Over the weekend while looking for a new game to play, I picked up a copy of RimWorld on Steam. Without a doubt, this is one of the most frustrating, unfair, and extremely addicting games I have played in a while. RimWorld has a ton of modes and different styles to play, so I will keep it simple and discuss what I have done.
Day 1:
When you fire up RimWorld you can either jump right into the action. or you can play a tutorial. I highly suggest you play
the tutorial first so you know what is going on and the basic controls. Once I completed that I jumped into my first real game.
When you start a colony you choose from three scenarios. You can either play as three crash survivors, a single rich guy, or a tribe of 5 people who are looking to make a new camp. I started with the three crash survivors.
Immediately I begin to pickup everything on the ground and build a simple base. A shared bedroom, some storage, and area for cooking, and an area to create items. Each day is a struggle to find food, make new gear I need, and figure out what the heck i am doing.
Day 4:
I think everything is going well right now. My survivors have some food, my base is a bit bigger, but the game doesn’t like this. From time to time the game will throw an issue your way. Everything from a raid party, to a mad animal, even heatwaves. This is when everything took a turn for the worse, and one by one the survivors dropped dead. It started with the heatwave. If someone was outside, it was lights out for them. Anyway stuck outside because they couldn’t walk where then taken by a mad animal.
Time to restart…..
Run #2:
I restart everything and learn from my mistakes. The survivors get back to where they were the first time, and I even get a new person to join me. Things take a bad turn when it starts to rain, and all of my electrical equipment. Turns out that doesn’t really work as all of the generators, and batteries exploded.
Fire is a bad thing in RimWorld. It spreads like crazy, and if you don’t get to it right away, kiss the base goodbye.
Final Thoughts:
One thing to keep in mind when playing this game is you can really do anything. Set times when survivors work on items, mark how important a job is for someone. Kill a bandit? Why not eat them? Survivors will try to get married or date one another. Sometimes they get depressed if they don’t have a bionic leg. Sometimes they want a bigger bedroom, or they want to eat at a table. Grow some flowers so they have nice things to look at.
This game has a ton of options for someone who really wants to get down into the nitty gritty. It also allows non hardcore players to have a good time and really get into a nice flow without to much micro management.
I have to say I really like this game, like really really like it. RimWorld is a nice change of pace from the other garbage I have been playing recently. The game is super unforgiving, and anytime you get two steps forward, be prepared to fight to keep them. The game plays unfair, but in a good way. It brings a nice challenge, and allows for a ton of different play styles. I would highly recommend that anyone who has ever thought of this game, goes and buys it.