In Rimworld you are tasked with building and maintaining a space colony on a distant planet.
The game is made by Ludeon Studios, a one man studio based in Montreal, Canada founded by Tynan Sylvester, who previously worked as level designer on Bioshock Infinite for Irrational Games.
Keep in mind that this game is still in Early Access and as such is unfinished and missing features. However, all things considered, there is already a lot on offer here.
I have clocked just around 40 hours in Rimworld and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience so far. Its intense difficulty kept me hooked, as each failed colony led to the next one lasting longer as my experience and know-how increased.
Rimworld’s use of random events such as raids, heat waves, fire storms and psychic drones makes for varied challenges throughout your time playing and will also mean that every new game will offer a slightly different experience. This randomness helps keep things interesting across multiple playthroughs and scenarios.
The soundtrack fits the game’s atmosphere well. It’s calm when nothing major is happening and quickly changes to intense battle music when a raid or similar event takes place, making everything feel that little bit more terrifying.
All that said, there are a few issues that I have encountered within the game. Not being able to have someone that you rescue from a prisoner pod join your colony is frustrating, as is the inability to repair items that have degraded. However the game is perfectly playable without these small features.
On the other hand, modders have already taken to sharing their own content through the Steam Workshop. The platform offers a variety of creations such as new custom scenarios that change how many colonists and what items you start your adventure with.
Frequently having to start over is part of the fun of Rimworld, as each new attempt will mean new people and scenarios to discover. My best experience so far saw all of my colonists but one dying to either infection or raids. This last survivor couldn’t hunt, fight, grow food or warden prisoners to convert them to the colony. However, he was a cannibal and the one thing he could do was tame animals. Raid after raid came and this single survivor held the line with nothing but his army of squirrels and rats, happily feeding off the dead.
I am always cautious about Early Access titles, but Rimworld is one of those few games that I just had to try. Many hours later I can safely say I was not disappointed. If you are a fan of unforgiving management sims, Rimworld is definitely for you.
