Risk of Rain 2 (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.2.2.0 Update

Risk of Rain 2 is a roguelike third-person shooter developed by Hopoo Games and published by Gearbox Publishing. A sequel to 2013’s Risk of Rain, it was released in early access for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2019 before fully releasing in August 2020 with a release for Stadia coming a month later.

Players control a survivor who is stranded on an alien planet. To survive, they navigate through various environments, killing monsters and looting chests to collect items that boost their offensive and defensive capabilities. Over time, the game’s difficulty increases, spawning more powerful and dangerous creatures. The game supports up to four players in online multiplayer. The game received generally positive reviews upon release. Risk of Rain 2 was fully acquired by Gearbox in 2022 which has continued development without the involvement of Hopoo.

GAMEPLAY

Risk of Rain 2 follows a similar approach to the first title, in which one to four players must progress several levels while killing enemies. Most survivors are locked until the player completes challenges about each one or purchases the Survivors of the Void expansion; the only survivors available at first are the Commando and Huntress. There are a total of fourteen survivors, two of which are only available in the expansion.

Each survivor has their own unique set of skills, providing different approaches to gameplay based on which survivor the player chooses. Risk of Rain 2 features several of the same playable characters, creatures, and items from the first game, but also adds new survivors and most notably transitions the game from a 2D to a 3D environment.

On each level, the goal is to kill aliens while locating a teleporter randomly placed on the level; once the teleporter is activated, the players must defend themselves from a larger onslaught of aliens, including bosses, until the teleporter is fully charged. Each alien killed drops experience and currency which the player picks up. If enough experience is gained, the player will level up, slightly increasing their damage dealt and max health. Enemies also level up, increase in health, and become stronger as time proceeds in each level.

Currency can be used to open chests found throughout the level that drop random items or to activate turrets and drones which can either attack enemies or heal the player. Currency cannot be carried between levels, as all currency is converted to experience before teleporting to the next level. The items collected from chests offer a wide range of boosts to the players carrying them and provide both synergistic effects with other items as well as the potential to stack their effects if multiple copies of the same item are acquired.

Additionally, another currency has a chance to drop from defeated aliens called Lunar Coins. These coins can be used to access a special vendor in the game, who sells special items for the coins while additionally allowing players to pick the next level played using the coins. The difficulty of the game increases as the player progresses through a playthrough, based on the duration of the current run, an initial difficulty scale set by the player, and the number of players in the playthrough.

Every few minutes, the aliens’ level increases, thus scaling their max health and damage the longer the player’s run progresses. In the metagame, players unlock access to new playable survivors, items, abilities, and game modifiers by completing certain in-game achievements; once unlocked, new survivors and modifiers become available to select from at the start of the game, and new items will start appearing randomly from in-game chests.