Slugcat

The slugcat is both the primary protagonist and single playable character in Rain World. It is a small white creature with black eyes, thin arms, comparatively broad legs with small feet, broad-ended ears, and a thick tail that tapers to a point. The player must keep the slugcat alive as it explores the world, confronts strange creatures, and takes part in completing challenging achievements. The slugcat has a variety of movement abilities which can be found detailed on the controls page.

Backstory
Each one of the three campaigns features a different slugcat with varying goals and backstories:

The Survivor
The intro cutscene revolves around a family of slugcats. They're shown resting in a nest, walking across a pole and hunting for food together. While eating Batflies, attention is drawn to a younger slugcat - The Survivor - who notices a few droplets of rain. A dangerous storm breaks out, and as the group attempts to make it back to a safe place, the juvenile slugcat slips and falls into the drains below. The final scene shows the protagonist standing in a new and unknown environment, and shortly after it fades out, the game begins.

The Monk
The Monk is heavily implied to be The Survivor's sibling, and as such their introductory cutscene is largely the same - it follows a family of slugcats doing various activities around a familiar territory. The only differences between the two lie in the last few slides, which highlight The Monk and show them diving down into the drains to go after their lost sibling.

Both The Monk and Survivor start the game in the tutorial section of Outskirts, with nothing in hand nor stomach.

The Hunter
The Hunter does not have an intro cutscene. Despite that, their backstory is the most involved with the lore of the world. Their spot in the timeline is the earliest out of all currently available campaigns, taking place sometime after Looks to the Moon collapsed. Her sorry state, caused by Five Pebbles taking in too much water, lead to slag buildup, which eventually became so severe that the little function she had ceased completely. Another iterator - No Significant Harassment (NSH for short), noticed the lack of rain coming from her can and decided to help by sending a special Green Neuron. This Neuron Fly holds several slag reset keys, which, as the name suggests, would get rid of the slag and allow Moon to function again if given to her. Being unable to make this delivery by themselves due to eroding equipment, NSH sent The Hunter to do it for them.

The Hunter starts the game in Farm Arrays, with the aforementioned Neuron Fly in their hand, a spear on their back, and a unique colored pearl in their stomach, which contains a message written by NSH for Moon.



Food
In order to hibernate, the slugcat must find and eat enough food each cycle. This amount is represented by the food meter, which can be viewed alongside the current karma level by pressing and holding the map button.



The food meter is made up of several food pips - circles which fill up as you eat, and a vertical line that separates the food pips required to hibernate (all found to the left), and the food pips that will be saved for the next cycle (all found to the right). The amount of food required to hibernate varies between sub-species:
 * Monk :
 * Survivor:
 * Hunter :

Monk and Survivor eat mostly smaller creatures and fruit. Interestingly enough, they can also devour any size of Centipede, though the larger ones need to be dead first. A full list of all the different foods can be found here. Hunter's diet is more varied, as it also includes the corpse of any killable creature, however, certain foods such as Batflies, Blue Fruit, Slime Mold, Bubble Fruit and Neuron Flies provide less value, and will only fill 1/4th of a food pip when eaten.

Incapacitation and death
While both disable the player's input and make the game over text appear, when incapacitated the player is still alive, just unable to do anything. Knowing when that is the case could potentially allow you to continue on without the need to restart the current cycle. You can differentiate between them by looking at the slugcats eyes (they'll be shut when incapacitated, crossed out when dead) and listening for bass notes (incapacitation plays one, death plays two).

Lizards, Dropwigs and Big Spiders have an RNG-based kill system, which means that when bitten/grabbed there is a percentage chance that the slugcat will die. If this check fails, the player will be incapacitated, killed if brought into a den. Vulture bites always incapacitate the player, unless de-masked, in which case they are always lethal.

There are a few ways to get out of incapacitation. A creature is likely to let go if wounded, or attacked by something hostile towards it. Throwing a rock or spear in the short period of time where inputs aren't disabled to stun the creature, or having a tamed Lizard/friendly Scavengers by your side are some of the more reliable methods, and usually the only ones that work when grabbed by a masked Vulture.

Slugcat varieties
Different sub-species of slugcat have different abilities and traits as well as different difficulties. There are four playable variants of the Slugcat:
 * The Monk : The slugcat most in tune with nature. It requires less food to hibernate, is better attuned to Karma gates, and has fewer predators than its kin. Always available
 * The Survivor: The game's iconic slugcat, fighting to survive in a world with dangerous enemies and a constant hunt for food. Just like The Monk, The Survivor is always available.
 * The Hunter : A stronger and more agile variety of slugcat, this creature is higher-maintenance than the others. It can store a spear on its back and kill and eat certain large predators, but it only has a limited time in this world. The Hunter is not unlocked from the start, and can only be played after beating the game as The Monk/Survivor.
 * Black slugcat (called Nightcat by the developers): A slugcat with white eyes only featured in the game's Arena game modes, where all slugcats have the same abilities. They can sometimes be seen in overseer holograms.

A deeper description of game play with each of these slugcats can be found on the difficulties page.

Trivia

 * All four slugcats are playable in the game's Arena modes, but they all handle similarly to how the Survivor does in Single Player.
 * Slugcats have a few different facial expression apart from the ones mentioned in the incapacitation and death section. For example, when throwing or swallowing an object, the slugcat will briefly close its eyes, and when regurgitating an object it will keep its eyes closed for a longer period of time. The slugcat will also keep its eyes shut when close to a threat. While idle, the slugcat will have widened, circular eyes which blink occasionally.
 * The slugcat will actively move its tail away from threats, such as lizards, in situations that allow it (such as resting at the top of a pole).
 * When faced by a lizard, the slugcat may hold its hand out in an attempt to briefly stop the creature from biting it.