This game was originally covered as part of our Nindie Round Up series that sought to give coverage to a wider breadth of Switch eShop games beyond our standard reviews. In an effort to make our impressions easier to find, we're presenting the original text below in our mini-review format.

Rain World is a survival platformer that has you controlling a bizarrely endearing and unnamed creature, traversing an apocalyptic landscape in search of food that enables you to hibernate to survive the tsunami levels of ensuing precipitation. Your rodent-like 'slugcat' creature is sickeningly sweet and loveable; Pokéfans could consider him a blend of Pikachu and Slugma.

The basic gameplay revolves around surviving day after day by foraging for food and hibernating once you have enough to live on. Then, you awake and do the same thing again, in an apocalyptic version of Groundhog Day, to progress further along the map.

This provides some wonderful exploration and free-roaming; the game certainly doesn’t hold your hand. It does, however, provide some cruel difficulty spikes due to the randomised nature of both food sources and enemies. Many opponents are very difficult, with one-hit KO attacks galore and not a huge amount to defend yourself with. That said, the thrill of finding a new area of the beautiful map does somewhat make up for the tough gameplay, which can, unfortunately, devolve into grinding.

However, where Rain World might slightly fall down in terms of repetitive gameplay, it redeems itself in style, sound, and visual aesthetic. This is truly a beautiful game, reminiscent of other 2D indie beauties like Limbo or Ori and the Blind Forest, while also being totally unique and stunning to look at. The wordless opening art tiles set to the gorgeous soundtrack alone could work as a short film; it’s that good.

Overall, Rain World is highly recommended as a piece of art, even just to check out its gorgeous visuals. Its gameplay is unforgiving, but not to the extent where it becomes unplayable. It certainly will take some devotion and time to get good at it, but with a world this beautiful, is that such a bad thing?