Rain World

I would recommend Rain World and especially its expansion to anyone that likes platformers and post-apocalyptic vibes. However, the base game with the default settings has some major issues, resulting in the time you spend being angry & frustrated, questioning why you haven't un-installed the game already, being longer than the time you are excited & impressed, which is never good. To avoid these issues, do the following:
Install the “SBCameraScroll” mod from the Steam workshop. By default, the camera is not centred on your character, and instead jumps abruptly when you reach the current edge of the screen. If there is an enemy right past said edge, you won't be able to see them in time to react to their attack (and your character always dies in one hit). I can not emphasise enough how annoying it is to die this way, and this mods fixes the problem by adding a smoothly scrolling camera. As a bonus, it also creates a parallax effect in some areas, making them look even more impressive.
Also install the “No Expedition Permadeath” mod, if you wish the play the expeditions game-mode (which is lots of fun). There is a lot of RNG in the game, which often leads to your death, especially for new players. If you can immediately continue playing from the last checkpoint, such RNG is a source of laughs, but if you instead lose 30 minutes / an hour / three hours of progress this way, you might never play the game again. Do yourself a favour and get rid of permadeath with this mod. For the same reason, if you wish to play the Hunter’s campaign (boring – play the DLC campaigns, expeditions, or challenges instead), you should set “Hunter Cycles” in the Remix tab to some high value, like 999.
Many improvements can be unlocked through the in-game Remix tab, which allows players a lot of customisation. Feel free to experiment with it, but the two settings I always enable are “Visual breath meter” (so you actually understand when you are drowning) and “Pull spears from walls” (aiming is challenging – this way you will get another chance to throw your spear by being able to recover it).
Lastly, read an online movement guide (all should be spoiler-free), as the game is awful at explaining even the basic movement controls. For example, when your character somehow enters a tunnel ass-first (which slows you down by a lot), you can press the jump key plus an arrow key to reorient yourself in the right direction.
I hope this review hasn’t put you off from the game, as Rain World really is quite special once you get the hang of it - it keeps on drawing me back even after hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Rain World is not a metroidvania, it's not an action platformer; it's always been an *ecosystem simulator*. I'd recommend it to every biologist or naturalist or ecology enthusiast out there. If you mistake this game for what it's not, you'll be very frustrated - all your intentions will be dashed and you'll give it up quickly, but if you're willing to accept and learn from failure, you'll find a beautiful intricate experience like no other. You're a little lost animal in an unforgiving world. Endeavor as such.
Take your time. Test out your environment. The gameplay loop is relatively simple - fill up on food, evade predators, find a safe place to sleep before bone-crushing rain pounds you to dust. When resources run out or you feel ready, trek to find the next gate and move on.
ALWAYS CARRY A SPEAR. Eventually the wacky movement will become second nature, you'll move with confidence, death becomes but a mild inconvenience, because like sleep like death, you wake up again. Whether you want to or not.
Good luck!

refunded.
yes, this is a positive review.
this game... is a work of art. there's absolutely breathtaking visuals to be found here, and it provides some of the best environmental design and storytelling I've ever seen. It's also just a treasure trove of creativity.
I refunded because it quickly became clear this is an extremely hardcore experience, on a genre (platformers) I frankly don't super enjoy. Just because -I- don't like it, doesn't mean I can't recognize how good of a game this is, and it doesn't really have much in terms of faults beyond personal taste or preferences on my end. this is, put simply, a great game that I don't like playing.
If you like difficult and punishing platformers, however, this game is a must. It's crazy how good it is.

im overly fixated on this game, i think about it every day
i have dragged multiple people into this game, and i dont plan on stopping
also murder is fun

This game, along with its dlc, is the best thing that happened to me in 2023. It was able to help me cope with feelings close to apathy. I marvelously managed to force myself to play it so as not to upset my friend who bought me the downpour dlc, even though I didn't even ask them to do it... In conjunction with the loathsome feelings I was experiencing, I moreover did not believe that any game could make me happy and make me not quit it after 2 hours. It all sounds pretty cliched, but no other games have put me within the state that I experienced when playing this. I will never forget all the feelings that I experienced.
When it got to be simpler for me to live, I still hadn't given up playing, It was really very unique and interesting game to me and I finished it with great interest and pleasure. One of the endings brought tears to my eyes, which rarely happens to me.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the creation of Rain World.

---{ Graphics }---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

A game where you are not the center of attention , but just a cog of a gigantic but slowly rusting machine...
A game where you are not treated as a god , but treated as equal as the lizards or the bats that scurry throughout the world...
A game where you are you...