Risk of Rain 2 strands you on an alien planet with nothing but a survivor, a teleporter to find, and a timer you cannot stop. Hopoo Games built the 2020 roguelike third-person shooter around that pressure, and it still holds up as one of the cleanest escalations in the genre.
Trailer, via Gearbox.
UES: Safe Travels and the Search for Contact Light
The premise is spare. A crew aboard UES: Safe Travels hunts for UES: Contact Light and any survivors from it. Petrichor V is the planet in the way, hostile from the first step, and the only way forward is the teleporters scattered across its surface. No run plays the same. Stages, enemies, bosses and items are randomized, so the map you learn is never the map you get twice.
That structure is the whole argument for Risk of Rain 2. You are not solving a puzzle once. You are learning patterns — enemy tells, teleporter placement, when to open a chest and when to run — and then applying them under a clock that never stops.
Difficulty Scales With the Clock, Not the Level
The scaling system is the sharpest idea in the game. Both you and your foes grow limitlessly in power over a run. A boss that terrified you in the first ten minutes becomes a common enemy later. Difficulty rises passively over time, and it also jumps when you advance a level. It further depends on how many players are in the game and on the difficulty level chosen at the start, which sets how fast enemies level up.
Currency does not carry between levels. Everything converts to experience before you teleport, so a stage ends with whatever you have already spent on chests, turrets and drones.
Over 75 Items and No Stack Limit
Chests drop random items that buff offense, defense and movement. There is no cap on how many copies of one item a character can hold, so effects stack, sometimes absurdly. Over 75 items are in the pool to unlock and exploit, and the game wants you to break it. In this paper’s view, the fun is in the build, not the fight.
Survivors carry their own abilities and demand different approaches. The Artificer and MUL-T are new to Risk of Rain 2. The Engineer, Huntress and Commando return. More survivors unlock through play and downloadable content updates, which keeps the roster a long-term project rather than a launch-day menu.
Four Players, Online, and a Teleporter to Defend
Risk of Rain 2 supports up to four players online, with single player, multiplayer, co-operative and split screen listed among its modes. The loop is the same solo or grouped: kill aliens, find the teleporter, activate it, then hold the line against a larger onslaught and a boss until it charges. Then you advance.
That defense phase is where the game is at its best and its most punishing. A run that felt controlled can fall apart fast, because the teleporter event stacks enemies faster than your build can answer them. The game does not soften that. It expects you to have planned for it.
A 2019 Early Access Launch That Landed in 2020
Risk of Rain 2 arrived in early access for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2019. It fully released in August 2020, with a Stadia version a month later. Versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S followed in August 2024. It is a sequel to 2013’s Risk of Rain.
The business side matters to the game’s future. Gearbox fully acquired Risk of Rain 2 in 2022, and development has continued without Hopoo Games. Hopoo went on hiatus in September 2024 and is not currently developing any games. Lead developers Duncan “Hopoo” Drummond and Paul Morse, along with most of the studio’s development team, moved to game development at Valve Corporation.
That is the part worth watching. The people who designed the scaling, the item stacking and the teleporter pressure are no longer on the project. Gearbox can maintain Risk of Rain 2 and has. Whether it can extend the design in a way that feels authored rather than administered is a different question, and the source material does not answer it.
Platforms, Modes and What the Score Reflects
Risk of Rain 2 is a shooter, adventure and indie release with action, science fiction and survival themes. It is played from a third-person perspective. It is available on Google Stadia, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It supports single player, multiplayer, co-operative and split screen.
The published critical score is 8.7/10, an IGDB critic aggregate drawn from 6 outlets. In our reading, that number is high and it is earned. The randomization could have made every run feel like noise. Instead the item stacking and the time-based difficulty give the randomness a spine. The losses read as legible, not arbitrary.
Key facts
– Title: Risk of Rain 2
– Developer: Hopoo Games
– Publisher: Gearbox Publishing
– Release: early access 2019; full release August 2020; Stadia version one month later
– PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions: August 2024
– Platforms: Google Stadia, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
– Genre: Shooter, Adventure, Indie
– Perspective: Third person
– Modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative, Split screen
– Multiplayer cap: up to four players online
– Items: over 75
– Published critical score: 8.7/10, from an IGDB critic aggregate of 6 outlets
– Acquisition: Gearbox fully acquired the game in 2022
– Hopoo Games: on hiatus since September 2024
Release schedule
| Date | Platform or event |
| — | — |
| 2013 | Risk of Rain, the original game, released |
| 2019 | Early access on Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One |
| August 2020 | Full release |
| One month after the full release | Stadia version |
| 2022 | Gearbox fully acquires Risk of Rain 2 |
| August 2024 | PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions |
| September 2024 | Hopoo Games goes on hiatus |
The Verdict on Petrichor V
Risk of Rain 2 earns its 8.7. The randomized stages, enemies, bosses and items would be a gimmick without the scaling system underneath them, and the scaling system would be cruel without the item stacking that lets a clever build outrun it. The two mechanics hold each other up. Add four-player co-op and the teleporter defense becomes a genuine test of coordination rather than a solo grind with company.
The weak point is not the design. It is the handoff. Gearbox has kept Risk of Rain 2 running since 2022, and the platform list has only grown, but the studio that built the loop is no longer on it. A live game can survive that. Whether this one can is open, and the source does not settle it.
The run you get today is still worth the score.
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