Any player in search of a real platforming challenge should be playing Rain World. It can be brutal at times and it has its quirks, but it will keep you coming back. Plus, it has a Slugcat.

An impressive bestiary of rogue DNA horrors, a charismatic hero and a huge world to explore. This is enough to forgive Rain World for a few weird design choices and at times wonky jumping mechanics.

It frustrated me, it treated me unfairly, but after I got the hang of the rules I simply couldn’t tear myself away from it and kept chasing momentary triumphs among incessant nervous breakdowns. [06/2017, p.60]

Rain World is simple but sensational, beautiful but dark and scary, and challenging but enjoyable. It's not suitable for everybody, but those who give it time and try to understand it, will not forget it anytime soon.

Few will see the more remote corners of Rain World’s relentlessly dire stretch, but those who do are unlikely to forget the experience.

Huge and sophisticated game. Less resistant or tolerant players will be destroyed, rumbled and spit through its brutal and even unfair difficulty. But the hard-core players will be rewarded with flawless and functional mechanisms, an excellently designed ecosystem of the world, exploratory joy, breathtaking atmosphere and an addictive feeling of success.

It's a quite special game, but not necessarily in a good way. We understand what the developers tried to achieve, but in the end it's a game that doesn't give you any help and can feel unfair. If you're ok with this and you're looking for a challenge, it can be an interesting experience.

Rain World could have been one of the best independent titles of this year, but risky design choices have just backfired here, causing it to be a missed chance, no matter how good some of the ideas that it brings to the table.

Beautifully crafted game with unique depressive atmosphere, but unfortunately the core gameplay mechanics are simply wrongly presented and designed.

Rain World is a maddening thing, because of quite how special it could have been. Beautiful environments, incredible animations and enticingly hazy mechanics are fantastic, but the sheer cruelty of how it’s pieced out to the player transcends challenge and becomes an unwanted trial.

Quotation forthcoming.

Rain World is the typical missed opportunity, a game with brilliant ideas ruined by some flawed mechanics which risk to hold back the wonder of an extraordinary world.

Rain World will beat you up. The progression system is extremely frustrating, which is a pity as this game had the potential of becoming one of the most intriguing survival games of the year.

With its pretty visuals and cute protagonist, Rain World seems like an interesting experience at first sight. But after a while, it crushes under its repetitive game mechanics.

I never felt properly equipped to discover, to improve. With core systems opaque and unnecessarily limited, all I ever felt equipped to do in Rain World was fail.

In Rain World, the spectre of failure, often caused by events you can't control, lingers heavily. It quickly drives home the point that you're a foreigner in a ruined land where anyone larger than you wants to eat you. Its stunningly detailed backgrounds and few rewarding gameplay opportunities are vastly outweighed by its platforming imperfections and hibernation mechanic, which makes little sense in its connection to accessing new areas. Oftentimes, the frustrations resulting from failure devolve into apathy, which is a wholly unfortunate outcome for a game that gives off a deceptively promising first impression.