The critically-acclaimed third person roguelike is getting another expansion soon — but its publisher is being very secretive about it.
Any fan of roguelikes has probably at least heard of Risk of Rain 2 , if not logged dozens of hours in the game themselves already! Hopoo Games's attempt to translate the original game into a 3D format was so successful that it netted them an IP buyout from Gearbox Publishing and the opportunity to develop a DLC expansion. Now Gearbox have teased their first addition to the series without Hopoo's involvement: A second expansion for Risk of Rain 2!
"Teased" being the operative word here. Take the reveal trailer, for example:
https://t.co/s1vT4oElUt pic.twitter.com/8xo2QJOgdW
— Risk of Rain (@RiskofRain) November 6, 2023
Risk of Rain 2 DLC: What On Earth Is EXXXXXXX-X?
That trailer doesn't tell you a whole lot, does it? Really, all that stands out are those strange light bubbles floating above every stage. Will they be a central mechanic in the DLC? Are they just a new kind of stage decoration? Who knows! Gearbox probably does, but they're not telling.
We do have some more clues to go off of, but they're not especially helpful. The name of the DLC listed on Steam is "EXXXXXXX-X", but that's likely just a placeholder and could mean any number of things. The Steam store description, meanwhile, seems to be an in-universe data log of a machine learning program trying to translate an incoming transmission in Morse code, and failing because the transmission is in an unknown language.
That still doesn't reveal much of note, until you look at the Transmission ID: Some eagle-eyed fans noticed that "1:19:9:7:14:1:12:6:18:15:13:4:5:5:16:23:9:20:8:9:14" can be read as a sequence of alphabet placements and transcribed to "A SIGNAL FROM DEEP WITHIN". What does this mean? My best guess is that it could be hinting at Risk of Rain 1's underwater stage making a return in this DLC.
Risk Of Rain DLC: There Are Four Lights
Finally, a small patch for Risk of Rain 2 went live yesterday, adding the light bubbles seen in the trailer to the game's skyboxes and making its playerbase think that the in-game end times are coming. But the patch notes are... odd, in a number of ways. For one, they skip a few patch numbers and go straight from 1.1.1.4 to 7.5, and also, maybe more importantly, they're just a wall of meteor emojis. This might be a stretch, but I think this DLC might have something to do with meteors?
The timing of this teaser is interesting as well. Risk of Rain Returns, a remake of the first game with bonus content, releases tomorrow, after all! This might just have been purposely timed to get a few more eyes on Returns, but it could also mean that there will be more crossover content between the two games.
At any rate, this expansion will be Gearbox's first real opportunity to show the RoR2 community what they're made of. Will they make sensible and meaningful additions to the game? Will they demonstrate that they understand what the playerbase wants out of the franchise? Will they finally add rain to Risk of Rain? Only time will tell.