By now, if you’ve any interest in survival platformer Rain World, you might have cottoned on that it’s hard. I said as much in my review, and many have echoed the sentiment since the game launched yesterday. Still, you probably want to persevere. While the game does have a cryptic yellow ghost as a guide, that little jerk barely explains the game’s weird systems. So that’s what I’m going to do, in as spoiler-free fashion as possible. These are for beginners, by the way: hopefully this guidance will make the opening hours less painful and more enjoyable, as you’ll kinda know what’s at stake immediately and, happily enough, you’ll know how the game works right from the beginning. 

The importance of hibernation

Apart from dying at the hands of Rain World’s enemies, this is probably the main barrier to entry for newcomers. The game explains that you must eat in order to hibernate, and that hibernation can only be done in special waterproof chambers which also serve as save checkpoints. What it doesn’t explain is that every hibernation has a deeper effect on the world, and crucially, so does every death.When starting out, understand that every hibernation and death moves you up and down a ladder respectively. Rungs on this ladder are marked by a symbol. Why is the symbol important? Because you need to be on the right “rung” in order to unlock certain crucial thoroughfares to other areas of the world. Ie, these things.

Notice the symbol at the top of the left glyph, above slugcat? That needs to correspond with the symbol on the bottom left of the screen – the “rung” I was currently on when I took this screenshot. What if you’re not on the right rung? You’ll need to hibernate enough times to climb onto it. Yeah, that’s painful I know. But such is life. 

The importance of death

While hibernating will move you up a rung, if you die, you’ll move down a rung. That means if you’re climbing (or let’s face it, grinding) to reach the correct “rung” and die on the way, you’ll lose a fair bit of progress. Keep dying, and things will get even worse. Does this suck? Yes. Do you need to deal with it if you want to play this relentless videogame? I’m afraid so.

Is there a way to make death suck less?

Yes, there are little golden flowers – usually found around the vicinity of hibernation chambers – which will lock you to the current rung on the ladder for one death. It’s better than nothing. 

How do I deal with being (and feeling) rock bottom?

The ranking / symbol / season system is punishing, but it does at least demonstrate that even though you feasibly could be moving through the first handful of Rain World’s areas quickly, you really shouldn’t. The way I survived was thus: try to roleplay the slugcat. If you were a useless little cat-that-is-also-a-slug, would you move on from an area while perfectly good food is still available, especially given food (which doesn’t respawn) is scarce? Make sure you’re well fed before daring to rest at a new hibernation chamber. Do a few quick reconnaissance runs (but get back before the rain!) Take it slowly. Focus on eating. If you’ve got empty food slots, make sure they’re bloody well full. I can’t stress enough: playing this game like it’s a rush through levels, is bad. Take your time. Focus on survival. Move on when you have to.

About that rain…

Bring up your map. The little dots around the rung / season meter in the bottom left of the screen counts down to when it will start raining. Keep an eye on it.

Can I survive outside of hibernation chambers if it rains?

Haha, no.

So, where do I go?

There are broadly two places you can go in the beginning of Rain World. Avoiding spoilers, both of these areas are gated by one of those symbol doors pictured earlier in this article. I’ll just say this: the first one of these doors you’re likely to encounter is the one you’ll need to go through. Or to be more specific: don’t go down, go up.Or, if you want spoilers: go to the bloody Industrial Estate. That is, up into this purple glowing tunnel and through the glyph door (pictured below: if you don't know where this is yet you probably don't need to move on).

Slugcat is very bad at jumping. How do I make him less bad?

You can’t, but there are skills that he has that you might not know about. Doing a long jump is well explained at the beginning of the game, but he can also do a backflip jump which is achieved by pulling back at the moment you start jumping. Practice a bit: it’s fiddly but once you figure it out, you’ll be happy. Also, there are poles strewn around the world which you’ll probably use to throw futilely at enemies. They have another useful function too: throw them at certain types of walls and they’ll stay there, meaning you can feasibly get places you thought were impossible. Make sure you aim properly though, because once they’re stuck in walls you can’t pull them back out.Also, I was stumped in the early hours thinking certain jumps were impossible. It’s worth persevering sometimes, and remember if you’re plunging towards a platform you’ll need to press “up” at the right moment in order to catch it.

Why should I persist with this game when real life is difficult enough as it is?

Because it’s a fascinating world and progress is rewarding. But yeah, life is difficult enough as it is. I’m confused, really. Tell me if you arrive at an answer.

Rain World looks to be set in a fairly commonplace videogame post-apocalypse at first. Wild vegetation grows from mysterious structures, the skeletons of skyscrapers scratch a leaden grey sky, and living is neither convenient nor fun. Except in Rain World you’re a slugcat (a cat that is also a slug), and the apocalypse it must endure is among the bleakest and most punishing I’ve ever experienced. You’re not punching trees to build abodes, you’re not meeting warring survivor factions and buddying up, you’re not grinding for a nice pair of trousers. You’re just surviving, by a thread. And it’s hard to do that.It’s a platformer and a survival game, but neither of those categories are a neat fit for Rain World’s peculiar brand of misery. There are traces of other games’ DNA, such as the original Dark Souls’ bonfire system and the roaming, improvisational foes of Alien: Isolation, but Rain World stands apart as one of the most alienating and difficult games in recent memory, previously mentioned company included.There’s little exposition: you’re the aforementioned slugcat, wrestled away from its family and plunged into a decayed urban dreamscape plagued with erratic, free-roaming monstrosities that want to eat you. As a slugcat you’re close to the bottom of the food chain, but not rock bottom: you’ll need to eat bats to survive, or more accurately, eat in order to hibernate. Hibernating can only be done in hibernation chambers, and one must have at least four units of food in order to use them. These chambers are infrequent, with each rest cycling to a different season in-world. Seasons work like a ladder: hibernate without dying, and you’ll move up. Die, and you’ll move down. This process is agonising, but I won’t spoil why.

Oh, and the reason you can only hibernate in chambers is because they’re waterproof. As the name implies, there’s rain in this game, and like virtually every other damn thing in Rain World, it kills you. Each life, or hibernation cycle, is timed: if you don’t get anywhere meaningful in the allotted time, such as another hibernation chamber (for which you’ll need to be well fed for), then you’re buggered.

There’s a whole lot more to learn about how Rain World works, but I’ve already said too much. The game only explains how to eat and how to hibernate, otherwise you only have the guiding hand of a cryptic yellow ghost, which you’ll probably try to kill and eat early on, as the game refrains from telling you that it's there to help.On that note, the early hours of Rain World will annoy anyone without steely patience: slugcat’s traversal feels cumbersome and it's terrible at jumping, but once you get a feel for what this game is trying to do (make you feel utterly disempowered) it will feel less like bad design and more thematically appropriate. You’re a slugcat. You’re nothing. You should already be dead. And yet, there are small problems with traversal that are hard to ignore, such as slugcat’s propensity for crawling into a crevice below or above the actual crevice you want to be in—particularly grating when you have three glowing numbskulls pursuing you for nourishment.

Yes, it’s cute that you’re a cat that is also a slug, but that’s where Rain World’s whimsy ends. The world is a bitterly depressing, 16-bit inspired wasteland, and while the beautiful, dilapidated grandeur is enveloping, there’s nothing in it that will make you feel good. It’s possible to feel like there’s no way you’ll survive in this world. I restarted twice towards the beginning of the game, feeling like I’d dashed any chance of progression.And yet, despite utterly loathing Rain World for the first five or so hours, once I learned the basic pattern of survival, and once the true consequences of death became apparent, I started to begrudgingly love it. This is a huge game, requiring a supernatural reserve of patience from its player, but the intrigue of the world will keep the converted on course.Still, it’s a hard game to learn. Slugcat has a small number of moves that aren’t necessarily gated, but you won’t realise they're there unless through circumstantial trial and error. Meanwhile, the free-roaming enemies can gang up on you in ways that can mean either certain death or a long time waiting for them to disperse, and the latter is often more grating when you’ve got torrential, deadly rain to worry about. Sometimes in Rain World, you just have to die. I’m sure other players will learn how to avoid certain death, but for most of us, the emergent nature of the game will at times feel unfair.

And that’s because, often, it is unfair. That is the core of what Rain World is about: failure often makes things more difficult, and if you’re looking for a redemptive “it’ll all work out anyway through the strength of will” theme to drag you through the muck, then… I hope you have a surplus of will at the ready.Rain World requires improvisation and smarts, and there’s no way to trick it into being easier. The early hours are taxing, and in all honesty, it continues to be taxing. It’s not relaxing. It’s not a game to wash away your daily worries with. But the variety of the world’s barren landscapes will keep the determined pushing on, and the seemingly insurmountable challenges are, well, surmountable, but not thanks to 'tricks' per se. You just have to be smart about it. You have to learn—and then very vaguely know—how to survive. You have to accept that sometimes you’ll be unlucky. Is that too demanding? For the vast majority of players, I expect it is. For those with the time and patience, Rain World will prove unforgettable.