Danger. It's just ah, which is more realistic, Um, a lot of times predators in ah media they're like roaring as they attack you. But. Mean That's not really how it works. Predators are quiet. They're sneaking up on you. They're watching you um and this game is much more like that. It's just quiet and tense. But um, sometimes also just peaceful. 01:02:31.87 Dave Yeah, there are moments when there is an ah song that plays that signifies that you're in danger. Sometimes it kicks in before you can see the enemies and you're like oh shit oh shit where is it where is it. Um. So That's yeah, a lot of times sometimes you get it. Sometimes you don't but I love that song and I came out of this like I don't have a lot of words to describe what the music sounds like. It's really atmospheric I think a lot of times. 01:02:49.42 soccr It's the only warning you get. 01:03:05.49 Dave Um, sometimes it's kind of like electronic music but a lot of times. It is very just atmospheric and evocative. Yeah, you've heard it throughout this episode. So hopefully those little sound clips that I put in here. 01:03:22.73 Dave Ah, do better than my words do but it is a it perfectly fits this game and it's very pleasant to listen to. It's a nice soundtrack. 01:03:34.60 soccr I agree. Ah, the music is always very short lived. Um I should probably go listen to the soundtrack. Its music was always welcome when it appeared in the game but you know 2 minutes would pass then it would be gone and I don't I don't know if the game ever plays. It's not. 01:03:50.71 soccr It's not a game where you are in an area and you hear that area's music. It's like um, you might get to a certain point in the game and you get a little song associated with that part and then it's gone and I don't know if you even ever hear it again. 01:03:52.58 Dave Right? right. 01:04:02.80 Dave Um, yeah I did take a look at the soundtrack. It's one of those soundtracks that has like this is an exaggeration but like three hundred forty five second songs you know so that definitely fits with what you just said? Yeah, so ah, let us wrap up this non-spoiler section by kind of just giving some closing thoughts here and then answer the question which is a great question for this game. 01:04:19.11 soccr That sounds right. 01:04:34.96 Dave Who would you recommend rain world to? 01:04:38.61 soccr Oh man first and foremost ah masochists. Ah definitely I would honestly recommend it to just about anybody who, um, who likes the look of it. Um, but I would say that it's important to go in. With the right expectations. Ah I would say um, going into this game and trying to have an experience versus ah versus trying to get to a destination is probably going to have a much better result than if you're. 01:05:17.63 Dave Yeah I agree with that I think that this is a game that requires a certain mindset and like you said adjusting of expectations. There might be times, especially if you play in Shorter Chunks. There might be times. There were times for me where I played for an hour and did not make any discernible progress. It was just deaths and getting lost and stuff like that. Um, and then there were a lot of times when I played and I had all these beautiful moments that made my jaw drop and. 01:05:56.26 Dave There are things that I'll never forget and those now that I'm finished outweigh the parts when I was frustrated. There were parts when I was frustrated and I'll talk about them in the spoiler section. There was one time I was playing and I had to shut my stream down because I was just so helplessly lost. And I was like I don't think people want to watch this and I don't want to stream this right Now. So I was like look everyone I'm going to look in a guide to give me a direction to go in and I am just turning this off now and I'll see you next Time. So. 01:06:17.90 soccr I Don't know. 01:06:31.82 Dave It does take a certain acceptance that like you will have play sessions like that you will have times when you're really close to making progress and something entirely out of your control happens and you die and you die and you lose your progress. There will be things like that. But I think that. I think that people have that adjusting of expectations in them and so for that reason I think that especially if you get this game on ps plus or like you but got it on Amazon for free or if it ever goes on game pass or something like this is a no brainer like. Try this because if it connects with you. It will really connect with you. Um, there are just as many people who tried rain world and bounced off of it because they just couldn't get down with what it was doing as there are people like me who. Now I'm going to be that person where like if I ever see somebody, like does anyone in here have any experience playing rain world anyone recommend rain world I'm going to jump at the chance to talk about it every time like this is one of those games that has become a small. But slightly significant part of my personality as someone who likes video games. You know. 01:07:50.42 soccr Yeah, absolutely people do bounce off this game particularly people who review video games Professionally apparently. 01:07:54.44 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:07:59.71 Dave That man I have to empathize with someone who like has a deadline to beat rain world that's got to be rough like this was one I had heard enough from you and from moon and Joe that. 01:08:08.93 soccr Ah, yeah. 01:08:16.58 Dave When I scheduled it for the podcast. It was one of those where I was like I'm going to beat this and then I will reach out to people about scheduling a date for recording. I am not going to say okay I have two weeks to beat rain world I'm not going to do that and you should not either listeners. Do not do that? yeah. 01:08:31.74 soccr Smart That's the way to do it. 01:08:35.88 Dave Um, but man I have like despite all the unfair stuff I have almost like my final opinions of this is that this is a just ah, a beautiful game and ah a real one of one something I Really appreciate I've never played any other game that. 01:08:55.13 Dave I can compare to rain world like I play so many games and there's so many where I can be like oh yeah, this game reminds me of these 3 games put together or like this game was clearly inspired by this other game and with rain world I'm just like. 01:09:09.68 Dave I Don't know I can't make any direct comparisons here. There's nothing like it. 01:09:14.95 soccr Yeah, it's so hard I Um I was actually trying to think of anything I could compare this to when you asked me to join you I I can't I Really can't There's nothing like rain world. It's an experience. 01:09:25.93 Dave The only other game I could think of that slightly approaches this is that game Tokyo Jungle for the PS 3 if you ever played it. It's another survival game where you play as animals on like the. 01:09:35.18 soccr Now I haven't. 01:09:41.67 Dave Post apocalyptic streets of Tokyo but that game is like super arcadey. Um you are part of your mission is to like find food and survive but also to find a mate and have children and then if you die you play as the offspring and you play as a pomeranian that eventually rules the streets of Tokyo. It's a really weird game that is superficially comparable to rain world but in the experience. It's totally different. Yeah, so yeah so um that is. 01:10:05.55 soccr Yeah, yeah, you can see the elements of it based on your description. Yeah. 01:10:16.82 Dave To wrap up the non-spoiler part here. We're going to do a little bit of housekeeping and then we'll do spoilers. So um, we forgot to ask you before we started. Do you have anything that you want to point people toward anywhere? 01:10:29.66 soccr Oh boy I I have absolutely nothing to plug I mean I'm on I'm on blue sky I guess you know say hi ah I guess I'll just say you know leave Twitter I know you can do it everyone out there listening. 01:10:35.30 Dave Yeah. 01:10:42.46 Dave Get out. 01:10:47.32 soccr I've got blue sky invite. If you want it just let me know. Ah, that's it. That's all I've got. 01:10:52.14 Dave It is it is ah it is a better place for now. Yeah, um, all right? So ah, yeah, if ah, you would like to support tales from the backlog. It's these same kind of things at the end of every episode if you'd like to join the discussion. Um I would love to have a ah lot of rain world discussion this week in the Discord server. So there's an invite link down in the show notes you can join the discord server come in and talk about rain world. I would love that you can support the show by leaving ratings and reviews on Apple Podcast Spotify and podcast addict. Those accept reviews and that helps if people search rain world in their podcast app. They'll help them find this episode so that would be greatly appreciated and last but not least if you would like to support monetarily you can do so at patreon.com/real Dave Jackson like I said this game won a poll to be included on the show and if you want to vote in future polls. You can do that over on Patreon I also have another podcast called a top three podcast we do top 3 lists. It is a much different vibe from this show but I have a lot of fun doing it. Think you might have fun listening to so soccr and I are going to take a break and when we come back, it's going to be full spoiler time for rain world 01:13:33.22 Dave Alright soccr and I are back in. It is full spoiler time for rain world and we're going to. We're not going to like walk area by area this game. You can go in lots of different orders through the areas. Um, so we're going to talk about some memorable experiences. So we're going to talk about some memorable experiences that we had some fun discoveries of how things interact and stuff like that and then we will go through talking about meeting moon. Meeting 5 pebbles and then the ending and the story that we take from that kind of stuff. But I think that we can just open this up by having a freeform. Ah what is some memorable stuff that sticks out in your head after playing this could be. Little anecdotes of escape or death or discoveries that you made what sticks out. 01:14:31.90 soccr Ah, man. Well so I told you that I played this game wrong? Um I mean I ah there were so my first playthrough most of the fun discoveries were just you know all the new and interesting things that could kill me. 01:14:34.50 Dave Yeah, yeah, let's start there. 01:14:47.91 soccr And the ways that they would kill me. Um you know like ah like I have no idea what is going on with that giant creature swimming in the waters of the shoreline but it chills me to my core. 01:14:57.80 Dave Oh yeah, like the fucking Mecha Crocodile monster. 01:15:06.15 soccr Yeah, and you pass like 8 of its corpses just sticking up out of the water but there's one just still around. Ah. 01:15:12.70 Dave Ah, dude and that part to get from like the one area to like the next place you're trying to go you have to swim like 8 screens and you're just helpless in the water there and that's one of those moments where if that thing is in the water. 01:15:24.20 soccr Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:15:30.20 Dave Like if you just go to the next screen and it's fucking there. You're just like well I'm dead I I'm dead. But yep. 01:15:35.62 soccr Yeah, or or just turn around and cross your fingers. Um I you know I had a lot of times where it seemed distracted by something though too and I managed to get around it. Um, but when I say I played this game wrong. Like I missed an incredible amount of things. Ah so I never learned how to use the sticky Hook shot worms. I went through the whole game without that or without learning ah that. 01:15:59.26 Dave Oh man. 01:16:09.74 soccr That you could grab those those bugs to help you float and jump higher. So all of these movement mechanics that let you ascend a little more easily I just I never discovered because my instinct was just to kill me. 01:16:18.28 Dave Just. 01:16:28.00 soccr I'm not going to touch it I'm not going to interact with it at all I'm just going to run um and and I will tell you it is not easy to get through this game without without those things because I mean I got to that I told you that um I circumnavigated like. 01:16:46.98 soccr Essential parts when I got to the sky islands. Um I I I turned around because I was like I can't I can't do this I'm just hitting a wall I tried maybe like 20 times and then I just turned around and I found a way. 01:17:06.85 soccr Down and all the way to the end of the game somehow without ever entering the farmer raises without ever encountering the deer I have no idea how I did this I think based on your notes maybe that maybe that was a way that you eventually ended up going. Um I wasn't totally sure based on what you wrote. Ah, because it sounded like you couldn't make the de work and ah so um, so I Ah I missed so much and the second playthrough I was like I'm going to do it right? I'm going to do everything correctly. 01:17:25.69 Dave Yeah. 01:17:42.94 soccr Intended big quotation marks around intended um like the way that the game kind of steers you. I wanted to actually try going that way and to do that I had to learn how to use things. 01:17:54.39 Dave Yeah, the other thing that it sounds like you didn't know was those little squid that swim around you. You can grab them and you can swim really fast and so. 01:18:10.80 soccr I Now are those distinct from the squids that you can eat. Ah, okay. 01:18:13.99 Dave Ah, yes, there's like the grayish purple like Jellyfish that you can eat and then there are the squid gives you reminded me in that part with that Mecha Crocodile monster. 01:18:27.10 soccr Yeah, okay. 01:18:28.61 Dave Um, there are those squid swimming around and for the longest time I was swimming through those sections is just praying like please don't eat me here but they never did and then eventually I it was one of the underground parts. There was one in like this really small enclosed. 01:18:35.60 soccr Yeah, exactly That's yeah. 01:18:47.89 Dave Ah, bit of water and I was in there too and it kept bumping up against me and it never ate me so eventually I was like ok this thing's not hostile what happens if I grab it and then um, when you grab it it like shoots down a direction in the water and you can control it and. 01:19:06.60 Dave I Don't know how I would have progressed because there's two ways to get into the final couple areas and I went the way with all the water at the shoreline. So without the squid I would have never made it through there. 01:19:19.27 soccr Yeah, um, um, this explains so much about so much of the difficulty that I had in the water areas because I mean I'm still. 01:19:24.10 Dave Okay. 01:19:36.60 soccr Still don't know how I managed to get through certain areas, whereas like to get a certain height or to get through ah certain stretches of water I was cutting it close with the oxygen like there's no oxygen meter but you know I died enough to note that I was close. 01:19:46.85 Dave Yeah. The swimming is janky too like it's. It's not very precise or at least it didn't feel that way. There were a bunch of times when it was like I'm trying to swim through this tunnel and I need to surface to go up to get air. 01:19:54.95 soccr Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:20:08.92 Dave I get stuck under something for some reason and then I die. Or yeah, so the squid were a big help. 01:20:11.30 soccr Yeah, that happened to me so much. But um, yeah, see that makes me want to check it out Again. I can't believe it's probably just a good standard rule that if something isn't trying to kill you. You should maybe see if it does something ah because ah I don't know that there's anything in the game that just um, doesn't interact with you in any meaningful way. But I kind of thought that's what that was. 01:20:45.46 soccr That squid was I was just like I know sometimes it kind of like bumped me downward in the water a tiny bit and it's like oh maybe it can drown you if you mess around. Yeah. 01:20:57.60 Dave I'm trying to think trying to just running through different animals in my head like is there anything that is just can't be used for anything but also doesn't want to eat you and I can't really think of anything. 01:21:14.76 soccr I Mean yeah, look can't be used for anything. Um. 01:21:21.14 soccr No I mean there are no I don't think there is I mean there are things that have really specific uses but everything is everything does kind of have a purpose. Well, what do you know they. 01:21:37.82 Dave Yeah, there's a lot and like that ah that level with those little hook shot insects like those larvae or whatever that was one of the easiest parts for me because once I figured out how that hook shot worked I was like zipping around like. 01:21:38.90 soccr Devs The devs were on our side this whole time they were looking out for us. 01:21:57.52 Dave You know this is I'm like a master. I've done this in other games before so that was really good. Um, yeah oh yeah I bet. Um. 01:21:58.36 soccr Um, yeah. 01:22:04.40 soccr Yeah, it's nice when you figure it out I got real good with those spears and throwing them into walls I will tell you. 01:22:17.43 Dave So when you say you did things the wrong way does that mean that from the beginning in the outskirts level you went left and then down into like the drainage system. 01:22:29.44 soccr No, no, no, no no I did ah ah see I'm going to save part of this discussion for a topic. You're going to bring up specifically looks to the moon. Ah, but um, no I mean I followed the guide. 01:22:34.84 Dave Okay, okay. 01:22:46.76 Dave Right? right? I forgot to bring him up. Well yeah, people can figure that out for themselves if they tapped out at the spoiler wall. They'll see him. He's there. That's true. Yeah. 01:22:47.31 soccr As long as I could um I mean you ask? Oh yeah, yeah, there's a little guide. 01:22:58.77 soccr Yeah, it's not always around but it pops up. Um you know, yeah, asking if I ever got lost I felt lost throughout this entire game. I mean there wasn't any point. Like the map system if you open it up like the way the areas connect to each other is so arcane and it doesn't it only shows you one area at a time I never felt oriented. I was always like well I'm just going to keep. Going in this general direction and hope that I end up somewhere New. Um, which worked out for the most part. Ah I Only got stuck once I got stuck in the shoreline and in retrospect I think we might guess why? ah. 01:23:51.96 Dave Right. 01:23:55.38 soccr But well I was in an area where I couldn't figure out how to go forward or back without dying. Um, there must have been a way out, but after like 10 cycles of being stuck I ended up using a passage. You know the fast travel because I did have 1 01:24:05.95 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 01:24:11.27 soccr To just go back to a previous area and then I just avoided going back to the shoreline as much as I could um I don't know it's it's It's not a game where I I sure Missed Objective Markers I'll say that. 01:24:26.76 Dave Um, yeah, um, let's see here. So. 01:24:35.70 Dave I think that I did pretty good for a while, as far as knowing where to go the overseer helps um put you on the right path to find moon and then it points you to the direction that goes up to the 5 pebbles area. 01:24:52.76 Dave Um, and then it points you to go back down to the Farm Arrays and you've actually gotten some explicit direction like 5 pebbles tells you to go to the Farm Arrays to the west so that helped a little bit but the map is kind of disorienting like it. 01:25:03.48 soccr Yeah, yeah. 01:25:12.14 Dave It doesn't show the whole map on 1 screen. There's like half of it that's foregrounded and half of it that's in the background and you have all these connections between them and like I was always relatively clear on where I was in relation to like the immediate area and like. 01:25:28.56 soccr Yeah, yeah. 01:25:31.10 Dave You get to memorize some screens and stuff but there were plenty of times when especially if the overseer is not there I was just like I'm just going to go in this direction and if I find stuff that seems too hard which in retrospect that it's not that kind of game. Everything's hard. Um, but like I'm just going to go in this direction. Yeah, and if I make progress I will continue in that direction and that worked out for most of the game but definitely not all of it. Um I had so let's talk about Moon first because it will tie into my. 01:25:52.64 soccr Just take the easy path. 01:26:10.15 Dave Frustrating time later so you found moon naturally your first time then. Okay, so for those listening if you're listening and don't um, haven't played Moon is. 01:26:12.22 soccr Here I did yes. 01:26:25.87 Dave Ah, at first it looks like a little alien but what it actually is it is a body being puppeted by a robot like a robot arm. Um, and when you go in there. There are these. Little floating things around the air. They look an awful lot like food around moon . Did you eat them? The first time you went there. 01:26:48.60 soccr Um, Dave I killed looks to the moon. The first time I got there? Ah and um I ah I didn't know what else to do ah and. 01:26:54.84 Dave Yep. 01:27:06.27 soccr I Think that a lot of people recognizing that This was a mistake maybe died and then you know retried a cycle not me I slept and and I had to live with that guilt and a lot of. 01:27:13.84 Dave Yep, that's what I did and. Oh no, okay. 01:27:22.88 soccr And a few other consequences for the rest of the game I think ah part of the reason that I got stuck and lost is because I don't think I don't think you have a guide anymore after you if she's dead which is fair. Um. 01:27:33.70 Dave Oh yeah, the overseer gets pissed. Yeah. 01:27:41.10 soccr I mean I got 2 looks to the moon. I think that's her full name and um I ah I knew this is where I was supposed to be because it was a dead end but I couldn't figure out how to interact with her I hadn't. I hadn't met 5 pebbles. I couldn't understand anything. Ah you know so like she kind of when I entered she was just like oh and I was like okay that was a reaction but you know nothing there was no talking there were no instructions. 01:27:58.76 Dave Right. 01:28:14.35 soccr Nothing seemed to be happening and then when I ate one of the neurons. There was a reaction and I was like well maybe this is what I'm supposed to do? Yeah, um, ah but I didn't realize she was going to Die. Um I did inadvertently commit to that decision. Ah my friend who I mentioned earlier I think ah ate like 1 or 2 and then I think there's an achievement or something that's like stolen enlightenment and he saw that and he was like oh and he just restarted the game. 01:28:34.24 Dave Ah. 01:28:43.26 Dave Oh nice, we started the whole game. Oh man. 01:28:51.48 soccr Yeah, he was that guilty about it. Um, so ah I I kind of screwed myself I Guess one of the advantages is you get you? you get that inner light early if you do that. 01:29:05.92 Dave Oh okay, interesting right? Um, so when I found Moon I ate several of them. Maybe not all, maybe all I don't remember but. 01:29:10.29 soccr Um, which we haven't talked about yet. 01:29:21.62 Dave Um, the overseer got pissed and moon died. So maybe it was all of them and it was just the simple thing that ah you have been hardcoded just like a wild animal that if you see food you eat it because you don't know when you're going to find food again. So I ate it and Moon died and the overseer was. 01:29:36.18 soccr Yeah, yeah. 01:29:41.44 Dave Pissed So I let the rain kill me and restarted but like you I was still like okay so I didn't kill moon but I don't know how to interact with it. It's not doing anything. I went and I picked up some of those shiny pebbles and I went over and brought them to moon and dropped it and Moon was you know. 01:29:57.48 soccr Yeah. 01:30:00.91 Dave Not impressed. So I was like okay well I'm leaving I don't know if that was helpful or not um, but at least moon seemed happier about that. But this was you on this quest and the overseer will. 01:30:12.43 soccr Being alive. Yeah. 01:30:17.99 Dave Point you in the direction of more of those neurons around the world and I thought I was following those and I think I got them confused with ah you find these little robot hands or projectors or. Whatever they are and they put out these little blue um like Diamond Collectibles holograms and you collect them and it says like you've unlocked a new item for the Arena and I was like okay I Wonder if that's what Moon wants. 01:30:47.22 soccr Oh yeah, yeah yeah. 01:30:52.80 Dave That's not what moon wants and I think I went through the whole game without collecting a single Neuron, not for lack of searching I just didn't find them. 01:30:52.63 soccr Note. I think after you get the ability to communicate with her, if you take her any of the shiny rocks that you find around then she will give you like a little bit of lore. 01:31:12.74 Dave Okay. 01:31:16.13 soccr I think is how it works. Um, it's I mean you have to go really far to get some of them and to bring them Back. So like I did not do very much of that on my second playthrough because I was determined to talk to her a little bit. Ah but you there are a few nearby. And she'll give you like a little bit of history or a little bit of um flavor text if nothing else. 01:31:38.72 Dave Okay, so I never found any of those and after that you get pointed to go up to this area called 5 pebbles. This area is like just visually ridiculous after such a. You know, peaceful ah aesthetic for a lot of the game. You know like it's nature reclaiming industrial areas like I've said several times and then you go into this just like a Kaleidoscope of colors and lights and. 01:32:18.61 Dave Especially the area right? right? when you're about to go in the room with 5 pebbles. It's like ah like a fucking rave in there and that was like super super memorable and it was helpful for knowing that I was going the right way as that stuff got more and more intense. Um. 01:32:36.13 soccr So yeah. 01:32:36.70 Dave So did you maybe I forget if you said this or not did you meet 5 pebbles your first time or not ok. 01:32:43.32 soccr Oh yeah, yeah yeah I I was under the impression that you needed to in order to progress or maybe he just tells you where to go I guess I'm not totally sure. 01:32:53.73 Dave So I thought you needed to because 5 pebbles gives you that light. Um that lights up the surroundings. But if you got the light earlier from eating all the neurons then I don't know if you would have to go there. 01:32:56.62 soccr Yeah. 01:33:04.25 soccr Oh interesting but doesn't he also give you extra karma. Maybe you might need that well in any case I did I did meet 5 pebbles. 01:33:08.34 Dave Um, yeah, you okay, um, because I think that I was talking with Moon not moon in the game. Our Mutual Friend Moon moon. 01:33:23.74 soccr Moon Moon in real life. 01:33:26.90 Dave Yeah Moon Moon Irl um and moon was telling me about this the speed runner ah route is to go from the outskirts and go straight down into the drainage system. Um, and then. 01:33:41.25 Dave You have to do some weird shit like carrying some items or something but you don't go meet 5 pebbles. You don't go all the way up there I don't think so it might be optional. It would not surprise me if it's optional. A lot of stuff is optional in this game. Um, but 5 pebbles. 01:33:55.85 soccr Um, yeah, yeah. 01:33:59.30 Dave Is 5 pebbles. The character is similar to moon but it is a dying supercomputer. Um, and you talk to like an avatar of the Ai in the supercomputer. That's what 5 pebbles is um and. 01:34:15.80 Dave I think missing out on 5 pebbles would be missing out on the story like 1 of the very few times when 1 of 2 times 2 times when I was like oh the game is telling me what it's about you know so. 01:34:30.97 soccr Yeah. 01:34:34.97 Dave Um, 5 pebbles tells you that all the creatures including you. The slug cat are trapped in this cycle of death and rebirth but they say the cycle. The cycle is stagnating and they want the cycle to end so they tell you that you should. Go West to the Farmer Rays go down and um ascend they say. 01:34:58.60 soccr Yeah, even though you're you'd end up doing the opposite of that and I mean physically. 01:35:05.64 Dave That's in a way physically. Yeah, Um, so this kind of gave me a little bit of nice story explanation for why you keep dying and responding and the karma system and things like that if we have a. Ah, cycle of life and death and rebirth and once I heard that I started to think um I'm not going to see my slug cat friends anymore. 01:35:34.34 soccr Um, ah, what does it all mean. Um I am the cycle of death and rebirth. So um. 1 of the things that I read and apologies to anybody out there who's an actual expert on rain world lore because um I don't think Dave or I are really well versed in any of this. But um, so from what I understand. Ah, 5 pebbles is the cause of the rain. Um, he's using it to cool his computer I think or something like that. Um and he and others like him, like looks to the moon were all trying to solve. 01:36:15.31 Dave Um, okay. 01:36:25.44 soccr I think I read the great problem which I think is related to like everything in the world being stuck in an endless cycle of dying and being reborn. Um, so that's my very surface. 01:36:34.58 Dave M. 01:36:44.75 soccr Understanding of what was going on and it is not my own This is completely stuff that I read ah but um, that's. 01:36:48.80 Dave Okay. 01:36:56.91 soccr Yeah I mean I saw that you in so in some of your notes here. You were making comparisons to Buddhism which I don't know very much about. 01:37:03.84 Dave Yeah, it's um, the you know the death and life and rebirth cycle The karma those are on the nose you know, references to buddhism but then later in the game. What really got me thinking about that. 01:37:13.41 soccr And yeah. 01:37:18.78 Dave Um, is when you go into the depths which is the last level. It's pitch black. You need that light that inner light to traverse down there. Um, all the statues are they look exactly like buddhist statues in places that I've been in in Asia they look. I was you know when I was playing I was like that reminds me a lot of the statues at Angkor Wat and I went back and looked at my pictures from Angkor Wat and I was like yeah those look exactly like them. So um, that kind of like. 01:37:56.87 Dave Kind of solidified that buddhist read to it and then the whole thing about the depths is there are these Guardian creatures down there that if you're not at a certain level of Karma I think they just kill you Um, but I don't know how you would be at. 01:38:09.87 soccr Oh really. 01:38:15.72 Dave A lower level of karma because you um when you go through the thing to the depths you pass by a gate that instantly raises your karma to maximum. Um, there's no rain when you're down there and there are no enemies. So I don't know how you would die. 01:38:16.30 soccr You know. 01:38:22.91 soccr Yeah, maxes you out. 01:38:32.48 Dave Unless you found a way to fall from a too high of a height or something but what moon was telling me moon our friend moon was telling me um, is that you can take some items because if you don't meet 5 pebbles. You don't get. 01:38:33.48 soccr Yeah, maybe there might be a way I bet I can find it. Right. 01:38:50.92 Dave That high maximum extra karma so you can get past the guardians if you carry some items down there so that makes me think that if you don't have those and you're not at the karma. The guardians will kill you so you are proving yourself worthy to them. 01:38:54.11 soccr Oh. 01:39:09.17 Dave To then go on to the end which is you know ascending and I don't know a whole lot about Buddhism so I'm not going to you know say something that's going to be incorrect here but that is the read that I got from this whole thing and it was really those statues that were like the the missing link. For me. 01:39:29.96 soccr And that all makes sense to me. I mean as much as it can. 01:39:34.83 Dave Yeah, um, before we talk about the ending I Want to talk about my experience of finding how to get down to the depths and this is a point that was intensely frustrating. 01:39:51.56 Dave For me and because I was streaming it all on Twitch everybody who was watching had the pleasure of watching this all play out which is normally something that would happen in the privacy of my my you know home office here. Um, that's what happens when you play on Twitch. So. 01:40:09.75 Dave After meeting 5 pebbles I followed it I got to like the wind farm and there's this part where you pass like you pass a checkpoint with those um those scavenger animals if you bring them a pebble. They'll let you go through their checkpoint. 01:40:28.86 soccr In. 01:40:29.21 Dave Um, which a glad that I figured it out because you see them carrying those pebbles around the whole game. Um, after that you get to this point where there is this like grass that kills you. It looks like sea anenome or something like that. But just. You can't walk through it for more than half a second; you just die instantly. Um, and the way to get past them is there are these big deer looking creatures down there and you have to ride on their backs. Um, I tried this. 01:40:51.40 soccr Yeah, yeah. 01:41:06.45 Dave I was able to jump because they'll kneel down and you can jump on their backs but they don't kneel down predictably and there was just a like an hour stretch where I was they just didn't kneel down ever again and I. 01:41:09.26 soccr No. 01:41:22.10 Dave I eventually went and looked it up later. There's an item you can put on the ground that they'll kneel down to get right? but I did not figure that out for myself. Um, so. 01:41:26.11 soccr Yes, there's things like pheromones. Yeah. 01:41:36.91 Dave Also Ah, one time I was riding on their backs and a bird came down and because it's rain world. Of course it can happen because it's rain world right? So I thought. 01:41:41.89 soccr Ah, no I didn't even know that could happen as if there's not enough going on at that point. 01:41:55.70 Dave That I had been collecting the neurons for Moon so I was like okay fuck this place with the deer I had a rough idea So I'm on the far west side of the map and I know I need to go down. 01:42:01.14 soccr So. 01:42:10.25 Dave I Know that Shoreline is relatively close. I can go to the shoreline and then if I need to I can make my way back. West So I used my one fast travel charge to go to shoreline because I was like okay I've collected this shit for Moon I'm going to go talk to Moon. Um. And I went and talked to Moon and Moon was like okay, have a nice day sir and like nothing happened so I was like well shit. Okay, so I'm going to go through the shaded Chapel. Um, there's a part in the shaded chapel that's pitch black but I have that light Now. So. 01:42:44.44 soccr Yes. 01:42:46.60 Dave To me, if I'm trying to figure out where to go in my head I'm thinking well the game just gave me an internal light source. I'm going to go to that place that was pitch black that I died to you know, 15 hours earlier I'm going to go there. That's going to be the way forward. Um. That was not the way forward. Shaded chapel has nothing to do with the way to get to the last level. Ah, and that's the 1 time in this game when I felt like they misled me instead of like withholding it from me that felt like complete misdirection and it felt like. Ah I just felt like I was like okay that you got to figure so put a fucking like way from shaded chapel into the last area you you can't do that you know maybe I I mean I was frustrated because I'd been running around lost and. 01:43:41.11 Dave Really struggling to get through shaded chapel because it's really difficult down there. So. 01:43:46.35 soccr Oh it's the worst area if you ask me I mean it's 1 thing to have enemies. It's another thing to not be able to see ah and also have the same rain world. 01:43:53.90 Dave Um, yeah. 01:44:02.80 soccr Enemy ecosystems surrounding you in the dark. 01:44:04.43 Dave Right? So like you can see down there if you have that light but it turns out there's another pitch black area in a totally separate part of the map. That's not connected to shaded chapel and it felt like um. 01:44:19.70 Dave It just felt like they gave me a light I had already been to a place that was pitch black that was on the critical path to get to shoreline you go through the lighter sections of shaded chapel. You'll probably go down in the dark section and you'll die because you can't see and then you'll be like okay. 01:44:33.10 soccr A. 01:44:38.59 Dave I'll come back some other time maybe but then I did come back and that's not even close to where I was supposed to go and that was the 1 time where I like outside of all the bullshit from the game that the designed bullshit this just felt like an oversight from the developer where they're like oh yeah, we do have that other. Pitch black area that doesn't really do anything There's no reason to go there. Um so I gave up. I checked the wonderful rain world interactive map there's a website. Um where someone has meticulously mapped out every room every connection. Every item every food spawn every safe room. It is an incredible work. Highly recommended if you find yourself lost I check that it eventually I was just like okay tell me because. The other part was like you have to go through shaded chapel to get back to the outskirts to then go down into the drainage system but I couldn't get through shaded chapel because it's so fucking hard and so I was like okay I'm going to see if there's another way and it turns out the other way was in the shoreline where I was. 01:45:40.97 soccr Yeah. 01:45:54.40 Dave Before I decided to go to shaded chapel. 01:45:57.36 soccr so ah so I wonder if you did ultimately end up going the way that I did. I really don't remember how I got to the end. Um I know that I I too I know that I went into the shaded shaded citadel I think it is and went I went because 5 pebbles says to you like go west and then go down and go down down down and I was like well I'm going to have to go into that big dark pit. There are. 01:46:14.32 Dave Right. 01:46:21.96 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:46:31.49 soccr There are dead ends down there too just filled with those spider things. Ah but I think that I don't know my path. I think my path did include that and for some reason I was thinking that there was a way now I mean I must have gone around. I Don't know how many ways there are so it seems like I probably must have eventually made my way to the shoreline and down that way. 01:46:56.29 Dave Um, I think there's 2. There's 2 ways to get into the um subterranean it's called the next to last level. Um, there's 1 way through the farmer rays. 01:47:04.96 soccr M. 01:47:12.57 Dave Ah, you eventually find this big pit that you jump down and that takes you to subterranean the other ones through the shoreline and that's the way that I went and it was another one where I had to check the map because it turned out that like it was one of those rooms that has like 6 exits to it. 01:47:32.49 Dave And the one that goes to subterranean to the end of the game was just number 6 in my order of ones to check and I just I just forgot and it would have been one of those where I was just going in circles forever. So I'm glad I just checked the map. So subterranean is a real motherfucker. 01:47:49.46 soccr Yep. 01:47:55.42 soccr Um, so that's the area right before the very end right. 01:47:58.15 Dave Yeah, it's the one with all the broken down trains and stuff like that. 01:48:07.21 soccr Um, it was really fun though. Um, there are like they're like that's the place with the Lizards that are like shadows am I or am I describing the wrong area. 01:48:18.86 Dave I think there's 2 areas. There's like the lighter section up above where the main enemies are those electrified orange worms. Um. 01:48:30.11 soccr Oh yeah. 01:48:31.54 Dave And like the train cars and then you go down deeper and you get into the part that's like you know, like tunnels and that's where those shadowy Lizards are. 01:48:43.29 soccr Yeah I mean I had a good time. Ah, just because I think it's because it felt very endgamey I was like oh man I must be getting close to something. 01:48:48.74 Dave Yeah. 01:48:55.45 soccr Because the intensity level just really cranks up. Um, you got in normal areas you have maybe like 2 or 3 enemies on screen but in this area it's just crowded with things all over the place and. 01:48:55.83 Dave No. 01:49:11.62 Dave Yeah, and tons of those um those big tall enemies that look like ferns. You know the ones that kind of just lay down and just smother you tons of those so you always have to have a spear to get past those? um. 01:49:21.27 soccr Yep yep, hate those. 01:49:28.75 soccr Um, yeah, there must be something else to him. Well I don't know I don't want to speculate. It seems like if maybe you have something in your hand. Maybe it tries to reach for it. I managed to get past one with something in my hand. 01:49:44.23 Dave Oh. 01:49:46.56 soccr That wasn't a spear. I don't know how they work. this game is just filled with mysteries I don't know how so many things work. 01:49:52.53 Dave I Know that it doesn't have to be a spear that you throw at them but a spear will buy you the most time like you can just throw a regular rock and it'll buy you a couple seconds if you time it perfectly. You can get past them but a spear will disable them for. 01:50:05.85 soccr Yeah, yeah. 01:50:10.53 Dave More than long enough to get past him. Um, be yeah that part with the trains up above and those electrified orange worms um was ah man that was rough I Just like you go through the karma gate. 01:50:11.34 soccr Yeah, they'll get shaken up. 01:50:30.30 Dave To get into subterranean you rest and then you go out and there's like I don't know maybe like 5 screens of those trains and those worms and that took me like an hour to get through. It was just so hard. 01:50:42.62 soccr Oh yeah, yeah, it revs up and I mean that's saying something. 01:50:49.93 Dave Yeah, um, but the lower portion the one that's dark and really red and angry that felt like it was like okay this is you know if there was a final boss. It would be down here. You know, um. 01:51:02.21 soccr Yeah. 01:51:05.90 Dave That part was a little bit easier because it just had more like tunnels to escape from the enemies and you know. 01:51:13.15 soccr Yeah, agreed there were a lot of ways to go. Um, lots of enemies but also lots of lots of points of Escape I Guess it's ah which helps. 01:51:20.59 Dave Um, yeah, did you ah did you ever figure out the trick. Um, where if you go through the little tunnel between rooms and an enemy follows you then you just immediately double back. 01:51:36.80 soccr I Think Moon told me at some point during my first playthrough I don't think I figured it out. I Also don't think I made good enough use of it. My second playthrough I absolutely did and it's the best. Ah, it's the best way to escape something. 01:51:37.26 Dave Okay. 01:51:47.70 Dave Yeah. 01:51:53.74 soccr Because they lose track of you. Ah, if you turn around fast enough. 01:51:54.84 Dave Yeah, the 1 thing that really feels like it benefits you over the predators like you can just do that. Maybe you have to do it like 2 or 3 times but you should lose track of them or at least like buy yourself. Some extra space to run and climb and do something else to buy yourself some more space. You know so all right? So let's talk about that ending so you go all the way down. Um, just keep going down down down you get to this area called the depths. 01:52:21.35 soccr Yep. 01:52:33.90 Dave That is like really dreamy. It looks like it's kind of like shimmering. Um, it has all those statues, it has those weird Guardian ah things that are seems like they're judging you and allowing you to pass rather than just kind of Chillin you know and. I Got the distinct sense that if I wronged them that they would kill me. Um. 01:53:00.71 soccr I Definitely did feel a sense of caution even though they never acknowledged me. They're imposing. Yeah. 01:53:07.30 Dave Yeah, um, and there's no rain down there which is good. Um, so ah, there's all of those like statues down there I talked about. They have I tried to describe it for people. They have this distinct like studded. 01:53:24.40 Dave You know stone statue hairstyle that again reminded me of those buddhist statues at Angkor Wat and um, eventually you get to a point at the bottom where it just gradually becomes more gold like it starts. The cavern looks like it's gilded at first. Like there's gold veins running through the rocks or something and as you keep going the gold just takes over until eventually everything is gold I can't say the word gold without thinking of goldmember from austin powers 3. 01:53:58.21 soccr Ah, it's actually an homage to that. 01:54:02.34 Dave Yeah I'm sure it's a yeah when you read the inspirations. It's the subway rat, it's the experience in South Korea and then it's Austin powers 3 gold member. So eventually this all it all feels like it's kind of melting away and. There's a point where you can't run anymore and all you can do is swim but you have to swim down and you don't have those squid to help you swim and I don't know about you but this felt like a in the back of my head I'm just thinking like. I don't think I can die here. But if I do I'm fucked. 01:54:41.41 soccr Um, yeah I Even though I don't think you can die. But I too was constantly afraid that something was going to happen. 01:54:54.69 Dave So you swim straight down into this like Lake of gold and eventually the gold fades away you yeah you swim for a long time but it was very clearly. The only thing you could do so you keep swimming and then. 01:55:00.74 soccr Forever. Yeah. 01:55:14.29 Dave Ah, man the gold fades away and it's all black. It's called I think it's called the Void sea in the games. Ah lower. The music is fucking going crazy during this part. It's really good and then there's all these worms down there. They're called Void worms and they there's this one really big one that is just jostling the fuck out of you like I didn't know what to do I had to look up what or I had to someone in my chat when I was streaming looked up what to do because I couldn't figure it out and. 01:55:48.84 soccr Yeah, just to swim down. Yeah I mean you just got to keep going for like 10 minutes I 01:55:51.93 Dave The answer was to swim down into the right. 01:56:00.80 Dave And then ah one of the void do this forever? yeah. 01:56:06.61 soccr Yeah, you're just holding I was just holding down on the dpad the whole time. 01:56:14.80 Dave To the point where like my finger kind of hurt from just constantly holding down the control stick for it like not an exaggeration like literally minutes minute minutes minute minutes of just holding it down. Um. 01:56:18.69 soccr Yeah, yeah, legit. 01:56:27.88 Dave And then eventually one of those Void worms Grabs you and pulls you really far down into this void and then your surround you start to swim and then these other slug cats start to swim into the picture with you and I got this like really distinct like oh is this about this. The journey of the sperm and all of the trials and tribulations I've been through this is sperm allegory that we're doing here. I don't think it is but the imagery in this scene was like that's pretty striking and looks a lot like it. 01:56:56.74 soccr The the imagery is there I don't know how you couldn't see the sperm imagery you got a bunch of white sperm shaped creatures swimming around you. You're all swimming toward in a black void toward a giant circle. Yeah. 01:57:01.87 Dave Um, yeah in a black voice. Yeah yeah, because yeah, you're right in one of the corners of your screen. There's like a light and it's you know that you swim to the light. Basically. 01:57:18.56 soccr How long did that take you to figure out because I actually because I had been swimming down for so long I just kept doing that. I Really wish I wish there had been a prompt or something I think I did. 01:57:37.99 soccr Like I think I spent at least as much time just continuing to try to swim down as I did to get there. Um, and eventually I tried changing directions and found my way. I wish there'd been some kind of prompt. Did you. Did you just figure it out right? away you noticed a little light and you were like I'm going there. 01:57:59.80 Dave Um, I know someone in my stream chat because I was very lost and someone was like hey I looked it up. Do you want to hint and I was like yes, please give me a hint and they said swim down into the right eventually, you'll see a light and I was like okay. 01:58:05.12 soccr Yeah. 01:58:17.60 Dave Got it but that light is not there early enough I would say so like if they had just made the light a little bit more noticeable at the beginning that would have helped. Um, yeah. 01:58:20.39 soccr Now. 01:58:29.51 soccr Yeah I think that was a little too obscure there. Um, because here you are at the climax of the game. You know, just just I was ready I was ready for whatever ending was in store and. Instead I was just sitting there swimming in the dark for another 10 minutes 01:58:44.99 Dave Yeah, and this was a section that I don't think it's beneficial to be super obtuse about what you're supposed to do during this particular section because this is a big. 01:58:58.78 soccr M. 01:59:02.70 Dave Moment like you went through this gold Cavern you swam down into this lake and then you somehow have to figure out to swim past the worm or grab the worm or something like that and then it pulls you down. You have to figure out which way to go to make the light appear. It. Think it could have been streamlined a little bit better to help this of all the parts in the game that could have benefited from being frictionless. I think this is the part. Yeah. 01:59:29.51 soccr Yeah I mean it's cinematic. So yeah I think reducing the Tedium would have I think it would have improved the experience but overall a pretty minor gripe. 01:59:39.10 Dave Yeah, for sure. Yeah, um, and once you do reach that light. You get this? Um, you know cut scene of your slug cat ascending at the end basically with all the others. Little slug cats and it's ah it's a wonderful scene. The music is really really good during this part again like this I said earlier the music tends to pick its spots like when to punctuate what's going on and this is the part where they're like the music's going to go fucking ham here and it's going to be awesome and it was. 02:00:15.90 Dave So We have this um, kind of ending you know, end of this end of the cycle I'm not sure that I broke the cycle. Ah but at least my slug cat ascended along with a bunch of others. Um. I Wonder if you do the stuff for moon collecting neurons or something. I Wonder if there are different endings I didn't really look into that. 02:00:39.92 soccr I Know that there are I know that the other campaigns give you more? ah. 02:00:44.27 Dave Um, oh yeah, that's because the other campaigns take place at different points in the timeline is what I read. 02:00:55.66 soccr Yeah, um I would be curious I mean I'm afraid to try some of the harder campaigns like ah apparently the hunter has a limited number of cycles until you can get to for you to get to the objective. 02:01:12.18 Dave Oof. 02:01:12.48 soccr And I think that's terrifying um I think you'd have to be really good. You'd have to be really confident about your rain world skills. But I think some of the dlc characters might be a little more chill. 02:01:28.40 Dave I'm sorry I just read how many cycles the hunter gets do the hunter gets 19 Yeah I was on like cycle 97 when I beat this game. 02:01:34.49 soccr 19 wow that's lower than I would have guessed. Yeah, right say like I don't know what it was but it was certainly a lot more than that. Wow yeah, that's intense. 02:01:46.42 Dave Jesus Christ so you can't I was thinking like oh well, you just not just don't rest in the shelters. No, you can't do that because the rain comes you have to rest in the shelters. 02:02:01.10 soccr Yeah, there's a reason. Yeah, there's a reason you have to do that. 02:02:07.23 Dave Ah, oh okay, so ah, when you visit 5 pebbles as the hunter you get 5 extra cycles on your time. Um, so yeah that that sounds um, really tough. 02:02:17.45 soccr Oh. 02:02:24.70 Dave Oh there's the other thing um downpour introduces these remix options where you can like customize your difficulty and it says that one of them. Ah, you can customize how many cycles the hunter gets um so that's cool. 02:02:37.66 soccr Oh 9000 cycles 02:02:42.49 Dave Yeah, exactly yeah I will take 200 please especially because this is like um, hard mode. So ah man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that. 02:02:50.45 soccr Yeah, right, It's the game's equivalent of that as if rain world needs a hard mode. 02:03:01.92 Dave Sounds like sicko stuff. Um I am kind of interested in trying some of the dlc characters like the Goremand is supposed to craft stuff. I don't know what you can craft but I'm interested to see. 02:03:15.27 soccr Yeah, it's it. The characters apparently got some different movement stuff too. Um, like the bulk can be weaponized even um, which sounds interesting. Yeah. 02:03:25.83 Dave Weaponized bulk. Love it. Ah. 02:03:33.14 soccr I would be interested in checking out those other campaigns too. But ah I think I'm going to have to take you know a year to break to work up the courage to play rain world again. 02:03:45.40 Dave Yeah, that. Um, this is a game that I think I would replay. Um, it feels like a game where um, you know, even if I don't want to replay the entire thing. I do want to because I want to play some of those dlc characters. Um, it is a game that like if I'm ever just sitting around. You know, got my steam deck or something and I'm like I don't really feel like playing whatever games I got going on. I'll just tool around in rain world for a half hour or something just you know see what I can do. It has been fun. I've done that a couple times since beating the game. Um, so yeah, it's ah yeah, really special game really sticks with you? yeah. 02:04:28.69 soccr It can also just be a fun world to play in. I Think if you don't, if you don't have an objective and you just want to mess around, that can be a good time. 02:04:40.20 Dave Yeah, there's a little bit distracted because I left the Wiki page for the hunter up on my screen and there's a gif of the hunter eating one of the dead Lizards because you can eat animals as the hunter So all right 02:04:57.97 Dave Dude. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking about rain world with me. This has been awesome. 02:05:05.29 soccr Thank you for having me. This is my vocal introduction to many of our mutual discord acquaintances. Ah, thank you for you know, bringing me on to awkwardly talk about a video game for 2 hours 02:05:10.54 Dave Right. 02:05:19.80 Dave Na that's that that's what this show's all about awkwardly talking about video games for 2 hours I'm going to put that on the back of the box. So I appreciate you man I appreciate the ah the conversation as always. 02:05:32.22 soccr Thanks so much. 02:05:34.86 Dave And for everyone listening I appreciate everyone who always sticks it to the end if you want to come in the Discord server and talk about rain world. Especially now that you know how soccr and I specific playthroughs went and all the various ways that we fucked it all up. Um, you can come in and chat. We would love to have you. And um, yeah, as always I appreciate it. You. Thank you to everyone who supports on Patreon tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog and we're all done.