Review of video game Risk of Rain by Chandler Wang

 Risk of Rain is a pixelated roguelike game with many unique playable characters with their own movesets and countless power-ups that you collect through the game. Roguelike games are games where there are no checkpoints, so if you die, you start over. This means you can beat the whole game much quicker than normal games like Pokemon or Mario, and roguelike games also have a lot of design differences from traditional games because of this setup. Many roguelikes, including Risk of Rain, are randomly generated, at least to an extent. Each time you play the game, the levels might be in different areas, the landscape will be different, the enemies will be different, and the chests and goodies will be hidden in different corners. These collectibles make your character permanently stronger in many roguelikes, including Risk of Rain - at least, until you die. This makes each playthrough a "run," and in Risk of Rain, as well as other roguelikes, you can "loop." This allows you to prolong the run, skipping the final stage/boss temporarily and going back to the first stage. In Risk of Rain, the game progressively gets more difficult the more time you spend in a run, so looping won't mean that the first stage will be easy. However, by looping, you can get ridiculously strong, and combined with the many other aspects of a roguelike game and the multiple characters, Risk of Rain has a ton of replay value. It's incredibly fun to try different items on different characters, become stronger as the game gets harder, and beat bosses and stages in the frantic chaos of the game. You can try to play quickly to keep the game easy, but miss out on getting more power-ups, or you can take your time and build your character to be as strong as possible. The various bosses and enemies keep fights interesting even if you play the same character, and the game has a really cool soundtrack that fits each area and fight incredibly well. The items that you collect have various effects, which you can synergize, such as trying to find an item that boosts your attack speed to boost your item that deals more damage each hit. These effects, although there are simpler ones such as attack speed, are often very creative, such as shooting a missile every couple attacks, exploding enemies when they die, or dealing damage to enemies when you fall on them. Also, hidden in the in-game "encyclopedia" are surprisingly well-written and mysterious descriptions of the items, bosses, and enemies that give the game a little extra story. Usually, these in-game encyclopedias will give you information on how to beat an enemy or how strong they are, but Risk of Rain put a lot of effort into something that many players likely don't even look at. The game doesn't really have much story and is pretty vague, but the encyclopedia puts a bit of lore into the game while still maintaining a very cryptic aura. It's a very fun and unique game, and I sunk a lot of hours into it despite it initially seeming somewhat simple and repetitive. 9/10.