Risk of Rain (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.0.3 Update

Risk of Rain is a 2013 roguelike platform game developed by Hopoo Games and published by Chucklefish. Initially made by a two-student team from the University of Washington using the GameMaker engine, was funded through Kickstarter before being released on Microsoft Windows in November 2013. Ports for OS X and Linux versions were released a year later, with console versions being released in the latter half of the 2010s.

Players control the survivor of a space freighter crash on a strange planet. Players attempt to survive by killing monsters and collecting items that can boost their offensive and defensive abilities. The game features a difficulty scale that increases with time, requiring the player to choose between spending time building experience and completing levels quickly before the monsters become more difficult. The game supports up to ten cooperative players in online play and up to two players in local play. A 3D sequel, Risk of Rain 2, was released in August 2020. Risk of Rain Returns, a remake of the game, was released in November 2023 for Windows and Nintendo Switch.

GAMEPLAY

At the start of the game, the player selects one of twelve characters. Initially, one character is available, the Commando. As the player completes various in-game objectives, more characters become available. Each character has various statistics and a set of unique moves; for example, the sniper can hit creatures from a long distance for large, piercing damage but their firing rate is slow, while the commando can do rapid, moderate damage at close range.

Throughout the game, the goal is to locate a teleporter, always placed in a random location on the level. As the players hunt for it, they will encounter monsters; upon death, the monsters will drop in-game money and will provide the players with experience. As the players gain experience they will level up, gaining more hit points and damage. Money can be used to open various chests, buy items at stores, activate attack drones that aid in combat, or pray at shrines that have a random chance of dropping items, described by game lore as the space freighter’s cargo. There are over 110 items in the game, and these provide benefits such as passive bonuses that improve offensive or defensive capabilities, or a special usable with a cooldown. Players can only hold one usable at any time, but they can collect many passive items, including multiple versions of the same item, stacking the benefits of these items. The location of these items is randomly determined through procedural generation.

Once the players have found the teleporter, upon activating it, it begins a timed countdown event ranging from 90 seconds on Drizzle (easy) difficulty, to 120 seconds on Monsoon (hard). During this time, many more monsters, including at least one boss monster, will appear. After the countdown is over, no new monsters will appear and the players will have to find and kill all remaining monsters on the stage before they can proceed to the next level.

Upon exiting the level, any remaining money the players have is converted to experience points. At the penultimate level, the players have the option of taking the teleporter to the final level, or using the teleporter to run through previous levels again, to gain more experience and items; when this latter option is taken, the teleporter on these levels will allow the same choice to either proceed to the final level or continue through additional levels. On the final level, the player must fight a final boss character; if they survive, they can escape the planet and win the game.

The difficulty of the game is determined by a timer. The difficulty level increases every five minutes up through ten levels, with newly spawned monsters having more health and stronger attacks. Additionally, boss characters may spawn before the players have found teleporters on higher difficulties. If playing alone, the game is over when the player dies. In multiplayer mode, a player who dies must wait until the other players survive to the next level, upon which they are brought back into play.

The item drops are based on the various progress the player has made in the meta-game through repeated playthroughs. For example, defeating certain boss characters for the first time will unlock an item that can then drop in future playthroughs.

Other items are based on completing certain goals, such as winning the game many times or performing specific goals with each of the characters. In Rainstorm or Monsoon modes, monsters will also rarely drop log books that describe the monsters; this itself is used to unlock more items and a playable character.