A Year of Rain

A Year of Rain is a team-based real-time strategy game from Daedalic Entertainment, the studio better known for point-and-click adventures. It pitches itself as a co-op-forward RTS where two players share control of an army, each commanding a hero unit while managing base building and unit production across a dark fantasy battlefield. The core loop is classic RTS fare: harvest resources, build structures, produce armies, and push lanes until you crack the enemy base. The hero units are the twist, functioning as powerful singular characters with skill sets that evolve through a match, lending a faint MOBA flavour to the proceedings. The game launched with three factions - House Rupah (a human military faction), the Restless Regiment (undead and monsters), and the Wyld (nature-and-beast themed). Each plays differently enough to justify trying all three, and the faction fantasy is reasonably well-realised on paper. The world lore has some genuine texture to it, borrowing from classic dark fantasy without being completely derivative. If you squint at it from the right angle, there are bones of something interesting in the setting. Here is where the enthusiasm has to pump the brakes, though. The Steam review score sits at 44 percent positive, and that number reflects real problems. The AI in single-player skirmishes is thin, the match pacing can drag badly in the mid-game, and the hero balance across factions feels uneven in ways that punish new players before they have learned the fundamentals. The co-op premise is the game's best argument for itself, but it requires finding a willing partner - and the player population is small enough that matchmaking is not your friend. The campaign offers some narrative framing, but it is short and does not do much heavy lifting in terms of story payoff. For someone who cares about whether choices matter and whether the writing rewards a second pass, A Year of Rain is a quiet disappointment in the narrative department. Builds and unit compositions have a decent ceiling for experimentation within a single match, but the meta settles quickly. Past your first dozen hours you will likely have seen most of what the systems offer. There is no deep talent tree or persistent progression between matches, so the strategic variety is bounded by the faction design rather than player-driven build crafting. Veterans of StarCraft 2 or Warcraft III will find this shallower than expected. Newcomers to RTS games might find the pacing challenging, and the tutorial does only a workmanlike job of bridging that gap. The visual presentation is competent and suits the bleak aesthetic, and the UI is functional if not elegant. Performance on mid-range PC hardware is generally fine. If you and a reliable friend are specifically hunting for a co-op RTS that is lighter than the genre heavyweights, there is a specific narrow window where A Year of Rain scratches that itch. Outside that window, the mixed reception is an honest signal. Monika, Scout Team