Why Does No One Copy Risk of Rain 2?

Art is, in most forms, a game of iteration. Everyone is inspired by something which then leads them to create some new thing. The Samurai Film inspires the Spaghetti Western. Music from the Sahel region of Africa leads to spirituals and work songs leads to the Blues leads to Jazz and Rock music. Old British Folklore and Epics help inspire Tolkien which leads to the Lord of the Rings which gives us the basis of a great deal of modern fantasy. Oftentimes, when determining the overall legacy of a piece of art or culture, we look to what it inspired in others, and it is no different in video games. 

Just the other week I talked about how, when playing older games, it can be quite fun to see the blueprint in them that has clearly set the path for the games of today. Sometimes though, it's far simpler than that. When a game gets massively popular, it is almost inevitable that you will see a wave of games emerge in that same style, hoping to capitalize on the success. It's to the point where we even have whole genres and sub-genres named after them: every day you hear about a new soulslike or survivor-like. And yet there is one game that is near and dear to my heart, quite successful, and yet seems to have very few (if any) copiers, imitators, or lookalikes. So I ask you: Why does no one try to copy Risk of Rain 2? 

For those unfamiliar, Risk of Rain 2 is a third person platform-shooter roguelike in which you play as one of several different survivors who each have their own abilities and playstyles, exploring the hostile alien world of Petrichor V. You progress through a series of stages, slaying the various enemies you are presented with, collecting money and experience as you go. You then use this money to open chests and terminals that give you a variety of items that enhance your abilities in some way. Some make you attack faster or move faster, some give you chain lightning through the power of a ukulele, and others let you goomba stomp on enemies heads! You unlock the ability to get these items and play as new survivors on a run by completing a variety of strange and unusual achievements, such as opening a timed security chest, doing a repair quest mid run, or chasing hermit crabs off a cliff. By the end of a run, you are typically some kind of whirling tornado of destruction, damage resistant teddy bears, and drone warfare, running around at lightspeed until you meet your untimely end at the hand of particularly green and spiky lesser wisp. Or your graphics card committing seppuku. Honestly, it’s just as likely by stage 30.

This is a game that I deeply love and that means a lot to my friends and I. I’ve even written about it before, talking about its approach to final boss design, which you can see here. To me, it sits in the same family as Slay the Spire and Hades: a triumvirate of incredible roguelike games that set the standard for the genre, all releasing in the 2019-2020 window. Yet both Slay the Spire and Hades now have games that were clearly looking at their homework. The game Sworn is basically a carbon copy of Hades just with Arthurian and Celtic myth, while Spiritfall uses Hades style boons with a Slay the Spire map and Smash Bros combat. You can’t throw a rock in the Steam store without hitting a new deckbuilder roguelike, whether it’s Wildfrost, Across the Obelisk, or Fights in Tight Spaces. Hell, the Slay the Spire style map of branching paths with varying points of interest converging on the final boss may as well be the official roguelike map at this point. 

So then why, if it is a game that I believe is equally as good and has done commercially extremely well for itself, does Risk of Rain 2 not have a similar sea of children and copycats? What is it about this game that has caused me so much joy, stress, anger, and divine revelation that makes it so difficult to imitate? I have narrowed it down to four collective reasons

1. The sheer scope of the game, in terms of its character variation and massive item pool, make it so that developing a game that uses the core concepts but iterates something new on them is basically impossible. The variability and randomness of builds, and the depths of strategy one can get to in planning your build, make the creation of a separate game incredibly daunting, to the point of not being worth it.
2. The use of environmental and item log based story telling in a roguelike. Hades has a somewhat traditional narrative based storyline with characters, dialogue, and a cohesive plot. Slay the Spire opts for the simpler route of basic character bios and “Here’s an evil spire, go fuck shit up.” Risk of Rain 2 says, “Here's dozens of sometimes interconnected item logs, location logs, and bestiary logs, combined with survivor information that can only be gained by completing a run, all in the service of building a surprisingly deep world that you can choose to really dive into if you want.” It’s a style of storytelling more common to your souls-likes and exploration based games as opposed to roguelikes, so it's not necessarily surprising that there aren’t many attempted copycats within the genre. It’s a lot of work for something most people don’t find necessary.
3. The sicko factor. Risk of Rain 2 is an ideal sicko game. Infinite builds, the constant option to make the game harder through shrines of the mountain, combat shrines, golden shrines, and more, and a deeply unforgiving system of death and reruns all combine into a game that is honestly, pretty interested in causing you pain. You’ll enjoy it, mind you, but it’s gonna hurt. While you of course can play on drizzle (easy), this game is quite frankly built around the idea that you’re gonna get a little weird and crazy with it. Compare that to the God Mode option in Hades or a much simpler Meta-progression system in Slay the Spire, and one can see how a dev might just…not want to deal with all of that.
4. The game is still evolving and receiving DLC. Hades released and that was pretty much it. Same with Slay the Spire. Both have sequels now of course, but they were pretty much just one and done games at their release. Risk of Rain 2 is constantly changing and adapting. At that point, why bother developing a copycat or new version, when the original is already changing and filling in that niche of providing a new experience? Who cares about the derivative when the original is still there and actively improving?

In essence, no one copies Risk of Rain 2 because the mere idea of doing so is already staggering. Here’s a game with a tough as nails meta progression, third person shooter combat, a unique system of item based builds, dark souls level convoluted and environmental based storytelling, that is still continuing to iterate on itself and its own ideas with each year. The only thing that I have experience with that is at all similar is the survivor-like genre, and even then they’re pretty different! They have much more limited item variety, less strategic content, and less worldbuilding on the whole, and are still able to find success. Why bother doing the work of making a Risk of Rain 2 clone or even a similar system, when you can have a lot of success doing something that is much more stripped down and (I assume anyway) much less design intensive? The fact that this game exists at all is simply because Paul Morse and Duncan Drummond are like-minded freaks (complimentary) who found each other and created something beautiful. 

None of this is to say people shouldn’t try to glean things from Risk of Rain 2. Its style of combat combined with its item synergies is truly incredible, and I do believe more developers should experiment with those systems. Having 18 different survivors who all play drastically different despite only having a couple of abilities each is honestly amazing. While prominent builds and metas have emerged, it is ultimately a game at the beck and call of RNJesus, something that could be frustrating but is instead intoxicating. It stands apart from the crowds of roguelikes, an iconoclast that I feel many are scared to touch. Yet, it is only in trying to imitate what we see as perfection that we can discover the next level to our art. We did not stop making adventure games and platformers just because Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 reset the standard. While Risk of Rain 2 continues to stand alone now, I do believe that I will one day look at a sea of games on Steam with variable item builds, deeply complex lore, and a roguelike system that wants nothing more than for you to try and make your life harder just because you can. And when I do, I will still open Risk of Rain 2 because I’m a bit broke and it's hard to justify buying a new game sometimes.