Long Card Road Home: Risk of Rain

So platformers, roguelikes, let's talk these elements again. Because we didn't already discussed roguelike platformers back with Rogue Legacy, which is probably the game I've had the most fun with this year. Oh, and retro style graphics, those are a thing nowadays too right?

It's like a fucking holy trifecta of "this era's indies" or something. I mean seriously. This is entirely A Thing. If the AAA shooter slash "open world" is the top of the scene right now, then retro style platformer with roguelike elements is the bottom. Or the middle. The bottom is anime games. What if we took a novel ... ok .... and added vaguely animated pictures?!?

Anyway so, Risk of Rain is a retro styled, roguelike platformer hitting all of those bases and hitting them hard. In fact the retro style goes further back, giving it more of a visual style from the atari era, but with far far more pixels on screen. The basic story is you're on a spaceship, it crashes, and alongside it crashes a bunch of junk on the ship. You can loot and use this junk, which is where half the roguelike elements come in. Also levels.

On the other hand, as opposed to other platformers, this is a shooty platformer, although it relies more on cooldowns and placement than pure button mashing as opposed to the obvious comparison, that being Megaman. I always sort of wonder why there aren't more Megaman clones in this era, but I think it comes back to the same reason there aren't Sonic clones - It is much more difficult to do.

I haven't actually played a true roguelike in recent memory - I plan on playing TOME this year, after getting through more of my card games in time for the summer sale - but I am under the impression that the cooldowns system is more from roguelikes than I think. Regardless, RoR is a ... shooty platformer roguelike with four abilities per class and tons of items?

Or something?



When we talk about visual design in video games and retro I always feel a pang that no one ever really picked up on the techniques used to make a more interesting world in Shadow of the Beast. You can google Let's Plays or Longplays or whatever and watch the animation in action, with its weird blimp in the background. Risk of Rain is considerably simpler, going further back in retro, but I really wish it had some parallax scrolling especially up close to sort of give the big monsters a bit more presence.

That being said RoR is strange. The game is very, very low detail up close but the screen is so big and so filled with things that it feels much more like an alien world than you'd think based on screenshots. It has all these little charming elements, and such complexity your brain processes them in this different manner. I really like the art style, though it can look a little 'MSpaint-y' at times. The writing as well, what there is of it, is quite good. The game has little logs and descriptions that remind me of the SCP wiki, just little tongue in cheek things. There are a couple memes and references to other games, but they're very quiet and don't jam them in your face. It ends up as a very charming presentation that works very well.

I'm not sure if I SEE YOU could ever count as a reference but man it just does that to me. Ronald Reagan noooooooo...

The basic game in RoR relies on a balance of currencies that feel very strange in some ways. There is a timer which denotes points where the game increases in difficulty, but on a more moment to moment level enemies spawn in where you are. As such even if it isn't getting 'more difficult' you're encouraged to keep on the move, constantly trading periods of dps against just keeping the enemies from getting overwhelming or looking for a location you can ever so briefly hold out at. The goal in nearly each level is to hit the teleporter and then a boss spawns, which begins a timer. Once the timer ends, there are no more additional enemies in the level, leading to a more manageable clean up phase. There are a ton of little balances going on as you go, with trading pre-teleporter time for more resources or trying to decide if you want to stick around something you can spend gold on to wait for enemies to spawn. Figuring out where the teleporter is then building a sort of 'flight plan' around various baubles that comes back to the teleporter when the counter runs out on the fly is an interesting thought problem that adds a certain finesse to the game and playing well.

I feel like this might very well be the most retro core idea in RoR, but it is also the most fleshed out and interesting. The game simply spins up as you go, in a very old school arcadey way. I mean this is how like, Pac-Man worked, right? Maybe not with such sharp transitions, but still, it's entirely an old idea brought forward into modern times.

Enemy design in RoR or moreover enemy behaviour is kinda where the game starts to fall apart. The actual enemies, the individual weird looking pixel creations, are surprisingly infused with personality and charm. The animations are good, and as I said above, there is this weird thing to this game where it is so very low fidelity that your brain starts filling in details. It happens subconsciously, but the enemies start to feel a little more than they should for how simple they are. The problem is that the game is sort of based around the idea that "it is raining" I guess, and the longer you stay somewhere, the wetter you get. Basically you end up with a metric fuck ton of enemies on screen if you stay in one spot, which while you're discouraged to do sometimes you just end up in the wrong spot and stuff gets overwhelming. While this is part of the difficulty, it sort of ruins the individual elements of enemies. In later stages especially you just end up not really paying much attention the enemies and just running away while using aoe cooldowns and the like. You can't dodge or sort any information on screen, there is just too much and you need to keep moving or you get one shot. Eventually the timer ticks and you push back, but by then there's such a blur you get very little of the experience.

It just turns into soup.

The problems with Risk of Rain generally stem from the whole roguelike, procedurally generated concept. Certainly the game's difficulty is a bit of a chore in parts to begin with, with some playthroughs being hopelessly gutted right from the get go. That being said, the game's spawning rules just don't really care at all about what they're doing. Enemies can spawn in positions that as best I can tell just can't be solved, and the game just ... Doesn't care. It's a "roguelike" which is phrase for "buggy or dumb behavior is added challenge duh!"

Also, it sort of underlines another issue I have with roguelikes - There is no attempt at conveyance. You are basically supposed to figure out what you're doing wrong through repetition or look it up online. My issue with this is it takes all the fun out of exploring the game, along both paths. If you're just supposed to mash your face into the game you tend to put your head down and lose all sense of wonder, and if you look it up online then that is just like reading the spoilers for a movie at the beginning. All in all, it just feels really cheap and easy on the developers. The game can behave in a buggy and moronic way because "challenge!" and it doesn't have to concern itself with explaining concepts or a reasonable difficulty cover because "roguelike!" You can sort of see why developers would flock to the resurgence of this concept - So many excuses for so many flaws.

I had one game end where enemies had spawned on a 3x3 tiny platform. Just hordes of them. I guess my mistake was in fighting the boss where I did, but they had already started spawning there instead of spawning on the platform I was actually fighting on. I mean sure, mistakes were made, but that feels like such a cop out. Oh you let enemies spawn in a position you can't possibly kill them from? Get bent.

The game is also kinda stupidly random at points. The teleporter to end a level is randomly placed, sometimes being a few steps away from where you're standing and sometimes just ... Who knows. I've had a couple maps where I've wandered in circles and just never found it, eventually just quitting the game. Maybe there's some nuance to finding them on some of the later levels but again, the game conveys almost nothing to you so if it's some special jump away or tucked in some offbeat corner you never otherwise go to but it is just hard to reconcile the idea this isn't just really really lazy design. I've also encountered more than a few run throughs where I get to the "enemies remaining: x" part of the stage and discover there are enemies literal minutes of walking in the middle of nowhere, far away from where I ever went, or at least a full screen away. I usually just end up closing the game in spots like this, I'm playing Risk of Rain, not two minutes of jogging simulator.

That's not even to say that the game is immensely flawed or something, just that it feels like a buffet line of excuses vis-a-vis being indolent about design and implementation. RoR is actually pretty smart about how its mechanics play out when it is its own mechanics that the team came up with, but you won't notice for the first couple hours of playing. Getting to that point is problematic.

The game also shares the terraria issue where you can be put in a spot that requires you do a considerable amount of damage to a target and just sit there, holding down the fire button, because the enemy AI is so completely terrible. Enemies are basically identical to Terraria - they are either walkers, slight jumpers or floaters that go through objects. Oh, there is also a teleporting ninja guy. I think they had that in Terraria too, except didn't look like the ninjas from Mario 2.You're sort of encouraged to stack enemies up and AoE them all down in one go with items, but sometimes you just have 1 guy in front of you and you're just piddling him down because you have to kill him to clear the zone and move on.

On the other hand one thing that is missing from RoR and is just so damn wonderful not to fight with nonstop is enemy knockback. You never really realize just how damn frustrating knockback is until you play a platformer without it for a couple hours. You can just focus on getting things done and not constantly scrambling around the screen without agency as enemies bonk you repeatedly. Also missing is damage on hit, that is, enemies do not strike you instantly for just touching them unless that is specifically within their power set. It is so very nice to play a game that is challenging and intelligently designed, and doesn't fall back on the "well they did it in castlevania so clearly this is the apex of difficult design" idiocy that plagues platformers. RoR actually gets rid of tons of stuff like that. Like I said, when RoR thinks for itself, it is really smart.

Oh and to go back ... The game does actually have parallax scrolling in a couple of the levels. Delightful! It is very simple stuff, but the game's spritework is so nice that little touch brought a smile to my face.

Level design, which is amazingly alien and pretty, is sort of a mixed bag. I should say level layout actually, because the levels themselves are amazingly atmospheric and cool for NES level pixel work. As I said the game is procedurally generated but not really. Some of the levels have more variance than others, so I'm not quite sure how you'd put it. Quasi-random? Regardless, the level design itself is sort of maze like and I'm not entirely certain why. Several of the levels don't "flow", they're just sort of weird messes that you can end up dead ending or getting jammed into a corner, which doesn't really gel with the game's feel. I also don't really like all the dead drops down a minute of crawling the game has. I don't really mind the idea that I fall down a hole - fine, my mistake - but coming to the last 5 enemies in a level and realizing a spider drone got knocked off something, somewhere, somehow while there were 30 enemies on the screen just feels like a punishment by way of excruciating tedium.

The biggest thing about RoR - I mean, when coupled with the excellent minimalist but just right spritework - is how incredibly well done the audio work is. Everything sounds good and the music is just fantastic, as good as Rogue Legacy's most of the way and some of the best tracks I've ever heard in a game period. I really like the way the attack audio changes based on what you're hitting. It is such a minor, tiny little thing, but it is a beautiful little detail.

All in all, I was fairly impressed with RoR once I got past the learning curve. The game does have its share of flaws - enemy clumping can be extremely frustrating, since they can end up piling up off screen and then one shot you when you don't realize it literally an entire congo lines of inhuman monsters, and having a boss spawn directly on top of you is pretty asinine as well - but it is charming and lovingly crafted. The little writing tidbits are excellent, and show lots of character without jamming it in your face. The character variety is a big plus over the nearest competitor I can bring to mind, Rogue Legacy, with each of the classes being quite different to play. Granted some of the classes are a bit shitty, but when you go for gameplay as different as the Enforcer is from the Miner is from the Huntress, you're going to end up with some of the classes just being a trip to figure out. I didn't unlock all the classes, missing two, as the one required finding it in the last level and the other beating the game five times. I beat it four times, but I get too exhausted by the last level now. The last boss isn't great, but then, the other bosses are mostly well designed. Uptime and projectile pathing on the one boss is pretty poor as well, but it is a cool idea at least.

Seriously though, for having four abilities each and moving in much the same basic way, all of the classes play so differently. I do wish they felt a little better balanced, and some of them could use a little tweaking or how enemies interact with them could use a little tweaking, but they're all very different and some are going to be better than others.

I do wish RoR had a save slot, to let me put down the game between levels and come back to it. A run to the end game can take upwards of thirty minutes, and the game does not let up that entire time - well except for the odd bits where you have to walk 2-3 minutes straight to get somewhere. Beyond that, RoR is mostly an extremely compelling game once you get through the first hour or so of figuring out the game's system. It could use a touch little more polish in a couple areas, but the underlying system and atmosphere are better than nearly every AAA title I can bring to mind, so maybe that's just unnecessary griping.

I want to say I liked Rogue Legacy more, but I have played RoR on and off since beating it, which sort of implies I like RoR more doesn't it? Even if you don't check out RoR, I would heartily recommend the excellent OST, playlist here. It's amazing how good that OST is, compared to some of the recent games I've played.

All in all, this game fights RL hard for my favorite game so far this year. I really look forward to seeing a bit more out of this team, guys, guys or whatever. RoR takes a bit more to get into than Rogue Legacy, so I'd recommend it over RL, but there's a bit more to the game once you get past it, so it is still great. It could use a little reworking in parts, but I got 40+ hours out of it, so obviously they should just make another game so I can get 80 hours out of that.

A small note : RoR has some audio bugs. The first thing is, if you buy the game and you have the 'slowly goes silent' issue - you'll know it when you see it - make sure 3d effects are turned off, or just google it, but the fix is usually in your audio settings. Also if audio doesn't start at all, close your web browser, it seems to fight with Flash.