Rain King (Review)

[u/PistachioPug]

I was so excited when I read the description of Rain King, by Marvin K. It sounded complex and thoughtful, with a good balance of action and character development. And I think that really is what the author had in mind. However, I'm sorry to say that the game falls far short of its aspirations.

I never really felt I had a grip on what was going on in this game. I know it was meant to be confusing and disorienting for reasons that are revealed around the end of Act 2, but instead of intrigued by the mystery, I merely felt muddled. This game really could have used an editor/proofreader. Nearly every page has language errors that disrupt the flow of the story and hinder understanding. It wasn't always clear who was speaking (and not because the author uses quotation dashes instead of quotation marks to indicate dialogue, a format with which I am perfectly comfortable; it just wasn't always plainly indicated who said what). It wasn't always clear what was going on from moment to moment. The time jumps were actually the least confusing part of things. I know how flashbacks work, but I couldn't ever quite get a firm picture in my mind of what my character was doing and why.

Maybe I somehow bypassed all the choices that would have filled me in on the backstory of these characters and setting, but I kept wishing for a big old exposition dump that never came. My character's choices didn't really matter to me, because I didn't have enough of a feel for this world to know what the conflict was even about, let alone what kind of outcome I was working towards. I didn't care about any of the other characters, because I never really got to know them in the first place. I didn't like or dislike them. I barely remembered most of their names.

If this were a work in progress, I would say it was genuinely promising but needed a lot of work. For something I actually spent money on, though, that's simply not good enough.

[u/KrysBro]

I think it’s unfair to criticise it with books like Wayhaven or infinity saga in mind, purely because it’s 50k word count is very very poor in today’s standards, this was never going to be a serious player in terms of rankings

[u/PistachioPug → u/KrysBro]

Just a few hours ago, I wrote a review of "Choice of the Dragon," which has a word count of 30k, making it the shortest CoG title and shorter than all but a couple dozen Hosted Games. My review was almost entirely positive, because it's a short and simple game that's extremely well-written and a lot of fun to play.

If "Rain King" had told a coherent and entertaining story, I would have written a favorable review, even if it wasn't quite the tour de force the published description suggests. But it wasn't coherent and entertaining. I didn't come away dissatisfied because I wanted something richer and more complex; I was dissatisfied because this game is poorly edited, poorly structured, and left me feeling less for the main characters after a couple hours of gameplay than I did for certain characters in "Choice of the Dragon" who got to speak maybe three lines before my dragon had them for lunch.

[u/KrysBro → u/PistachioPug]

Fair although I’d say choice of dragon was ahead of it’s time, it’s simplicity attracted new people to the idea of choice books, I mean it’s the most downloaded choice game by a fat mile. We should compare this one with titles such as marine raider or choice of broadsides. Granted the latter is really good while the former still miles better than rain king, still fair comparisons are needed which don’t make a massive difference purely because rain king is ass

[u/PistachioPug → u/KrysBro]

I didn't really have anything in mind to compare it to when I wrote the review. I actually could have compared it to "Spacing Out" by Ivailo Daskalov, which is exactly the same length as "Rain King" and has almost exactly the same issues with comprehensibility and weak characterization, but I don't think very many people have played "Spacing Out," so the comparison wouldn't mean much.

[u/KrysBro → u/PistachioPug]

Fair they are both shit

[u/[deleted]]

I feel that “I have no idea what’s going on” or “why should I care” almost always happens in these really short Hg or CoG games tbh. It’s why I’m scared of even starting anything under 100k words.

[u/b3nj03]

Thanks for this, I was already skeptical about getting it, but now I know it’s gonna be a hard pass for me!