The first thing you notice when playing Risk of Rain is a difficulty indicator. Easy, Medium, and Hard are arrayed along a timer, which has already begun counting up. Survive long enough, and the timer will eventually read “I’M COMING FOR YOU” and then “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.” So with no time to waste, you leap out of your spaceship and begin shooting the menagerie of strange and often fantastical aliens that come to attack you. Killing them gives you money, which you can use to open the chests scattered around the map. And here the magic begins.
Some chests simply give you a random item, while others let you pick one from three. Still others allow you to input random items to craft a specific item on offer. The items on their own are eclectic: a teddy bear that prevents damage, a ukulele that summons magical lightning, and so on. In certain combinations, they produce incredible effects. Combine “N’kuhana’s Opinion,” which damages your enemies when you heal with an enormous number of common healing items, and you’ll barely have to shoot at all. For a precious moment, you’ll feel like you’ve broken the game.
Of course, that’s exactly what the designers intended—a fact that becomes increasingly apparent as you face ever more ridiculous and screen-clogging enemy hordes, or depart the planet to face the game’s punishing final boss. The resulting dynamic is a furious cycle of one-upping the increased difficulty, scrounging for ever more broken combinations just to keep up. This dynamic serves two aesthetic goals: discovery as the player finds new random items and figures out how to work them into their build, and challenge as the player masters the interactions between items, constantly rising to meet the new difficulty. It is an incredibly well-executed combination that keeps me coming back again and again.
