Writing about Rain World never feels right. Despite its substantial popularity now, it always feels like my praise is partially overcompensating for its initially poor critical reception. I do not malign anyone who spoke ill of it even if by now, with over a hundred hours in it, I consider it an unmatched masterpiece. This manic survival platformer experience has ups and downs. I understand. I was there, ten hours in with no understanding of anything, utterly miserable, thinking I would never make progress again. So perhaps the greatest success of The Watcher is that, for the first time since my first playthrough, it filled me with that same sense of unmatched despair.
I quit back then. It took convincing to bring me back. After bettering my skills, evolving from a mere survivor to a hunter in the game’s ecosystem, beating the previous DLC’s campaigns, and playing through all sorts of fan-made content, The Watcher hit me with the exact kind of paranoia that instilled in me an undying fascination with Rain World. Losing myself in its beauty, annoyed, directionless, and hysterical—I trudged through my favorite game once more.
The Watcher plays very differently from any other Rain World experience out there in that it is disjointed, without the base game’s gates that typically mark the border between regions. Finding entrances to a new place feels unexpected, and there may be no grace period upon exiting. You can be thrown into a room and promptly chased down by familiar or unfamiliar dangers, falling right into a pit before you can even figure out the difference between background and foreground.
I had the pleasure of playing several of these regions in co-op in their mod version before the release of The Watcher. As impressive as they were back then, their visually touched-up versions found here are some of the most astonishing and memorable locations in what already was one of the best-looking games ever made. This massive expansion consistently made me drop everything and marvel at its vistas.
There may not be a logical connection between regions, but the state of scrapping around a new environment in bewilderment and awe is perhaps stronger than ever. Accentuated by a surprisingly experimental and impressively varied soundtrack, even for Rain World’s already zany standard, exploration in The Watcher has a strong fever dream vibe, tying to its themes surrounding the creatures known as Echoes: spiritual remnants of an ancient race made up of dark tendrils and gold flakes, a truly insane sight in the original campaigns.
It has a deeply emotional story, but only if you took the time to search out the optional and arduous task of searching out these beings and various colored pearls in the base game (or looked it all up online). For me, this is the third time seeing an end to Rain World, and this was not my favorite ending. As a way of telling stories through gameplay, however, it feels like the story barely just began, evolving further into its own medium.
One day I hope to return to Rain World to see even more creations like the ones that made it into The Watcher, to see the tools found here be picked up by new storytellers, changed, and revitalized. This DLC showcases the very best of different angles that can be taken when creating regions, from the ones more controlled and paced by its creators, defined by unique creatures or movement options, to completely hands-off chaotic sandboxes that are a pure joy to engage with. These are exciting interpretations of what Rain World is and can yet be.
Upon concluding my time with The Watcher, the only thought in my head was “I am not ready for Rain World to be over.” There is still a lot that I have not seen or done, with more updates still to come, but watching the credits roll this time has finally made me realize that the endlessly captivating world, frustrations included, has become an inherent part of me. There is a triumph in failing, trying again, barely squeezing through, losing hours of progress, and working towards regaining it. Parts of this new challenge make sure you feel that in your core by giving and then taking away when you most need it.
Failing is just a part of the cycle, testing one’s limits through controlling your little slugcat avatar that this expansion emulates on so many brand new levels and at such uninterrupted intensity feels unprecedented. The base game is about a desperate search for something to cling to in an unfamiliar, hostile world. Downpour introduces all-new exciting ways of play through a set of new campaigns in a largely familiar world. The Watcher is a fierce battle between an experienced player’s passion for exploration, confidence in their skills, and rediscovered, crushing melancholia that sees them doubting themselves once more.
Some of my favorite bits of Rain World are found here. The regions I lovingly dubbed “Hell” and “Hell 2” put forward such a fantastic, sinister and daunting atmosphere. The upped difficulty level was a joy to match. There are absolutely parts of the whole package that should still be fine-tuned. The beings I unlovingly dubbed “shock turtles” which coalesce into a group that block your path and often do not move despite pelting them with projectiles for minutes are beings of pure evil. They sent me into a wall on more than one occasion, forcing me to use dev tools.
If you are a fan of Rain World, it would be silly not to give The Watcher a try. Just like when I recommend the base game to anyone, I cannot guarantee it will be to your liking. Everyone takes Rain World to mean something different. For some, the feeling of insignificance in a gigantic space is what matters most. There is plenty of that here, but at the same time, the slugcat’s position in the story gives them unprecedented narrative importance. For others, it is the lore. There are great moments here that greatly reward a curious player, but the disjointed nature makes a lot of regions completely detached from the grand story.
Right now, for me, Rain World is the single best-playing, best-looking, and best-sounding survival sandbox out there, and from this angle, I have nothing but honest praise for The Watcher as a stellar new take. Like the base game, there will always be parts that I dread revisiting, there will always be entities I enjoy encountering more than others. That uneasiness and mixture of emotions is what I come to Rain World for, it is what I expected to get out of The Watcher and to say it overdelivered would be an understatement. It blew me away. I hope it only continues to do so, for as long as I live.
Mateusz played Rain World: The Watcher on PC with his own bought copy.
