Rainswept – Review
Follow Genre: Adventure game
Developer: Frostwood Interactive
Publisher: Frostwood Interactive
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC

Rainswept – Review

Site Score
9.8
Good: Remarkable storytelling, Interesting characters
Bad: Too simple animations
User Score
10.0
(4 votes)
Click to vote
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Rating: 10.0/10 (4 votes cast)

Who doesn’t love the sound of rain pattering against the window on a calm and cold evening? You can sit back with a book and a hot drink while outside darkness creeps in and a storm is brewing. Or you can play Rainswept, of course. An adventure game that has much of the same ambiance as the above described activity, with some crime solving thrown in for good measure. This is Frostwood Interactive’s first venture into the gaming world, but hopefully not their last by a long shot.

Story

You take the role of Michael Stone, a coffee drinking, cigarette smoking detective from the big city haunted by a dark past. Detective Stone is sent off to the small town known as Pineview to solve the mystery behind the rather brutal death of a young couple. The local authorities, unused to such violent crimes in their sleepy and peaceful town, chalk it up to a classic murder-suicide, but Stone thinks they might be dealing with something more sinister instead. Aided by Officer Amy Blunt, it is your task to run around town searching for clues and questioning the residents, in an effort to shed some light on the case, all the while dealing with your own personal demons.

The story is gradually revealed as you play, most of the information comes from dialogue you have with other characters and a few short cutscenes. Here and there you will actually encounter a flashback, though these are also playable bits, meaning they don’t get boring or tedious to sit through.

Graphics

Rainswept’s art style is at the same time very simplistic, yet oddly breathtaking. Everything is in 2D and the characters kind of look like paper cutouts that move over a pretty flat background. However, the colors are beautiful and a few times the details are turned up to eleven to make for some really stunning scenes. Sadly, this simplicity is also its downfall, especially when the characters are moving in complicated ways or into weird poses, the animation can come across as a bit choppy and unnatural.

Sound

The music in Rainswept is composed by Micamic. That name might not immediately ring a bell, but they worked on the soundtrack of another highly acclaimed indie game named The Cat Lady. And for what it’s worth, they’ve done an excellent job at making some really good music that fits the atmosphere of the game. It’s heartfelt, it’s soothing, it sounds like the break of dawn in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Too bad that this music only pops up in short stretches every so often. Most of the time you are instead listening to sound effects: birds, the quiet murmur of people talking and of course, true to name: rain. This isn’t a bad thing exactly though, as it does fit the tone of the game, and it makes the moments where the music does come into play feel more intense as a result. There is no voice-acting in the game, despite the game consisting primarily out of dialogue. Be prepared to do some serious reading.

Gameplay

Rainswept is an adventure game, a murder mystery that you need to solve. The basic controls are very simple: use the keyboard to move left or right in your environment (like a side-scroller) and click on things you can interact with. You can inspect objects or people, pick them up or talk to them respectively, and use items where necessary. Often during dialogue you are presented with a few different choices. While they do not alter the story in a big way, they make it so that you can still personalize your own experience and change the kind of person your character is. For example, maybe you want to be more sarcastic and witty as opposed to being serious and stern all the time.

Sometimes the game will teleport you from place A to B whenever you need to go somewhere, making the story very linear, but on other occasions you will get a number of different tasks for the day which you can complete in any order, leaving you free to roam the town and talk to its residents at will. While a lot of these conversations are entirely optional, and technically not relevant to the story, they will help you learn more about the town and the people that live there, maybe giving you a greater insight into what’s going on exactly.

All your observations and clues are written down in a handy notebook which you can consult at will. You might find yourself needing to look back to recall small details or seemingly unimportant facts that become relevant later on. Here you can also see the map in case you get lost, and any objectives you have at any given time.

Conclusion

If you like games with an intriguing story and realistic characters, Rainswept will be right up your alley. It tackles some rather serious subject matter in a surprisingly heartfelt way, and while it gets a bit dark at times, the overall atmosphere is one of hope. The backgrounds are beautiful, the music is superb, honestly, what’s not to love?

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Rating: 10.0/10 (4 votes cast)
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Rainswept - Review, 10.0 out of 10 based on 4 ratings
Jessica


Games are my escape and writing is my passion.

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