From the moment I first saw RAD in action, I knew I had to play it. A top-down 3D action game filled with some serious 1980s aesthetics and enough neon colors to summon the gods of a dead mall food court. Needed it in my life as soon as possible. But at some point I found out that it was a–GASP!–rogue-like and immediately had to temper my expectations, because while I respect the genre, I don’t particularly enjoy it.
If you’ve never indulged before, rogue-likes are games that have a very strange (and somewhat alien) sense of progression, especially when compared to most mainstream modern releases. There’s procedurally generated levels, some measure of permadeath and lots of starting over, usually at the expense of all your hard-earned items and upgrades.
RAD, at its core, is no exception to these rules. Though after spending some serious time traversing its synth-soaked world, I found myself oddly addicted. You choose an apocalyptic character, explore the central hub a bit and then warp to the dangerous outlands (known as the Fallow) to help bring the deadened landscape back to life. There’s very little explanation regarding specific goals or controls, and in a sort of homage to the genre’s unforgiving style, you’re basically plopped down in the wasteland and forced to fend for yourself.
To be honest, this hardcore aspect was initially jarring, and yes, most of what RAD wants you to do is communicated in a way that doesn’t exactly hold your hand. Against the odds, though, I ended up somewhat endeared to the game’s old-school approach. You won’t find any long-winded tutorials or bloated cutscenes here, for better or for worse. There’s a bit of story at the very beginning, and both NPCs and omniscient narrator (all of which are written in standard Double Fine excellence) drop nuggets of world-building as you play. But for the most part, you’re kind of on your own.
RAD’s fundamental gameplay loop essentially consists of repetitious runs into the Fallow, wherein you upgrade as much as possible and make it as far as possible until you die, at which point you get warped back to camp, devoid of everything you’ve just collected. That is, unless, you’ve returned to home base between each level and deposited your hard-earned cash in the handy ATM.
To be fair, there is a kind of meta-experience bar that fills across runs and doesn’t deplete when you die. It just continues to fill and earns you game-altering options called Quirks and other various unlockables. So even though RAD is a rogue-like with lots of blank-slating going on, you’re still earning experience through each successive try. A nice touch in a genre that can be brutally unforgiving.
And unforgiving RAD can be. Enemies, which are nicely varied, can quickly bring down your health hearts if you’re not being vigilant. Carelessness is deadly in the Fallow, so there’s a constant balancing of offensive and defensive maneuvers. The game tends to reward conservative play, and it’s all too easy to get reckless and find yourself in trouble, even when it comes to relatively benign encounters.
At the beginning of each run, you can swing your trusty bat to attack and roll to evade, and that’s pretty much it. As you progress and harvest energy from enemies, you fill up a bar that eventually outfits your character with a randomized mutation.
While not all the mutations are especially useful, they are really fun to discover and use. You’ve got some gnarly bat wings that can glide and hover. Then there’s a projectile flaming skull that you can heave at baddies. There’s also a monster tail that allows you to spawn tiny minions that attack your adversaries. My favorite change so far has been the crustacean legs that give you the ability to dig underground and explode upward to cause massive damage.
The coolest part is that mutations stack, and some of them even start to interact and create brand new effects. Like how the cobra head mixes with the tail to produce cobra baby abominations. Once you have two or three mutations going, an added level of strategy gets added to the mix, and it’s incredibly satisfying orchestrating the ensuing chaos.
There is a downside, however, in that because RAD builds its foundation on random stages and random power-ups, you can sometimes get stuck with a less-than-ideal mutation, and thus be at a significant disadvantage, even early on. I guess, in a way, this forces players to master each of the abilities, but I just feel that some of the abilities simply aren’t as beneficial as others. It’s a balancing issue, I suppose.
Other than that, I love the 80s vibe, complete with cassette tapes that serve as currency and floppy discs that serve as keys. The synth soundtrack, while excellent and very fitting, is a bit too understated and I would have loved the music to play a more prominent role in the game. As it stands, it borders on ambience when it’s good enough to be featured. The over-the-top announcer is a nice touch, too, and adds to the retro ambiance. So do all the scattered arcade machines, and the Pac-Man cabinet that I desperately wish I could play in-game.
Despite some difficulty frustrations and the innate hardcore nature of its rouge-like roots (which could scare off some players), RAD is a solid original IP that I hope gains enough traction to see a sequel. I’m always impressed with Double Fine’s work, even when they venture slightly outside the box like this, maybe markedly so. Cheers to this challenging, neon wonder.
