RimWorld may not be exactly like most space games that fall into my wheelhouse, but it’s a pace game nonetheless! So here we go!
RimWorld is a survival game. It has some strong resemblances to Prison Architect, if you’re ever played that, but the key difference is the importance on gathering resources. Everything requires something to make something. Steel, wood, cloth, components…the list goes on.
It’s been around for a while and it’s been over a year since I played it. It was still in alpha then and it felt pretty deep already. Now it’s on Steam and while it’s till in Early Access, it’s only grown. This game has layers upon layers now.
The colonists generally work independently. You set jobs to do around the settlement and they tend to them. You can set priority and who does what in the work panel.
Here we can see that one of them doesn’t mine. Which is BS. Lazy bum.
There are a few different scenarios you can play but the only one I’ve really tried is where 3 crew members crash and have to survive.
You start with three. But obviously you add people as you go along as the screenshot shows. I apparently wasn’t thoughtful enough to document the beginning…except for this one!
Everything is procedural generated including the people you start with. You can name your starting three but you can’t really change their stats or what they’re good at doing. Once you start, the game does try to help you along in learning to play. There’s a ton of things to learn. The core of it is, build what you need to survive.
You can see in the screen that I’m a good ways along. I’ve carved out shelter out of a mountain. This takes a little longer but it’s much more secure. It allows you to funnel enemies into close quarters where you’ll hopefully have a numbers advantage. Let’s look at more screens!!
Here’s a wider shot of the habitat. It’s a bit dirty. We had just fought off a big animal that didn’t like it when we tried to hunt it. The grey squares to the left are where I’be instructed the colonists to mine. The blue array outside are solar panels which run to a bank of 4 batteries (the yellow bars).
One of the changes between when I first played and this version is the addition of temperature and how it affect things. Things don’t grow in the winter, naturally. But it also get’s cold inside which can cause hypothermia.
I was lucky to pick a spot that was generated in a temperate climate. But the winter in this spot get’s pretty cold. In the first screenshot you can see ground is white. That’s from the snow.
With all the other changes one of the most difficult/dangerous ones is health of the colonists. Injuries can now become infected. And without medicine to treat the infection, permanent damage can happen. Check out this screen where one of them got their leg torn off.
I was lucky enough to have enough medicine on hand in order to install a peg leg. So Brian is able to hobble around still. No matter what game I’m playing, I can’t seem to kill that guy. Huh….
Here’s the settlement at the time of this post. I’m hoping to mine further into the mountain. You can see the planned grid up at the top. That’ll be individual quarters for the colonists. The enclosures to the right are growing rooms. They let me grow food year round. The big grey square to the right of the grow houses is a thermal power generator. Those come in handy for eclipses. You can also see another bank of 4 batteries to the left. Those are connected to the main power line with a switch. Reason being is I’ve been burned too many times by shortages in the line. They start a fire and discharge any battery on that line. I kept finding myself without power and it being 3 degrees outside. Then I’d have to be a power miser while they recharged over the next couple of days.
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