RimWorld
Ludeon Studios
After a colony ship mishap, my three survivors were scuttled to escape pods and jettisoned down onto the surface of a titular rimworld—one of the isolated, distant planets far out in the unknown reaches of space. Rimworlds don’t have any form of strong central government (if any), and even basic survival is a brutal undertaking on these forlorn worlds.
My three (four counting the pet) survivors had just crash-landed, and moved quickly to set up their first make-shift colony building. They were Jans, a strong ex-soldier with a penchant for animal handling, his pet dog Foxy, Triest, an beautiful female artist, and Macon, a rather simple-minded miner.
Macon immediately began dividing his time between hunting animals for food and mining the stone an steel in the area. Jans feverishly set about erecting the base’s walls, and built separate sleeping quarters for them, as well as a refrigerated area to store food in and an electric stove for cooking. He also built a couple of solar panels to power the entire colony.
Triest, whom couldn’t be bothered with any form of manual labor, occupied her time by sauntering about the grounds surrounding their base, apparently in an attempt to gain some sort of creative motivation.
Over the course of their first week on the rimworld, the intrepid trio staved off three separate bandit raids, in part due to the defenses that Jans had bolstered their base with.
Eventually, Triest fell in love with Jans, and they moved into the same room after building a sturdy double bed. Jans was quite productive from then on, after receiving daily bouts of “good lovin’” from Triest.
One day, however, a rather large group of bandits attacked their base. Even though the ruthless thugs were eventually rebuffed, Triest suffered a mortal wound. No matter how much Jans attended to her with his middling medical skills, she passed away, leaving Jans heartbroken.
They two remaining men then turned their attention to a hostage that they’d captured during the recent raid. Their hostage was a young woman named Bilali, who was a slightly psychotic wench with a passion for lighting things on fire.
Strangely enough, while attempting to rehabilitate Bilali, Jans fell in love (or perhaps lust) with her. He eventually offered her a place within the colony and then moved her into the same room he used to share with Triest.
Somewhat of a prima donna, Bilali grew increasingly irate about how crudely furnished their bedroom was. She desired something more upscale, with glitz and glam—what was on display, evidently, was hardly befitting a former brigand of her station and comportment.
As she launched into one of her daily rage fits, she decided to go the extra mile and light their bedroom on fire. Since it happened to be during the night, Jans awoke at the last minute, and although he tried to escape, he was overcome by the fire’s smoke and was burned to death. Bilali eventually perished as well. But the mild-mannered miner, Macon, managed to escape unscathed.
Macon, perusing the burnt remains of their former colony, decided to pack up what he could salvage from their bar-b-que’d base. Together with the other survivor, loyal doggie Foxy, they left the area in order to scout for a location where they’d build a brand new colony. Hopefully, they’d attract peaceful fellow survivors, but perhaps not…only time would tell.
As you can see by my recent game of RimWorld, things can quickly go haywire within a typical game. And, with the game’s most recent update (which is pretty game-altering), your colonists can be imbued with even more varied personality traits and quirks. Together with the random events that transpire over the course of your survivor’s time while building their base up, these factor make each and every game very unique indeed.
The update also renders the whole planet now, so that you can see the entire globe, as opposed to just a large patch of the continent as before. This enables the game’s developers, Montreal-based Ludeon Studios, to showcase another new feature—the ability to travel to anywhere on the planet’s surface (except into open-water areas).
For instance, if you’ve stockpiled a certain resource to excess, you can simply load up the surplus and travel to a neighboring trading post, where you can sell your goods. Or, as in the example above, if things go horribly wrong and you need a fresh start, all you have to do is pack up your belongings and hit the road.
For those uninitiated, RimWorld is like a fusion of the intricately-crafted, procedural game, Dwarf Fortress, and Prison Architect. It contains the extremely detailed, emergent storytelling of the former, and the minimalist aesthetics and polish of the latter. Thankfully though, it has a unique feeling and style all its own.
What I love most about RimWorld is that every game is so totally unique, and that you just can’t predict what’s going to happen to your struggling colony next. And since it sports a top-down perspective, it’s also a welcome alternative to the veritable plethora of first person shooters that are over-saturating the market right now. Try it for yourself, but be forewarned, it can be quite addictive.
SCORE: 92%