Rain
Company
Documents about Rain
How Big Is Your Game's Discord?
This analysis explores the role of Discord as a community-building tool for video games and examines broader trends in game discoverability and platform marketing as of August 2020.
- Steam’s automated wishlist notification emails are a primary driver of sales, but developers must offer a discount of at least 20% to trigger these notifications.
- Discord serves as a vital hub for player retention, with effectiveness extending beyond official developer-run servers to include community-led and partner-affiliated hubs.
- While major titles like Minecraft, Valorant, Fortnite, and Roblox dominate Discord activity, indie games such as Terraria, Risk of Rain 2, Deep Rock Galactic, and TemTem maintain disproportionately high engagement levels.
UK Indie Games Devs Power Ahead in Latest UK Games Fund Round
The UK Games Fund successfully concluded its sixth round of funding in May 2020, demonstrating the resilience of the British independent games sector during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The UK Games Fund supported 38 independent game studios in Round 6, providing financial packages to assist in the development of their own intellectual property.
- The selection process for Round 6 was highly competitive, drawing more than 170 applications from UK-based developers.
- The UK Games Fund adapted its original funding model—which initially planned for a £5,000 prize followed by a pitch for £20,000—to provide immediate, flexible financial support in response to the economic impact of the pandemic.
Why going 2D to 3D was an epic challenge in Risk of Rain 2
The transition from a 2D to a 3D environment in Risk of Rain 2 serves as a primary case study for the technical and design challenges inherent in evolving a successful indie franchise.
- The developers maintained the franchise's signature high-intensity chaos by utilizing a unified base class for players, enemies, and AI, which ensures consistent movement and inventory logic across all entities.
- To manage the computational load of dynamic lighting during combat, the game employs deferred rendering, which calculates lighting based on screen resolution rather than individual vertices.
- The transition to 3D movement necessitated a sprint mechanic and a lowered camera height to prevent the gameplay from feeling sluggish compared to the original 2D iteration.
How Art Was Used to Create a Unique Cinematic Experience in Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain functions as a pioneering interactive drama that prioritizes emotional resonance and mature narrative depth over conventional gaming tropes like boss battles or traditional failure states.
- The development team prioritized a grounded, cinematic aesthetic by modeling environments after Philadelphia’s industrial landscape rather than using the exaggerated, oversized spaces typical of the era.
- Visual storytelling was achieved through 'invisible' methods, embedding character history directly into environmental clutter to maintain immersion without relying on cutscenes.
- Character fidelity was maintained under a strict 20,000-polygon budget, utilizing 3D scanning and a modular motion capture system that decoupled facial and body animation.
Game Maker Studio 2 - Make a Game Before This Video Ends! (Tutorial)
GameMaker Studio 2 serves as a highly efficient and accessible engine for independent developers aiming to produce professional-grade 2D titles.
- GameMaker Studio 2 is a 2D-focused engine designed for rapid prototyping and deployment, as demonstrated by commercial titles like Hotline Miami and Risk of Rain.
- The engine utilizes an event-driven architecture where Create events define initial variables and Step events manage real-time input responsiveness, friction, and acceleration.
- Standardizing the frame rate at 60 FPS is a core practice for maintaining technical stability and a smooth user experience.
The Rain World Animation Process
The animation process for the indie game Rain World centers on the use of procedural animation to create a believable, autonomous ecosystem.
- Rain World utilizes a procedural animation system that separates physics simulations from cosmetic visuals, allowing for performance efficiency and easier tuning of creature behaviors.
- The game’s AI and animation are deeply integrated, where locomotion is driven by pathfinding algorithms that treat creatures as physics objects moving toward destinations in a tile-based environment.
- Creature personality is an emergent property of the game's systems; by making AI motivations and environmental interactions visible to the player, users project intent and personality onto non-scripted behaviors.
Choices vs Consequences - What Player Decisions Mean in Games - Extra Credits
Game design often conflates the concepts of choice and consequence, yet these two mechanics serve distinct psychological and narrative functions.
- Choice-based design focuses on the player's internal conflict by presenting dilemmas without clear numerical solutions, forcing them to weigh personal values in real-time.
- Consequence-based design relies on retrospective analysis, where the impact of a player's past actions is revealed later to prompt reflection on previous behavior.
- Effective consequence-based systems, as seen in Chrono Trigger, require a clear causal link between minor actions and narrative outcomes to prevent players from feeling unfairly punished.
Q2 2026 Earnings Release: Shift Up
Shift Up’s Q2 2026 earnings release highlights a period of stable financial performance and strategic preparation for future growth.
- Shift Up reported Q2 2026 revenue of KRW 55.7 billion, a 17.8% increase quarter-over-quarter, alongside a net profit of KRW 41.7 billion.
- The company maintains a high operating profit margin of 50.5%, despite a 50.4% year-over-year revenue decline.
- Goddess of Victory: NIKKE remains the primary revenue driver, achieving top-grossing status in Korea and Japan following its 3.5th-anniversary update.