Journey through Petrivore
Written By Jake Leung
Rogue, released in 1980, is a genre-defining dungeon crawler video game that features a procedurally randomly generated dungeon that the player can traverse and attempt to beat. However, when you beat the game or die, all your progress is deleted and you can try again from the start. This spawned an entire genre of “roguelikes” that centres around the idea that each attempt at the game is unique and random from previous attempts. Although each attempt or “run” is randomised, many games allow for some unlocks to transfer over between runs. For example, unlocking an item allows it to appear in all runs.
In 2013, the developers at Hopoo Games released a 2D platforming action roguelike called Risk of Rain. Featuring various characters or “survivors”, you attempt to escape and survive a foreign planet, fighting enemies and the planet’s dangerous inhabitants. In 2019, a sequel Risk of Rain 2 was released. Risk of Rain 2 or ROR2 is a 3D third-person shooter. ROR2 as a game excelled beyond the standard set by ROR1 and is now considered one of the best games of its genre, later releasing the well-received Survivors of the Void DLC. But what makes ROR2 such a good game?
Art By Jenny Chan
Beat
Risk of Rain 2 is widely praised for its music and soundtrack. Composed by Chris Christodoulou, ROR2 features 20 official tracks, 4 bonus tracks, and 9 DLC songs, making a total of 33 tracks of electronic synthetic rock. These tracks are attributed to different stages of the game, with the game dynamically changing the music to game events. While the entire OST is widely considered phenomenal, some tracks stand out as certified “bops”. Tracks such as “The Rain Formerly Known as Purple”, “ You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Ukulele”, and “A Glacier Eventually Farts (And Don’t You Listen to the Song of Life)” are iconic to players of ROR2 as incredibly good songs. Pairing these songs with events in the game such as boss fights makes for an incredible audio experience. Basically, just like wisps, the music is fire.
Design
ROR2 features 12 unique playable Survivors(characters) with 2 extra from the DLC. Each different survivor has a very different playstyle and different synergies with different items. If you enjoyed Call of Duty, you may enjoy the flashy skill-based Railgunner that relies on fast flicks, timing, and aim, or perhaps you’d prefer the Spider-Man-Esque Loader who requires dynamic movement. You may even like characters such as Huntress just for their looks. With 16 environments and 8 hidden realms, each with unique enemies, bosses, and randomly generated interactables, the player has a lot of content to play through, with the random generation keeping the game fresh and dynamic for hundreds of hours. Furthermore, the game is filled with lore and story. Each enemy, environment, and item is given a lore entry and their appearances are consistent with the world-building and story of the game. However, this story and world-building is not explicit, the player is required to read the log entries and infer the possible story. This includes the story of the final boss Mithrix and Providence(from ROR1), the cultish worshipping of N’kuhana and the heretic, and even the garden of wisps seen on Scorched Acres.
Game
Despite the large assortment of possible play styles, certain skills are common among all successful players. A high degree of game knowledge and experience greatly aids a player in playing to a survivor’s strengths and minimising their weakness. Understanding in-game mechanics such as proc, one-shot protection, or time can mean the difference between a successful gamer run and a failed noob run. Knowing the game’s items allows for “building” that effectively upgrades your character and survivor.
However, the ultimate challenge is not in learning and understanding the game. The challenge comes from time and enemies. An in-game timer scales the difficulty of the game, meaning the more time has passed in a run, the harder the game gets. This results in the spawning of higher numbers of more difficult enemies. Thus players must value speed when making decisions on whether they should take longer for better(or possibly worse) items, or move on to preserve time. As the game progresses, the player will realise that the game becomes kill or be killed. This is where players must develop good reaction time, movement, strafe patterns, and aim.
All this culminates in a game with a high skill ceiling requiring decision-making, game knowledge, and mechanical skills. All while the player battles time, enemies, and bad luck. This provides an incredibly satisfying experience and challenge.
Friendship
ROR2 is a multiplayer-compatible game, where the game becomes exponentially more difficult with more players, but more items spawn. Playing multiplayer is a more challenging yet rewarding experience. As enemies are both tankier and hit harder, it is more likely someone dies and you are given the privilege of taunting your dead allies. Furthermore, builds can be more specialised and the multiplayer power scaling allows for hyper-long run experiences in a short time frame. Each item has a stackable unique effect that when collected over time, can overpower a player to the point of game crashes.
Mod
There is an incredibly active modding community that creates a variety of game-changing mods, including a long-awaited sequel to Starstorm(a mod for ROR1), reworks of enemy AI and abilities, new original characters or rebalances, and most importantly, new skins for characters such as Huntress. These additions add flavour to the base game and potentially makes the game a more difficult challenge and enjoyable experience.
In Conclusion
Risk of Rain 2 is a roguelike masterpiece that engages both knowledge-based theory crafters, and skill-based players. Providing an incredible gameplay experience for both solo-players and groups alike. As well as an implicit story written in a poetic manner for those interested in mystery storytelling to decypher.