14 DAY TRIAL // 
Roguelike elements have slowly but surely infiltrated quite a lot of games lately, and Risk of Rain, from developer Hopoo Games, is the latest example.
The title, actually made by two students, blends action platformer gameplay with roguelike elements like permanent death, procedural level generation to some degree, and an unforgiving difficulty system that spawns harder and harder enemies as you spend more time in its big world.
Throw in the retro pixelated graphics and the lack of hand-holding and Risk of Rain seems to be a blast from the past for those who like a challenge.
Does it deliver a fun time or should you grab an umbrella? Let's find out.
Risk of Rain opens with a basic cut scene that shows a ship filled with different items and characters crash land on an alien world. You play as one of the survivors, who all have different specializations, from the Commando, to the Engineer, Miner, or Enforcer.
At the start, however, you only get to control the Commando, as all the rest of the cast needs to be unlocked. Unfortunately, the game doesn't explain just what you need to accomplish in order to unlock the characters, so you're just fighting blindly trying to see what achievement is the correct one.
Fortunately, the Commando is a pretty solid class combining decent mobility with firepower. You have four basic abilities and you can also hold a one-time-use gadget in an inventory slot. Most items, however, stack, meaning you can gather as many as you want, each applying their effects.
As such, you can score bonus weapons that upgrade the damage output of your attacks, or passive items that heal you or affect your foes in different ways. There's a huge number of items in Risk of Rain but, in order to get most of them, you need to slay enemies to earn money, which can be spent on upgrading yourself.
Speaking of enemies, they are extremely varied and each has all sorts of crazy attacks. While most of the foes can be defeated at first, as time passes the game's difficulty increases from Very Easy to Easy and so on. As such, small enemies that could easily be vanquished at first become quite resilient and deadly.
The goal of Risk of Rain is to teleport through the different worlds, and this can be done by finding a teleporter hidden in each level and then surviving a big wave of foes led by a giant enemy. These are the most nerve-wracking moments of the game and will make you sweat or swear, depending on your skills.
This is where Risk of Rain's magic factor comes in. You can start a game quite near a teleporter but, without sufficiently leveling up your character by killing enemies, you'll be underpowered for the big attack or for the next level. As such, you need to strike a balance between killing enough foes, earning enough useful items, and starting the teleport sequence.
Besides braving the dangerous world alone, you can play cooperatively with another player locally or with three other friends online. While this may sound like a good idea, death is permanent here as well and items aren't shared between players, meaning some characters will be quite underpowered, especially since the difficulty progresses at a much faster pace.
In terms of visuals, Risk of Rain looks quite good, making the pixelated retro style rather refreshing. Special props go to the actual enemies, as they boast some great and different designs, not to mention plenty of variations.
The soundtrack is also pretty good, but some tunes don't exactly go that well with the action on the screen. Even so, there's enough variety to keep things interesting.
Conclusion
Risk of Rain is a great roguelike experience that will certainly delight those looking for a challenge in terms of action platformers. Its lack of hand-holding will definitely attract many, but a few more explanations concerning how you can unlock characters might have been useful.
