this game is the best ive played in a looong time, and I have no idea why.
The pixel art isn’t the best, the characters are so tiny and u cant really tell how they look. Enemies even more so, BUT…im totally addicted.
The game is the absolute HARDEST game ive played, yet something keeps me trying and trying. Getting to level 2-3 and die is normal, and u only have one life.
Anyone played this beauty?
Yep, the GF and I play in co-op but she always ends up dying and watching me play. It’s pretty fun when it works.
I wish they fixed the co-op, at the moment the powerups are spread too thin. The networking is also horrendous, when I play on LAN it takes about 10 minutes for me to get it set up so it actually starts a server and lets someone join. This has to be done EVERY time the game ends.
Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls effect. We will die a lot, and we love it 
Haha yeah i love it, and the music is SUPERB. I havent tried local coop, i use hamachi wich is painlessnfor this game, trybit. Works 100% as it should.
Haven’t played it!
But I was theorizing in my head, how to break the tendency of not penalizing player for dying. Because if you don’t hold the player’s progress back a little, you either need to create a ton of content… or you’ll be making a very short game. Not very good options.
Remember old days? If you died, you had to start over!
It used to be a worthwhile challenge to beat a tough level, that everyone knew about. You didn’t have a bizillions of other games to play, it was that one cartridge… either you beat the level, or go play outside… and that wasn’t an option!
With today’s millions and millions of games, the big masses tend to want to move forward, not get stuck in the same level. And that’s why when you fall down the pitfall, you’re placed back at the top… instead of starting over.
My theory is that to make up for the lack of interest in challenge, every time you re-play a level, you don’t experience the exact same thing. So randomizing the experience is key.
Risk of Rain seems to be a perfect example, it doesn’t matter if you die! You wont have to go through the same experience again. That’s why dying is a lot of fun in that game, right?
Same thing with Minecraft, dying isn’t an issue! Even in hardcore mode, because having to rebuild a house again, is a different experience every time.
Other games, like FEZ, do it differently. They hold back player’s progress by making the level exploration intensive. But when FEZ dies, you don’t lose all your progress, because you’d have to replay the same experience, and today’s players don’t forgive this!
But here’s the kicker, risk of rain is NOT randomized. I have played the same levels over and over, i think they only change some parts of the layout of each level, but u will end up seeing the same stuff over and over. And theres like 6 levels total in the game, still, im all over this like a crack addict:P
Its just something with the extreme challenge for me, u know that the more u play, the harder it gets (they arent kidding here!), the difficulty bar just keeps going up as u spend more time in the game. at the same time, the items u find helps the player become stronger, with an UNGODLY amount of item combos and stacks…i think this is waht keeps me going in. theres also 10 classes to unlock wich furthermore adds to the gameplay.
VERY good game, i encourage everyone on this firggin forum to pick it up and let me know when u beat it, i’ll worship u for the rest of my life!
ps: i beat it once already, NO idea how…didnt know what the items did back then, pretty sure i had some crazy good stuff.
I guess people are getting tired of the games practically playing themselves
It’s a challenge. I haven’t played this but I watched the video etc… look like fun.
Basic recipe for fun/success:
fightYes those things are certainly in there, pretty much all of them. Im not sure how the gam is doing saleswise but i seriously hope its good because it deserves it. I know alot of ppl got hesitant because of the graphics, and i can see the point, but in this game its pretty cool.
2 more characters to unlock…NEVER gonna happen!
I haven’t tried the co-op yet but I like it a lot. It’s a neat twist on horde mode with cute audiovisuals and lots of things to unlock. I find the rules of the game a bit weird and unintuitive, though. And I don’t seem to be able to nail down timing of jumping.
I’m a big fan of randomization but I think it’s just a matter of finding a fun thing, an interesting core gameplay loop, your player wants to repeat over and over. You know, Halo’s ‘30 seconds of fun’.
But yeah even if levels of this game aren’t really randomized, there are certainly lots of variety. Playing a different character makes a big difference. So the game is at least a little different every time you play.
I find it has the same things that Rogue Legacy and Binding of Isaac have that keeps me replaying them like a crack addict. They all have this randomness of a REALLY good item, ability, upgrade dropping during the gameplay that makes you feel really powerful. But it is varied enough that you wont see it every single game unless you get better, so you play more, get more kick butt abilities and the game gets easier, or so you think. Then you die. Repeat.
Dying isn’t not fun, what isn’t fun is losing progress and feeling like your time was just wasted. I think risk of rain avoids this by having the first level make or break your guy, it’s almost a gamble of sorts. Oh look at all these upgrades (which would have been useful when I died) I’m going to do so much better.
And when the player dies, it’s usually his fault. Progressed too fast, progressed too slow. I spent too much time getting points for that next upgrade. Should have started the boss early.
And the fact you can’t save the character means that when you quit, you lose it anyway.
I love Risk of Rain because of how you unlock upgrades and in one go, you can just keep stacking on upgrades. Pretty much I love the upgrades system.
I’m quite interested in roguelikes/lites, Risk of Rain being no exception. There is a rewarding feeling of being able to overcome a challenge that’s screwed you so many times, and progressing into new territory is much more rewarding because of how high the stakes are. Because of that, tight, fair controls are also very important. If a player blames themselves for failure, that’s good (I shouldn’t have charged in. I should have moved quicker). If they blame the game, that’s bad (I couldn’t see because of that plant in front of the camera. Stupid lock-on system made me roll of that cliff).
Risk is good, but honestly one of its major flaws is it’s randomized perk drops. You’re at the mercy of the RNG to get good equipment, and that can really affect your performance late game. It’s the same with FTL.
Teleglitch is another roguelite/like that I’ve been really sucked into. It gets around the randomness by having the same pieces of rooms, items and enemies spawn in each level, only it jumbles up the placement to keep things interesting.