Rimworld: Surviving Savages, Killer Robots, and Eating Without Tables

Relationships are...interesting to say the least, and I still can't tell if breakups are random or a separate system, they just seem random a lot of the time, which somehow makes them very entertaining.

Rimworld is a game that I struggle to categorize. I've heard it described as a lot of things, including a colony management sim, a story generator, a war crime simulator, pure crack, and so on. Truth be told, it's all of those and more, being a game that were it not for the existence of Dwarf Fortress and other simulators would be a genre of its own. Rimworld is a game that is entirely what you make of it, and that's its strongest suit. It's a game that I've sunk a lot of time into, and I'm continually surprised that more people haven't played it, especially as it's fairly accessible. So what exactly is Rimworld?

The beginnings of Brantford, a truly unpleasant place to start despite the good location. Yes, my colony is home to a wookie, an android, two humans (one vampire), and an elf. No I didn't choose them.

Rimworld is something of an oddity to me, since I love detailed stories, but in comparison Rimworld's are rather bizarre and seemingly nonsensical, being generated by the computer. This allows the game to offer almost an entirely different experience on every playthrough, allowing for all sorts of stories to be told. However, what makes Rimworld such a well of stories to be told is that there is really no set-in stone quality to the game's universe besides some common concepts, which mostly exist to give it a unique identity. These facts of the universe however are pretty darn unimportant at the end of the day; the only ones that have a major impact on your game is the existence of mechanoids and cryptosleep caskets (think cryopods for space travel. The last important detail that you need to know about your story experience is that the story is not entirely in your hands. Sure, your actions in building, maintaining, and protecting your colony are in your hands, and you do choose your starting group of pawns, but nearly every event you encounter, from the most beneficial to the most disastrous are determined by the storyteller. Storytellers are essentially the themed difficulty setting that you choose when you start a new game along with the actual difficulty. Depending on the one you choose (which can be changed at any time), you'll get differing likelihoods of events to encounter that create a 'story'. These stories could be anything from a steady and slow-paced story of management to a solitary colony standing defiant against hordes of foes, or even a story of abject hopelessness from start to finish. However, keep in mind that these generated events don't coalesce into coherent narrative arcs, they're closer to small short stories that are easily retold to your friends. This is one of the aspects of Rimworld that makes it quite a compelling game for me narratively speaking; just by playing the game you're experiencing your own unique story that cannot is nearly impervious to being ruined. True, much of the story isn't in your hands, but you most certainly have the power to start and end it. If you're looking for a deep story filled with expert storytelling, Rimworld will unfortunately disappoint, but if you're looking to be able to make some tall tales or legends (that actually happened), then Rimworld won't let you down.

Oh God the rats have found the corpse pile, never mind why I have one in a cave.

Rimworld is by and large a game of colony management, with you assigning priorities and only occasionally issuing direct orders. As with the story, you don't have total control, but you do have arguably the most of all aspects. You'll be setting quotas, designating contruction projects, some minor zoning management, and occasionally shift management (because night-owls want to work at night). For the most part your colonists, or 'pawns' will do their prioritized jobs as directed, but they're subject to their own whims and opinions. Most will be somewhere between mediocre and pretty good at their strong suits when you bring them into your colony, whether through slavery, coercion, or them voluntarily joining. You can improve their skills through simple practice, and it won't take long for some of your pawns to be the equivalent of Einstein in their skills. You'll definitely need their skills to be better, because being more skilled in a certain area generally means that jobs will be done faster, better, with less failure, etc. Some though will just flat-out refuse to do a specific job based on a life experience or upbringing, which can be a definite pain. Combat is generally split into gunplay and melee, with skilled practitioners of both being pretty damn scary. Good shooters are able to shoot faster and more accurately, but skilled melee users are essentially demigods, capable of putting down enemies in a single swing (they're great for choke points). There's really no single concrete way to play Rimworld, as every goal is determined by you, but the methods you can use to achieve them can vary anywhere from conventional to war-crimes (there's no Geneva Convention on the rim). When you kill an animal, you can butcher it for its meat and skin. This applies to humans as well, and while most pawns greatly dislike this, there are some that don't care and even enjoy it. Surgery isn't based on a doctor's note, it's controlled by your orders, and your control isn't limited to your colonists in this regard. Organ harvesting is a very profitable method of financial sustenance, but I have yet to try this, choosing to practice more ethical methods such as selling art, leather, drugs, and guns taken from my enemies' cold dead hands. There's a lot of moral relativism in this game, and your pawns are by no means mindless. They're subject to the rigors of life, love, loss, and other hardships that they encounter. Sometimes it's because all their friends had died yesterday, other times they just had a terrible lovin' session, or they might just be having a bad day. Regardless, when they snap they will be temporarily removed from your control and act in a certain way or perform an action independent of your control, and these can range from minor annoyances to disastrous (If one goes to destroy chemfuel or a mortar shell, arrest the crazy fucker). I could go on for an entire paper, but really it's a game that you can play however you want, and there are some truly crazy playthroughs I've seen out there. This game can easily eat away an afternoon, and there's always something to do. Mods are special in that most of them greatly augment the potential of the base game (which is closer to a framework in all honesty), allowing for many other styles of play and occasionally adding in more dimensions to the gameplay, such as the need for tools or proper hygiene. I'd strongly recommend playing this with mods but you don't lose anything by just playing the base game.

Art is a source of endless giggles and surreal humor. For some reason the engine seems to relish using the word 'innumerable'...

By its very nature, the more I think about Rimworld the more grim it gets, and that's just based off of the general premise of people in the far future being essentially marooned in both space and time on a savage and disorderly world with nearly no hope of return (and that's just the people who came from spacer worlds). This is very much in contrast with the uncomplicated and somewhat cartoonish art style. It's relatively easy to forget that you're essentially reenacting the climax of Saving Private Ryan when the presentation is filled with armless people holding guns, body slamming each other, and pastel-colored explosions. Just so I'm clear, this isn't a knock against the game, quite the opposite, as this game runs incredibly smoothly. You won't see photorealism here, but it's easier to understand what's going on at a glance than other colony management games. Specifically from a visual standpoint, Rimworld could be called a more accessible Dwarf Fortress (which is definitely on my watchlist), as the amount of guides you need in order to understand what is going on visually is effectively nil. There's a decent amount of music, and all of it (with exception to the combat tracks) help realize this lawless pastoral feeling that makes up the game's core identity. As with the gameplay and story, Rimworld's visual and audio charm can be further augmented and diversified through modding, and these new kinds of terrain, creatures, and music tracks can help shake things up and further your enjoyment of the buffet that is Rimworld.

Manhunting...bedbugs? How big could they be?

At the end of the day, I have to give Rimworld my strongest recommendation, and that's not only because I've spent close to four hundred hours playing it so far. It's not necessarily an experience like other games as an actually fun exercise in management, and on top of this it's a game that my dad (i.e. someone who rarely plays games) and sister love to play. Despite it being only a few years old, Rimworld is a game that feels both like a spinoff/successor to other colony management games such as Rimworld and a timeless title that you can boot up endlessly. For your next obsession, you can't go wrong with creating your own pocket of civilization (or not) on a lonely Rimworld.

Apparently bedbugs are weak to a hail of gunfire and barbed wire, never would have guessed they got that big.