Recently I decided to try Rain World, which I'd previously seen my partner and some friends play and gush about. I was drawn in by the cute slugcats and the art style, especially the whole "abandoned world" aesthetic. You go through areas with lots of rust, pipes, broken machinery, stuff like that. I was also aware going in that this was an "exploration" kind of game, the kind that doesn't hold your hand and gives little instruction. I figured it wasn't going to be that bad.

Here's how my first experience went, playing blind.

Starting out, learning to hunt for food and hibernate was easy and intuitive. Surviving and fighting monsters is hard, but I can understand it. I enjoyed narrowly escaping a giant lizard and getting to the next shelter. My problem began with the Drainage System area.

There's this area with a big pit, and a shelter on the other side. I, assuming I was making progress, jumped the pit and saved in the shelter - now I respawn there. I found that the adjacent room was a dead end, the pit was too wide to jump back across or climb up, and at the bottom of the pit is an area that's completely underwater, rendering it impossible to enter without a water breathing character. Since I now respawned here for every attempt, I was basically stuck here.

I only managed to get out by getting ridiculously lucky. After many reloads, scavengers spawned in the dead end room carrying spears. I grabbed one and made it back across the pit by throwing it mid-pounce and grabbing onto it in the wall. If it wasn't for this, my save would have been permanently softlocked.

I talked to a friend who played this game already. She said going to this area is a common mistake for new players. The fact this is a thing and I could trap myself like this playing blind was outrageous to me, but I continued. I was still greatly enjoying the rest of the game aside from that. I left the area and went back to what I assumed was the intended progression of areas. And for the next several hours, I had fun.

But after a while, this game's "guide" - a yellow blob that pops up at random and sometimes gives hints - started to become a hindrance. It kept projecting images that I guess were meant to be lore, but it'd cut itself off and warp out before I could even see them. I couldn't get them to reappear. Then it started giving me arrows with some kind of robot icon. It would lead me in a vague direction - the arrow only guides you to a room exit - then disappear.

This led to me getting completely lost. I tried over and over to get it to appear again, going back and forth through rooms, saving and reloading. Nothing. It would only appear half an hour after I gave up and went somewhere else, telling me I was going the wrong way. This was extremely unhelpful. I just decided to ignore the guide. But it left a burning curiosity in me, so I asked that friend again.

She said I had to go back to a previous area and go to the far east side. Not only was I far past this area now, but the in-game map has this 3d effect, so there wasn't really an "east side". I had to go on the wiki and find a map.

So, after hours of struggling just to get there, all I got was a robot NPC who made some sounds and animated a little. I was really frustrated and closed the game. I went on the wiki. Apparently, you have to meet this character, then hibernate in a shelter, and now you've met them. This bewildered me, but I did so.

The yellow thing showed me an image of some flies I need to bring to this character - I saw that on the wiki too, whatever, there's already so much of this game you can only learn on the wiki anyway. I tried to go out and get them, but I ran into the same problem. This thing only appears when it wants to, and only helps when it feels like it. I was left wandering in the completely wrong area for hours before I got frustrated and looked at the wiki again. It was no help, so I looked up steam guide after steam guide. I found a world map, and - I was several areas removed from where I needed to be. The game just let me wander into the wrong area for hours and didn't stop me.

The game had every opportunity to put me on the right path. The yellow blob frequently appears but doesn't give help, it just stares at you. In fact, it actually giving a hint seems to be very rare. I get that it's diegetic, it fits into the world - but finding out I was wasting my time struggling and dying and repeating the same set of screens for hours and I was in the completely wrong area just shot my motivation completely.

I really wanted to like this game. I loved the slugcats, the survival, the artstyle, the world, the gameplay. I even installed mods! But this game just doesn't want to help me play it. I already dislike a game that's so hands-off you need a wiki to play it blind. But it's taken too far when the provided guide bait-and-switches you. It's frustrating. I didn't think I'd get this angry, but this tried my patience.