Risk of Rain

Rogue-likes and platformers do not have too many things in common, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't play well with each other if someone combined them into one. Risk of Rain is a game that decided to give it a go and provide you with the opportunity to see how would such a mix would fair under close scrutiny, with plenty of interesting mechanics to try out.

The main purpose of the game, as it is in any rogue-like out there, is to survive and reach the end of the level. On the way there, however, you must battle an army of monsters, as well as avoid various other traps and navigate the environment using basic platformer mechanics. Using a variety of skills and power-ups, things can be quite simple, as long as you remember to gather the gold coins and purchase new weapons whenever you stumble upon a chest.

In the beginning, you get the chance to choose from a variety of characters, each one of which has different abilities that come in handy when it comes to dealing with the massive numbers of enemies. Thus, there are both ranged and melee warriors, using anything from machine guns to pickaxes to cause damage. However, due to the very low resolution, it can be pretty difficult to differentiate between the characters most of the time.

The interesting thing about the game is the fact that there are a couple of different maps available and they load randomly when you start a new round. Thus, every session is a different experience, or at least it is until you learn all the maps. Moreover, the enemies vary with the environment as well, which means that you need to learn how to approach them and avoid their special attacks.

When you find and activate the teleporter, you must survive for 90 seconds in order to be able to advance further. To make sure that the task is harder than it sounds, a boss monster is usually spawned, which can deal incredible amounts of damage and benefits from quite the hefty quantity of hitpoints. However, you still have to kill it and the rest of the creatures in the level in order to move on, regardless of whether you survive the 90 seconds.

Risk of Rain is definitely worth a try, especially since the weird combination of genres can surprise you in many ways. For those who love a challenge, the game is quite capable to cause high blood pressure and a few other stress-related issues.