Rain World's new slugcat will explore icy wastes and desert sands as The Watcher DLC gets a release date
But what's it watching?
The post-apocalyptic wastelands of Rain World are stunning, brutal, and full of strange creatures that would like to eat your kittenish face. It's a landscape of wonder and pain, and it's about to get a little more wonderful and painful. The upcoming Watcher expansion, which adds new places to visit and a new type of slugcat to play as, will be coming out early next year, say the developers. There's a trailer to say so. Look at this slippery gastropodal feline, standing calmly in the rain, as if the torrential and lethal weight of the water will not crush that little fuzzy head. The gall!
It's coming out March 28th, 2025. We're not told precisely what the expansion is all about, only that this time the slugcat you control will be the Watcher, otherwise known as the "Nightcat". This dark critter has something of a cameo in the game's previous Downpour DLC. You can play as the Nightcat in a multiplayer arena mode, for instance, and the adorable little Squirmle also shows up briefly towards the end of another slugcat's story campaign.
We're not told what abilities this slugcat has though, if any. In Downpour, each new variant of the slugcat sports special traits and characteristics. The prickly Spearmaster has needles in its body to use as weapons and climbing tools, for example, and the Saint uses a sticky tongue as a kind of grappling hook. But the Watcher? No idea.
Maybe the confident way the fuzzball stands in heavy rain implies an immunity to the game's most unconquerable environmental hazard? Or maybe all the mysterious talk of ripples and concentric rings is suggesting this slugcat has some ability to travel through time or space in a novel way. I don't know. But one thing is clear from the trailer. There will be a bunch of new areas to explore, and some of them look wildly different from the landscape's usual twisted urban swamp. Sand! Snow! Pink skies!
"The wilds that await will be unlike all that's come before," says a blurb for the DLC. "Unknown creatures stalk and climb and dive and hunt. New breeds rip and pluck and burrow and hide. Predator and prey redefined."
Gulp.
If you haven't tottered unsteadily into the post-apocalyptic landscapes of Rain World, I do recommend it, with the proviso that you consider playing on an easier difficulty than the default setting. This survival metroidvania (I don't know what else to call it) was nails when I played it for review, and under time pressure I didn't have a perfect experience.
Nevertheless, it is a singular piece of work. It has both some of the best rain in games and one of the best cats in games. Its harsh and fascinating world has stayed with me in a way few games do. I sometimes look back on that review with a tinge of regret, a feeling like I was unable to fully meet the game on its own terms. Then again, this was before developers Videocult pumped a bunch of updates into it and added that nice easy mode for sufferers like me. Some day I'll go back. If I can summon the courage to get past this thing again.