This World Wants to Die

In Rain World, death isn't the end—it's just the start of another cycle.

The overgrown ruins of a city, so industrial it looks like one big machine, are shrouded in blankets of fog, coating enormous creatures in the midst. Dangers are everywhere, but they aren't apparent until it's much too late, and allies that you wouldn't trust at a glance. There is so much life here, but so much death too. This is Rain World, and this is you—or at least the character you control throughout the game. This tiny, squishy little creature is called a slugcat, and he's about to have the weirdest day of his whole life.

Every creature in Rain World is stuck in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. When you die, you don't move on; you just come back and do it all again. From the animals and the plants that you eat to the animals and plants that eat you, every lifespan in Rain World is in this cycle. This means that every life in Rain World is hopelessly, irreparably permanent. And this one little slugcat is going to find the way out of it. Despite its breathtaking world and thriving ecosystems, Rain World is ultimately a game about dying—not just the repeated, grueling deaths that you make slugcat suffer through as a player, but the very concept of dying itself. Dying permanently is next to impossible for the inhabitants of Rain World, but that sure won't stop them from trying.

For a game that seems hellbent on killing you over and over again, it sure is hard to actually die in Rain World, thanks to those cycles mentioned earlier. The end of your current life is just the beginning of your next. That isn't an escape; it's barely even a restart. It's more of just a player respawn. The only way to really, truly die and leave your existence behind completely would be to somehow break that cycle. But why would anyone ever want to do that? How is absolute nothingness preferable to an endless reincarnation loop? Isn't that what most living things are trying to avoid—oblivion? Your life is all you know. You've been doing it this long. Isn't that less scary than having to confront whatever comes after? Though I suppose if the life you've been living was painful, upsetting, or just really, really boring, I can understand how you might not want to be stuck in it forever.

Hundreds of years prior to the events of the game, the world was inhabited by a society known simply as the Ancients. They were obsessed with trying to figure out a way to break out of this cycle. They put countless resources into the search for a permanent death. They even started to call this true death Ascension and developed an entire religion around it. Eventually, they did stumble across a way to achieve it—a sea buried deep in the earth beneath it, an expanse of black and gold. It looked like something out of another dimension. Nobody knew exactly what it was; they just knew that anything that entered its strange waters would be so thoroughly broken down that it would essentially vanish from existence, including, of course, people. They called this strange new substance void fluid. It would, they thought, be their salvation.

But it turned out Ascension wasn't as simple as throwing yourself into the void fluid. There were some people who weren't actually able to leave reality that way. Instead, they would get stuck in time as something else—a sort of nothing being, doomed to float between reality and oblivion, unable to live or die. An echo of their former existence and nothing more. You get to meet a few Echoes in the game. For you as a player, it's always this strange, awesome, sad experience, like an encounter with a ghost trapped in its old haunt. For the Ancients, the discovery of the Echoes was a warning. Their hubris, their plan to ascend, could go much worse for them than they had expected. Of course, as I said at the start, that wouldn't stop them from trying.

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In a world where the Ancients sacrificed everything for ascension, the simple slug cat thrives by just living in the moment.

Throwing yourself into the void fluid wasn't as simple as it seemed. There were some people who weren't actually able to leave reality that way. Instead, they would get stuck in time as something else—a sort of nothing being, doomed to float between reality and Oblivion, unable to live or die. They became an echo of their former existence and nothing more. In the game, you get to meet a few Echoes, and for you as a player, it's always this strange, awesome, sad experience, like an encounter with a ghost trapped in its old haunt.

For the Ancients, the discovery of The Echoes was a warning. Their hubris and plan to ascend could go much worse for them than they had expected. Of course, as I said at the start, that wouldn't stop them from trying. It's not really clear what happened in the end. Maybe they did Ascend. All we know for sure is that at some point, the Ancients vanished altogether and seemingly all at once. You can see remnants of their civilization, but the Ancients themselves are nowhere to be found. Now, the world belongs to the little creatures left behind to keep living through the cycles the Ancients worked so hard to escape, including this little slug cat fighting for its life in a world so much bigger and so much stranger than it could ever hope to comprehend.

The Ancients, The Echoes, and the very concept of Ascension are all Mysteries to the slug cat, a simple being that it is. All it knows is that when it dies, it comes back, and that works for you, the player, as well. To you, that's just respawning, something you do in most video games. You and slug cat barely even notice this cycle. There's really no time and no reason to get existentially frustrated with it the way the Ancients did. For both of you, it's just how things are, and it's just fine—handy even.

None of the background info I just walked you through was really comprehensively spelled out for you in the game, especially not early on. You can pick up little snippets of the lore here and there as you play, but there aren't a whole lot of specifics. We don't know very much about the lives of the Ancients, just that they were apparently so miserable that they had to find some way to free themselves. Though there is one aspect of ancient life that the game makes pretty clear: remember that religion I mentioned that was partially inspired by the Echoes? The Ancients rationalized that the people who got stuck as Echoes were for some reason unfit to ascend. Some of the Ancients theorized that these individuals must have been too arrogant or selfish during their lifetimes. Maybe they had some vices they couldn't shake. The consensus among the Ancients was that the ability to ascend or not was determined by moral purity.

So, of course, they codified it and made a list of sins that could anchor a person to the material world that they'd have to eschew if they wanted a chance at Ascension. Think of these as their own version of the seven deadly sins. They included things like violence, lust, and gluttony—pretty standard stuff for the most part. But there were a few sins among them that sort of stuck out to me, things that don't really feel like sins, specifically companionship and self-preservation. To the Ancients, even the simple acts of trying to survive or having friends were sins. They took this so seriously that their lives became ascetic in the extreme. They were documented as eventually only allowing themselves to consume gravel and bitter tea. Knowing that, I kind of see why they hated their lives so much in the end. Imagine it—they didn't get to form relationships with each other, they were constantly malnourished, and they had this existential dread of accidentally becoming an Echo hanging over their heads the whole time.

The thing is, all of this suffering just seems self-imposed. Nobody is telling them that they have to do these things. It's all just parameters of a religion that they made up, and it's specific to their species too. You don't see slug cat following any of these rules. Heck, slug cat has like 80 siblings and spends half the game snacking on bad flies. Slug cat seems like he's having a great time, minus, you know, all the things trying to eat him. The Ancients were unique in that they were the only creatures so discontent with their eternity that they felt the need to commit what amounts to mass suicide over it.

Though the Ancients were eventually successful, it took a lot of work to figure out how to ascend. In order to do so, they built giant sentient supercomputers with the express purpose...

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In a world obsessed with death, it's the vibrant life that truly captivates us.

The Ancients in Rain World imposed their own rules and parameters, which were specific to their species. Slug cat, for instance, does not follow any of these rules. Slug cat has around 80 siblings and spends a significant portion of the game snacking on batflies, seemingly having a great time despite the constant threats to its life. The Ancients were unique as they were the only creatures so discontent with their eternity that they felt the need to commit what amounts to mass suicide. Though the Ancients were eventually successful, it took a lot of work to figure out how to ascend. To achieve this, they built giant sentient supercomputers called iterators with the express purpose of calculating a way to break their cycles. These iterators are still around despite their creators' disappearance and are probably the most incredible entities in the game world. They are huge, almost indescribably so, and most of the game takes place on the surface of their superstructures.

The iterators are another order of life, another magnitude of existence. With the Ancients gone, they really are the gods of this world, yet they know full well that they are entirely obsolete. They alone remember the Ancients and know the purpose for their existence, but now all of that is gone. There is no great problem left to solve, no Ascension to riddle out. The iterators are alone in an empty world, breaking down both physically and mentally. Nature is taking over their bodies, and by the time you finally find a way to speak with one of them, they are barely functional. They solved the problem of the Ancients' endless existence, and now perhaps it's time they solved it for themselves. Except they can't. The Ancients specifically programmed a taboo into the iterator systems, forbidding them from killing themselves. They literally can't even think about it, which seems cruelly hypocritical. The Ancients gave these machines the intellect to understand why you'd want to ascend, made it their purpose to find a solution to the problem of Ascension, and then made Ascension the one thing iterators can't do. Once the Ancients are gone and the iterators' mission is complete, they are just left there to feel eternity wash over them, becoming sentient corpses of giants decaying.

However, not all life in this place is so tormented. There is another class of life form called purposed beings, creatures designed to fulfill an explicit role. While the iterators technically fit this description, it is more about the smaller life forms. For instance, slug cat was created to clean pipes in the iterators' giant computer systems and is perfectly happy to do its job, crawling through the decrepit bodies of the iterators and eating batflies. All the little creatures that make up Rain World's ecosystem are completely unaffected by the moralizing that made the Ancients so miserable. In fact, Rain World's gameplay is centered around self-preservation, one of the very sins the Ancients tried so hard to avoid. For a world that wants to die so much, there sure is a lot of life happening here.

Many fans have noticed this too. The game was a little too hard for some, including myself, as it is actively hostile to its players. Much of my research involved watching breakdowns of the lore. Hardcore fans have poured hundreds of hours into scouring the game for every tiny piece of lore. The love people have for this game isn't really about its obsession with death; it's all about the life within it. One of the most popular Rain World videos, Curiosity Archives: The Most Complex Ecosystem in Any Game, is essentially half an hour of gushing over the environment and all the creatures that inhabit it. Fans spend less time talking about the purgatorial existence of the iterators and more time making cute memes about their different aspects.

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Rain World isn't about escaping death; it's about embracing the life within its world.

This game is actively hostile to its players, so a lot of my research involved watching breakdowns of lore. There are many hardcore fans who have poured literally hundreds of hours into scouring this game for every tiny piece of lore. The more I learned, the more I began to notice that the love people have for this game isn't really about its obsession with death; it's all about the life within it. One of the most popular Rain World videos out there, Curiosity Archives, highlights the most complex ecosystem in any game and spends half an hour gushing over the environment and all the creatures that inhabit it. Fans spend less time talking about the purgatorial existence of the iterators than they do making cute memes about their different personalities, which I think is amazing.

As a player, you're right there with slug cat, happy to hang out and observe the world of this game. Like slug cat, most players are perfectly content to live within this endless cycle because each new life is another opportunity to explore the world you find yourself in. You don't have the self-imposed parameters that made the Ancients so miserable. You're not an all-knowing brain confined to a rotting body like the iterators are; you're just a simple little slug cat having a great time.

At the end of the game, you do actually manage to ascend. Slug cat plunges into the void fluid and travels across a bizarre, otherworldly dimension full of enormous alien creatures in an endless sea of black and gold. It's a spectacle to be sure, but it's also confusing. It's not what slug cat wanted, and I don't think it's what most players want. At the beginning of the game, you're told that slug cat is trying to get back to his family, but that never happens. Sure, slug cat gets this crazy symbolic ascension, but you never get the satisfaction of knowing that he accomplished his goal. In fact, if you're playing this game blind, chances are you don't even know what's happening when you get to this part. It's just a bunch of stuff—a little animal caught in something far beyond its understanding. It's incredible, sublime, reality-shattering, but ultimately, for a creature with no frame of reference, meaningless.

We only know so much as a slug cat. Our entire experience in Rain World has been staying alive, exploring the world, and maybe, if you try really hard, picking up some pieces of lore here and there. I think I speak for slug cat too when I say that I would much rather go back to having fun living my life than whatever this ascension thing is. Breaking the cycle is only appealing to those who don't see any value in it. With slug cat, we have none of the ancient self-imposed rule sets or ambitions, none of the iterator's vast powers. Here, with this little creature at peace with its own existence in this big, unknowable world, we find contentment.

Of course, that only works when you're in the audience. If you're the one designing that big, unknowable world, you probably do have to get wrapped up in the high-level details. There is a lot to creating a world. In fact, if I'm being honest, I think world-building can be one of the most daunting parts of a project like this. It can feel borderline hopeless when you start to think of the sheer scale of it. Fortunately, a while back, I found something that will absolutely help you. It's a 12-part video series called Creating Unique and Powerful Worlds, taught by many-time author and professor of fiction Lincoln Michelle. He walks you through how to begin your new world, what the ripple effects of that starting idea will be like across your world, how to create themes within your world, how to create characters to experience the world you've made, and then finally, how to put all of these things together.

The prospect of making an entire world can be really paralyzing, but it doesn't have to be. This course will absolutely help you bring the size of the task down to something you can really understand and manage. I can say from experience that it is so liberating just to have a roadmap for a project like this. Thanks to our sponsor, Skillshare, you can actually watch it for free. I personally would sign up for this course alone, but you'll also get access to thousands of other classes as well. Experts from pretty much every discipline have gathered there to share their knowledge and experience. There are classes on creative writing, illustration, fine art, animation, graphic design, film and video—pretty much anything you can imagine. You can even join in on live classes, connecting with other creatives and teachers while you learn.

Once you've finished Creating Unique and Powerful Worlds, please do come back and tell us the impact it's had on you as a writer. It's one thing to get paid to do a sponsor spot; it's another to see how much it actually helps people. Anyway, that's all for this one. Thanks for watching and keep making stuff up. I'll see you next week. Bye!