Faithful to the series and captures its gameplay magic | CBT Review - Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds
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✨Overview
Risk of Rain is one of my favorite roguelite series. It started with the side-scrolling pixel art in the first installment and then shifted into a 3D third-person perspective for second. Now, it looks like it's set to shift again with its newly announced mobile spinoff, Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds, featuring a brand-new top-down perspective stick ARPG shooter, and the formula still works. Of course, it comes with the usual mobile game offerings as well: free-to-play, microtransactions, hero collecting, and gachas. It's announcement is timely, considering another Risk of Rain game that returns back to its 2D roots by remastering the first game: Risk of Rain Returns, has recently released.
📖Story and Premise
The narrative centers around the fate of the ship, The Shimmer Mark, and its surviving crew which were scattered across a star system filled with perilous planets and moons. Unlike Risk of Rain 1 and 2, where players assumed the role of survivors stranded on a hostile planet, Hostile Worlds puts them in the shoes of survivors stranded on space instead, trying to rescue teammates stranded on planets. Starting with the mission to retake command of The Shimmer Mark, players then venture to each planetary body, attempting to rescue any surviving crewmates. There’s not much story here honestly, but it’s still consistent with the tone of the series.
🎨Graphics and Art Style
Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds maintains the series' distinctive visual identity, characterized by low–fi graphics, desolate yet vibrant worlds, and a harmonious blend of sci-fi and fantasy art styles. The transition to a top-down perspective actually enhances visibility compared to its precessors, and allows for cleaner visuals, ensuring players can navigate the chaotic landscapes with ease. The consistent art style creates a cohesive and recognizable aesthetic, even the fonts are the same. Despite the mobile platform constraints, the game successfully captures the essence of the Risk of Rain universe, delivering a visually engaging experience.
🎮Gameplay
The core gameplay of Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds takes a departure from the traditional roguelite formula seen in its predecessors. Instead of the procedural level generation and permadeath mechanics, the game adopts a more structured approach with steady level progression. Players enter each level, face waves of monsters, loot gold, purchase upgrades, and extract. This shift allows for a more accessible experience on mobile while still retaining roguelite elements through temporary upgrades and looted gold that are specific to each run.
The introduction of seamless character swapping during combat adds a strategic layer that will feel familiar to mobile players; enabling players to bring three survivors on missions and switch between them at will, one at a time. This dynamic approach to gameplay encourages experimentation with different playstyles and synergies. For example, my support character can place a healing beacon on the ground, then I would switch back to my low HP DPS character instantly for him to get healed.
It also adopts some mechanics from its big brothers: mainly the monster spawns that gets more difficult as time passes, the chests that are scattered around the levels that contains the upgrades, and the teleporters to charge and defend in order to extract. The balance between speed and upgrades becomes a key decision, as lingering on a level for more resources poses the risk of facing stronger enemies.
⚔️Combat
The combat in Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds is a highlight of the gameplay experience. Three types of moves—standard attacks, special abilities, and dashes—create a dynamic and engaging system. Standard attacks fire automatically within range, providing a consistent source of damage. Special abilities, manually selected, produce impactful effects, adding a strategic element to encounters. Dashes can be used manually for both avoiding enemies and passing through obstacles, enhancing mobility in the heat of battle.
The variety in combat is further amplified by the diverse lineup of Survivors, each with unique abilities. The encounter with nasty monsters across different biomes ensures that each level presents distinct challenges, keeping the gameplay fresh and unpredictable. Whether facing hordes of enemies or confronting epic bosses, the combat in Hostile Worlds is intense, requiring quick thinking and adaptability.
⏫Progression
Persistent progression in Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds comes in the form of upgrading characters and equipping them with gear and gadgets looted from missions. Unlike the organic unlocking of character perks in previous Risk of Rain games, the system is now currency/resource-based, which again, will feel familiar for mobile players. Players can also collect or “rescue” the survivor characters via random drops or by participating in its gacha system.
While the game is also marketed as having four-player co-op, a substantial part of the experience is actually in single-player mode, and multiplayer is unlocked deep further into the game. In Singleplayer, there are multiple planets to conquer, with five levels each divided into small areas. All playable in three difficulty settings. The progression system ties seamlessly into the rescue mission narrative, reinforcing the player's connection to the overarching story even if it’s just a minor narrative element.
The actual multiplayer is unlocked at level 15, which takes a couple of hours of singleplayer progression. The 4 player mode is mostly in the same gameplay format, but has a different objective for all players to accomplish; shrines scattered around the map for bonuses; and a revive system for downed teammates
💵Monetization
Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds adopts the typical mobile game model with free-to-play, microtransactions, hero collecting, and gacha elements. While this aligns with prevalent trends in mobile gaming, it introduces a departure from the traditional Risk of Rain formula that not everyone will like. Some might prefer it to be a premium game with an upfront cost. Having said that, I was satisfied with my solo free-to-play experience so far, I got everything I need to progress through the first few hours of play.
📊Technical Performance
The game performed adequately on my Snapdragon 888 processor, with around 30-60fps performance on low settings, which still looked great and not that noticeable compared to the high setting. However, I ran into ocassional issues with massive framedrops when I was playing for extended periods in all kinds of setting configurations, low or high, the frame rate drops occasionally appear nonetheless. In my experience, this looks like a memory leak, but don’t take my word for it. This simply boils down to developer still on-going with their optimization with the game, and for its visuals, I think a constant 60fps target for recent flagship specs is totally doable. The UI is already functional, but needs a little bit of work; for example, the location of the button for swapping characters which i found a little too far from hands, but you get used to it after a while.
⚖️Conclusion
Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds is a promising upcoming spinoff and addition to the series with its top-down shooter gameplay and mechanics rooted in roguelites. It’s faithful to the series and captures its gameplay magic for the most part. However, instead of fully embracing the Risk of Rain formula and bringing it to mobile, it looks like mobile has brought Risk of Rain to itself with its plethora of mobile-centric elements.
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