 Here we go, it's yet another retro-style 2D side-scrolling action platformer, this time it's Risk of Rain, so what makes this game stand out among the crowd? To start with, it doesn't waste your time with story, a ship carrying a treasure trove of fun, video game-y stuff, like explosives, weapons and creatures, starts breaking apart and eventually crashes on some strange planet. You choose a survivor from the ship's crew and go out into the wild and, uh, kill stuff and make stuff go boom I guess. Maybe there is a bit more to it than that, this is a roguelike action platformer, so while the game does look like the same retro-styled stuff, run to the right, jump around and all that, the difference is the sheer amount of depths and items, gear, weapons, and of course the whole roguelike thing with randomized levels and exits, plus the 12 characters to choose from give this game a lot of variety and replay value. To give a good Super Nintendo comparison for that aspect, think of King of Dragons, with certain characters good for close-range melee stuff, guys good for ranged attacks, that sort of thing. The way the game works is you spawn into an area, search around until you find a teleporter that you activate and then you have to survive the next 90 seconds as you're bombarded with enemies and oftentimes a boss. Survive that and move on to the next area, or you can stick around and fight, you can level up, gain experience, get more powerful and all that jazz. Now for a game with a leveling system like this, I know the first thing that comes to mind, at least for me, is to just grind and grind some more, level up and breeze through the rest of the game. However, risk of rain is smart, the longer you stay in a level and the longer you grind, the more batshit crazy the enemy spawning rate is, and the harder the game is. As a result, this game can be comically difficult. No, literally, one of the difficulty settings is titled Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Jokes on me then, huh? One thing in my opinion that holds this game back a bit, though, is the visual design. Everything is just too frickin' small. Once you hit a certain difficulty level, the game devolves into a chaotic mess. Alright, that may not be a fair criticism considering this game was initially a student project between two college kids at the University of Washington, but still, this is what you're getting here, and if you enjoy the chaos, or at least you just don't mind it, then obviously this won't be a problem. But personally, this is just like, what in the blue hell is supposed to be happening? I can't even see where I am. So yeah, risk of rain is certainly interesting, and far from ordinary. As clever as the difficulty sliding scale is, this game might just be too tough for some people to get into. But on the contrary, if you pick up the gameplay quickly, then you'll find this game incredibly addicting. In other words, you'll either love or hate risk of rain. If you think this game sounds interesting, keep it on your wish list. The price has been as low as a dollar, and at that price, you might as well take a chance.