Rimworld [Game Review]

Rimworld is a top-down survival sim game created by a single developer named Tynan Sylvester, who later created Ludeon studies after the game become popular. It was originally created in 2013, and released as an alpha in 2016 on Steam. Tynan also wrote a book called Designing Games which I have not read, but is on my wishlist.

This game is a little different from what I've reviewed in the past, but it is probably the best resource management/strategy/sim that I've ever played. If you're interested in system design, it's a great look at how little mechanics interact with each other to create amazing and unique scenarios. I've probably sunk over a hundred hours into this game, but I still keep finding different things about it, and different ways to play.

In Rimworld, you play as a colony that has crashlanded their spaceship on a rimworld, far away from civilization, and must figure out how to survive in a harsh environment. You typically start out with 3 colonists, and a few materials such as steel, wood, and some weapons like a rifle and pistol. You must build your base, set up defenses, figure out how to get food, and keep your colonists happy so they don't go insane and start binging on alcohol or set your colony on fire.

Oh yeah, expect to die in Rimworld. A lot.

Don't let Rimworld's cutesy and simplistic graphics fool you. This is an incredibly complex and brutal game. The simplest of mistakes can cascade into devastation across your colony. Your colonists can die from gunshot wounds, illness, heart-attacks, insanity, fire, raids from neighboring colonies, and animal attacks. Life is definitely not easy on the rim -If your colonists begin to starve, they'll chow down on the corpses of enemies and ex-friends who happen to be laying around. Your colonists all come with unique personalities with different traits and skills - and you must be mindful of their personalities and take them into account. If you invite a pyromaniac or a sociopath into your colony, expect trouble. If you don't have someone who's good at doctoring, and one of your colonists gets a brutal gunshot wound, they may get an infection and die. If you don't have someone who's good at gardening, you can't grow things that you need like healroot medicine.

The game has a steep learning curve, but the upside is that you can sink tons of hours into it and not even scratch the surface of what it's capable of. Mods on Steam allow for new weapons and items, different races, seemingly endless combinations of new scenarios, and things like combat mods that change the rules of battle. The game allows you to customize nearly everything - If you want your colonists to eat only vegetarian food, or to wear clothes made only out of devilstrand, you have that option. There are multiple terrains that allow for different types of challenges - including desert, tundra, mountains, and tropics. There are also several storyteller modes which set how often you get random events and how the difficulty gets ramped.

Now I'm excited and I want to go play again. Check out on Steam if this sounds like your type of game. It's definitely one of my top favorites of all time.