So, during their dev stream, Hopoo and Gearbox announced a lot of very exciting news that I wanted to talk about. These range from a new expansion for Risk of Rain 2 to the release of Risk of Rain Returns as well as a mobile game. Hence, I figured I’d share some thoughts while talking about this news!

1. Risk of Rain Returns!
2. Risk of Rain 2: Seekers of the Storm
3. Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds
4. Risk of Rain as a Franchise

Risk of Rain Returns!

As I previously stated, I’m incredibly excited for Risk of Rain Returns!

Risk of Rain Returns or RoRR is a remaster of the 2013 roguelike-action-platformer that we all know and love. Originally developed by Hopoo Games, Risk of Rain had you stranded on an alien planet where you fight off enemies to get stronger, acquire items, and you engage in a race against time. The longer the game goes on, the harder it gets!

Slick movement, a challenging but fair experience, and an astonishing soundtrack were what really made Risk of Rain 1 stand out to me. To date, it’s one of my favourite roguelikes and I just highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t yet.

That said, it’s also ten years old now and frankly, it shows. Multiplayer is a pain to set up, the graphics look sort of dated, and a lot of the improvements that Risk of Rain 2 brought are missing in the first game, obviously. Risk of Rain Returns fixes that!

Overhauled HD graphics, new tracks for the soundtrack, and a lot of new enemies, customizable abilities, and fun new gimmicks are added into Risk of Rain Returns to make it feel more like a new release while keeping the essence of Risk of Rain the same.

While everything from the original game is still inside this title, Risk of Rain Returns also features some survivors from Risk of Rain 2, as well as features seen there, like the improved multiplayer.

I’m really excited! It looks great based on the trailers I’ve seen and the shorts uploaded by Hopoo. Can’t wait to sink my teeth into this one.

Risk of Rain 2: Seekers of the Storm

What’s incredibly surprising to me is that Risk of Rain 2 is getting a new expansion. It feels like it was just yesterday that Risk of Rain 2: Survivors of the Void released… and that one was already incredible!

So, getting a new expansion already with a new “big bad” so soon is pretty exciting to me.

Seekers of the Storm is an expansion introducing new survivors, items, stages, enemies, bosses and other features. As it has also been the case with Survivors of the Void, only one player will have to own the expansion in order for the others in the lobby to also be able to access the content.

The expansion will feature at least four new areas, some of which come in a day and night variant with structure and enemy differences, as well as a different skybox, based on the time on the map.

More than anything, I’m really excited to see new structures in the world and a lot of verticality in the design. Can’t wait to fall down and break my ankles!

A new final boss, The False Son, awaits us here born out of parts of Aurelionite, Providence and Mithrix. There’s a lot of lore here and implications that I can’t wait to dive into and I just don’t wanna take away too much, especially with so many unknowns… but the trailer for it looked crazy, so definitely check that out!

That said, there is no release date for Seekers of the Storm just yet but you can wishlist it on the Store Page already, and I am pretty excited for this, although I also am unsure how to feel about Gearbox working on it.

Originally, I had mixed feelings about Gearbox purchasing the IP and now releasing new content for the game, given Gearbox’ track record… but all the worries I had were tossed out of the window when I learned that they have a very capable lore team, as well as many talented developers that really managed to make the teasers we got to see of SotS look and feel like Risk of Rain 2.

I’m hyped!

Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds

On top of this expansion and Risk of Rain Returns, we also learned that Risk of Rain is coming to mobile in the form of Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds!

RoR:HW is an isometric take on the Risk of Rain formula featuring chibi-versions of the survivors battling against hordes of enemies. The premise is pretty interesting and the stuff we’ve seen so far of it didn’t look bad…

But it’s a Gacha game. I am honestly unsure why they thought that Gacha/gambling mechanics were necessary for a Risk of Rain game. Don’t get me wrong, Gacha can be well done… but it can also very much end up being rather predatory.

More than anything, in the Risk of Rain games, you unlock characters by actually achieving things on your runs. It’s a merit-based unlock system. The same goes for items.

If RoR: HW scratches that and adds in Gacha mechanics for the sake of monetization, I’m actually quite unsure if I really wanna play the game. I mean, I’ll try it out but this can probably quite quickly turn into a pay-to-win problem.

The worst part about this is that they could have easily made money with skins, sales, retries, and hats… but they chose to go for gambling instead. I have mixed feelings about this, Gearbox.

On the homepage, though, you can sign up for it already and secure yourself the mercenary! So that’s something!

Risk of Rain as a Franchise

Last but not least, we got some information on future plans for Risk of Rain as a franchise.

Gearbox did mention that they have other plans for future updates, DLCs and possibly even other games in the franchise. Honestly, a lot of it sounds intriguing although I’m worried that they’ll turn everything into a cash grab.

That aside, Gearbox did improve the codebase a lot for the game so that it’s much more streamlined across platforms which should possibly speed up porting in the future for other expansions.

Survivors of the Void is released on consoles now… finally. But it took ages to get there due to differences in the code and a bunch of other porting issues. In the future, this process should be better, according to Gearbox.

The prospect of more expansions for Risk of Rain 2 is amazing, though. I hope they don’t mess it up. Seekers of the Storm looks quite interesting with the day-night-cycle on some maps, and the incredibly lush and vertical maps as well as the dark castles and desert ruins seen in screenshots.

I can’t wait to dive into this new DLC as well once it’s out!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.