Rw The Watcher - Blog Posts

The Watcher and Enot with their adorable crimes against Nature. Enot Pups are already weird explosive things so I got creative with designing these 3

Twitter didn't like this so let's see how Tumblr reacts to it.

Nightcat aka the Watcher design I may change once the DLC is out and I finished it

Day 29: The Watcher

LETSHAVEAWATCH...

I was planning to exit this room pipe... and, well.

WATCHER SPOILERS!!

Prince my beloved,, my freak of nature,,, my eldritch horrors beyond comprehension,,,, im so normal about him i promise guys (lying so much)

WATCHER SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT!!! WATCH OUT!!!!!

so

this moment huh

im so normal about Unfortunate Evolution you dont even know. what even fucking is it. how in the balls did a void worm get rotted. absolutely insane region /pos

after doing nothing but play rain world: the watcher for 4 days (bar monday i had to go to college sadge) and i have now completed the whole dlc as it currently stands. i have many thoughts

EVERYTHING BELOW HERE WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!!! FOR EVERYTHING!!!!! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING

alright. starting with the generic spoilers

first up, the beginning. HOLY FUCK I ADORED THE BEGINNING OF THE CAMPAIGN. i wish my clipping software wasnt broken so that i couldve clipped my reaction to That One Chimney Canopy Room. literally as i was climbing i was speculating on when in the timeline Watcher was (my thought was around hunter/gourm) and then Boom. rot jumpscare. i am The Rot Enjoyer so i was genuinely ecstatic. also the jumpscare of Hydroponics being in Industrial was rather funny

(also idk where else to mention it but all the drawn art for watcher is so gorgeous. the colour theory used is geneuinely breathtaking. the last frame of the intro cutscene is beautiful)

secondly, the world (or, what of one there is). being able to get lost in the world is something i havent been able to truly experience up until now (i didnt play any of base game or downpour blind) so it was delightful getting lost in these gorgeous and unique regions.

and aether ridge i suppose

i really dont think aether ridge was a good choice for a modded inclusion. i mean just off the top of my head i can think of several Better regions with better maps that they couldve used. but like. thats also a handful of regions amongst TWENTY THREE. THAT IS MORE THAN THE REST OF THE FUCKING GAME. INSANE. so many regions that i straight up didnt see two of them in my first playthrough

i do wish the world has at least some interconnectivity like in base and downpour. i miss the cohesive and grounded world but also that is just Not what watcher is about so its alright. its still cool regardless. also the implications of some regions being timeline variants of others??? hell yeah

thirdly, the new creatures. fuck barnacles all my homies hate barnacles

in all seriousness though, most of the creatures are cool additions (sea slugs my beloveds <3) i just wish there was some more interspecies interactions besides the moths throwing lizards around. itd make the world feel more alive. the barnacles also need a massive tweak they are just actually bullshit sometimes.

i ADORE the rotzards though. ough the pained noises they make,,,, i love them sm theyre so cool. i wish more creatures got rotted. i wouldve KILLED to see a rotted whale or loach. that one rotted void worm took me OUT

fourthly, the gameplay loop. the weakest part of the game. the total lack of any direction or assistance is upsetting. in base rain world you have the overseers to guide you, and in downpour you have your anchor points in FP and LttM. but here?? nothing. i didnt even know i needed to be finding the echoes until 8ish hours into my first run. i needed my friend to read me a guide for my second. the game needs to at least give the player hints or clues. i found a workshop mod that implements saint's echo ping and both me and my friend had such a better time playing after that. that should be a default setting

its even worse for the second ending. as i mentioned, my friend had a guide pulled up and walked me through it as spoiler-free as she could. and i would have NEVER gotten it blind. this combined with the sheer number of regions (as mentioned previously, twenty three!!!) honestly ruins the game. my friend almost gave up on the whole DLC because of it. i know they plan to start patching things in, and their first action should be implementing better guidance

also i didnt even know you could go through ripples at top karma?? or that you could warp without a karma flower (with consequences)??? the game just. didnt tell me. which i feel like it should because those are both Pretty Big Things

i do think that the gameplay loop could be genuinely fun with actual assistance. because i actually had fun finding the echoes after i got that mod.

and now, onto the ending specific spoilers, starting with the echo ending

WE GET TO ACTUALLY FUCKING SEE ANCIENTS????? LIKE WALKNG AROUND AND SHIT????? IM SO INSANE ABOUT THAT

the storyline of helping an echo detach themself from their wordly desires and move on is so sweet. but i did NOT know that was the story until the last region. it almost made the ending feel unearned. it felt a little shoehorned in tbh. but also like. i dont care WE SAW ANCIENTS WAHHHHH

also hey we watch an echo ascend. neat. i do have a theory that an echo can ascend (or at least move on) if their attachment to whatever desire binds them is destroyed (Four Needles disappearing after their body no longer exists at all) and can move around space and time in accordance to their desires (Rhinestones choosing to come to Undergrowth to appreciate the life thriving there) so. hell yeah more echo lore i LOVE echo lore

but you know what i love more than echoes. the rot

the second ending. is peak i fear. not only is the campaign progression significantly better and more impactful than the echo story, but the ENDING. OH LORD THE ENDING. again, i am The Rot Enjoyer so i was going INSANE at the whole world getting fucky. and dont even get me STARTED on the rotted base game regions. i could go on for hours about how genuinely fucking cool the rotted regions are.

and everything surrounding The Throne and the roterator (The Prince??) (me and my friends nicknamed them "Yapper") is insane. the rot gaining sentience???? and having a pure and genuine trust in their beliefs???????? holy moly. fun fact if you hit them with a spear they get happy that youre playing with them <3

i cant even put my thoughts of this ending into words because its just So Insane (also i experienced it like. an hour before writing this so my brain is still reeling) but my theory currently is that every single strand of the cycle will eventually fall to rot (as the echo says that "it all ends up like this" if you wrongwarp to a rotted region) and that we simply witnessed and assisted in the end of one of these strands. theres. more to that theory but i just Cannot words it yet. ill probably make a seperate post about it soon

overall, The Watcher is an inherintly flawed product that i hope gets fixed up and improved soon, because i did genuinely enjoy it and want more people to. outside of the region bloat and lack of any direction, the game is genuinely peak, but those two things really do just kill it unfortunately. it is deserving of its mixed reviews on steam, but i do hope to see that shift more positively as the rest of the planned content is added and QOL changes are made.

also fix those damn barnacles PLEASE

i somehow glichted myself of the back of a skywhale and was like "wait i have to draw this"

the reference screenshot:

can't read all of this yet cause I've only gotten one of the endings

I already got that the watcher was probably a kid from the toy room ending, but this made me realize spinning top was a child too noooooo😭😭

I dont wanna be bawling about this ending a second timeee

The Abandoned Children of The Watcher DLC (a ramble)

(Spoilers ahead, obviously, but this is just a quiet sort of pondering I've been having with myself, feeling an ache so profound where the child in me - lost and afraid and so, so cold - resides.)

I love the thematic change that the Watcher DLC presents us with. I know it's been a point of complaint for many, and to each their own, but I can't help but feel that throwing aside these painful, heartfelt themes, writing them off as rushed design is doing the beauty of the tale that we've been given a disservice.

Rain World - the base game - felt primal. You are an animal, wandering the world - eating, fighting, running and dying, thinking and moving like a rat in a maze, the maze being a god you could never truly hope to understand. And why would you? You have a family to find, and even they are soon forgotten in the pressure of the cycle, drowned out by the rain and the echoing, burning call of the Void.

The Downpour DLC was much more narrative-driven. It was character-based and iterator-focused, putting emphasis on these dying gods that feel less like gods and more like abandoned children, growing in their lonesome and their bitterness, losing themselves in their self-destructive tendencies until there's nothing left but metal slag and somewhat-organic rubble. That seems to be a repeated theme, here.

The Watcher DLC feels much more... personal.

A tale of two children, abandoned, never made to grow up. The Watcher themselves, so plagued by naiveté, busying themselves with toys instead of confronting what the little lost echo tried to tell them.

Spinning Top searching endlessly with a tragic sort of fervor for any evidence that anyone ever missed them, never having been taught the weight of what they were supposed to do, only doing what others did, what they were taught was right, and nothing more. A child, a little girl playing with spinning tops and plushies, made to ascend through that "white door" and leave the reality that they had just barely begun to set foot in behind.

The Prince, even, simply… learning. Growing. A toddler, smashing and breaking and rotting all in its path with delight, seeing what he's doing as something so wonderful. The tragic part about it is that he truly does - for all that he represents, he means well, but the Cycle is callous and omnipotent and cares not for the wishes of a mere child.

A cold, golden hand, marked with an X and sprouting flowers from its palm.

An endless repeating pattern that will consume you utterly if it so wishes.

F2U RW Resources || Downpour Spoilers

You can request stamps & blinkies in askbox!! :] (i would love to turn more gameplay clips into stamps...)

I'm totally new to this, but it was fun to make I'll do more...maybe tomorrow...maybe in a week...or a month

You can find and use them from here (watch out, watcher spoilers aren't spoilered!) (don't look at the rest of my profile..... it's a mess)

SMALL WATCHER SPOILERS UNDER CUT

(if anyone gets the that's a dead kid reference, i would be very, very happy....)

past and present, looped together

RIPPLES. THE CYCLE. LORE ( I'm theorising, there is watcher spoilers so everything is under the cut )

throughout both the game and even trailers, you are constantly told and reminded about ripples and how you should view cycles as them

so that's what I did!! here's the diagram I made

here you have two cycles, cycles are a bump in a ripple ( forgot the proper name lol) anyway I've yet to figure out how exactly you get moved to the previous cycle, but it probably has something to do with the void spawn, either way, as time moves on and the ripples expand and go forwards new material is pushed into the plane of consciousness, dust falling from the sky, but as this happens, material is pushed down into where the cycle came from as well 'dissolving' it, you see this as the void sea ( note the void sea you see ingame is still in the plane of consciousness, because obviously you can perceive it, you 'leave' once you enter the egg, which is the edge of the cycle )

also ripplespace, it's just the space outside the ripples, although like in the diagram the watcher only sees the area that mixes with the cycle otherwise, they would cease to exist

anyway I came up with this randomly during math class so sorry about inconsistencies in the diagram,

I'll also probably have to think about this more, to fit in pieces like void worms, void spawn and ripple spawn ( already have like paragraphs of theories on them but it doesn't entirely work with this ) and all that stuff

TW: the Watcher spoilers I'm digging through the game files and noticed a couple of interesting things in the names of the scene art. Nothing really important but just small things I guess everyone accepted the scags from the intro for Watcher's family? But we didn't know for sure, and they were all different colors… Well, they actually ARE his family. The parts with them are called "sibling" and "mom". Also, the red scag is called "enemy".

The other (and more interesting to me) thing I found is those echo's golden diamond things being called "chains". Good to know I guess

.... No, I didn't find anything interesting for Prince Except maybe his string is being called "stem", but idk feels obvious

Aaand ye. Thats it for scenes. Nothing much

But I also went in illustrations Remember falling green stars in Outer Rim? There also was these buildings in the background. They're starcatchers. For storing those fallen stars. Why? Fuck if I know

There also were those pink pyramids from Signal spires... But I think most people already know they are an older version of iterators's structures. They called "structure" in files btw

Thats it, returning to my state of waiting for the next Watcher update