Rain is a game that was released digitally on Sony’s Playstation Network in October, 2013 and developed by SCE Japan Studio. SCE Japan Studio is the first party development studio responsible for the development of titles such as: Ape Escape, Echochrome, Knack, and Tokyo Jungle to name a few. In recent years games that SCEJ Studio develops don’t receive the same critical acclaim that they used to with Knack and Tokyo Jungle being generally unfavorable to critics. While I enjoyed Tokyo Jungle, I did feel it needed plenty of polish, so I was curious to see whether or not I’d like Rain.

Rain is a very short, story driven gameplay experience with puzzles and platforming to compliment the story as it unfolds around you. The story is about a little boy, who is only visible in the rain, as he searches for a girl that he saw being chased after by monsters, getting chased by such monsters himself during his search, it’s a very simple story and the way it plays out is very interesting. The story is almost like a children’s book, with short sentence by sentence to tell you what is going on, with beautiful water colored cutscenes and interesting dark visuals in-game. The story continues to be told as you progress through the game via in-game text that pops up alongside you whenever anything significant happens, yet does not affect the pace of the game whatsoever. This makes you feel as if you are just always in this story book world; this is something I like a lot about the game.

The main gameplay mechanic is to run from monsters into areas of cover, because as you are only visible in the rain, when you reach an area that is covered from rain, you become invisible and the enemies lose track of you. This is incredibly reminiscent of the stealth element of Tokyo Jungle, a gameplay mechanic that felt a little underdeveloped in that game. I like this a lot because its more polished than in Tokyo Jungle, cover is more secure and more assured except in places that the game clearly indicates it if you pay close enough attention. What I mean by this is that the enemies themselves are also visible only in the rain and sometimes wander around in places that would make them invisible, yet you still retain cover because they can’t see you, however, if you bump into them, then they can find your location. This is an interesting gameplay mechanic as you can still see their foot prints being made in invisible areas, making these moments of the game require careful precision. The variety of what the game does with this main stealth mechanic is something that I really enjoyed.

Rain has a very “indie game” feel in that tends to focus more on the experience than necessarily the gameplay. I see what they were going for but it does make the game suffer in a few places. For one, the previously mentioned in-game text can sometimes be bothersome, as you spend most of the time running from enemies and finding cover, sometimes text appears as you’re running or in an area full of enemies and it becomes easily missed. This is disappointing as the game is very story driven so it’s not necessarily what I would call good game design to have the opportunity to miss story anywhere in the game at all. Speaking of, it also bothers me that for such a story driven game, just pressing start skips any cutscenes without warning and cutscenes cannot be paused, this almost feels like they’re just using game mechanics and conventions from more non-story driven games in an experience where they clearly want the story to be what shines through. Not only this but I also previously mentioned the platforming in Tokyo Jungle as a major hindrance for me, while this game’s jumping and platforming is more polished than Tokyo Jungle’s, it still has issues very reminiscent of it. About half an hour in (of a 3 hour game mind you) I did get used to the clunky overshooting of the jump arches and the fact that the amount of startup frames for the character’s jumping animation tended to be a few too many, but these are still issues to me as it felt almost like a few of my deaths in the first half-hour of the game were just not my fault. However, as I said, you adapt to the strangeness of this game’s jumping and you take it into consideration later on as you play.

Once you accept the game’s flaws and odd gameplay mechanics, it’s actually a pleasant and satisfying experience. The story is an interesting child’s book like experience that is calming, constantly flowing, yet a little dark, so I suppose the name “Rain” is appropriate for the experience it delivers. After I adjusted I found myself incredibly satisfied after completing each puzzle. The game does a bit of optional hand holding with hints given at certain times of the game, but this often during more obvious points in the game or after spending plenty of attempts on one puzzle and as mentioned previously, is completely optional. Overall, the game is a fairly decent but not a completely polished experience, which is still nice, but among the things that can be overlooked, what can’t be is the 3 hour game time. This wouldn’t be so bad honestly if it weren’t $15. So with that price tag and the unpolished gameplay mechanics, and three total hours of gameplay, it’s hard to justify this purchase, but if it happens to go on sale, I’d say certainly go for it. Otherwise I wouldn’t recommend purchasing for full price.