Do you ever start to play a game and just forget the time? You look at the clock at it is already 3 am on Monday and you notice that you have been gaming for 72 hours straight. Well, this is actually what happened to me with rimworld(not to this crazy excited).
RimWorld, a colony simulator from Ludeon Studios, has recently hit the Steam store with a $30 price point.
But before I tell you more about this awesome game that is called Rimworld, let me tell you a story.
So this was one of my very first games of Rimworld that happened when the game was still in alpha one or two years ago.
This is the story of Kyle and his mother that stranded on a random planet together. They awoke from the sirens ringing in their ears and their ship falling apart. They didn't have enough time to back a lot of things so they took the most important things and rushed to the escape pots, with them was their trusty husky named Jamal.
They landed on some sort of jungle that was surrounded by huge mountains. The jungle itself was overgrown and flourishing with all sorts of strange lifeforms. The good thing about this is that they were actually trained for those kinds of special scenarios and they knew what they had to do. The first thing they did was establish some kind of 'base' from wood that they found.
I think it was several weeks after the crashed landing and some things have happened until this point, but things were going really crazy from this point onwards. Kyles mother decided that she can't live without a real man in her life that can make her feel all the pleasures a real man can provide. Kyle is the only man in the colony was chosen as her new 'sex-slave'. This was the time when Mother and Son started a relationship. They thought it would be a great idea to build a king sized bed with the wood that they have harvested in the last few weeks.
The mother went out hunting during the day to provide for them both and then laid with her son when it was dark. Everything was peaceful for the next few days and then everything went downhill - The Raiders came. Pirate shot their way into the base that they have established and people opened fire on each other. One of the Raiders tried to engage Kyle in melee but was shot by his own friend in the back. Jamal that saw everything with his eyes jumped in front of Kyle to stop the incoming attacker and engaged with him in a heavy melee fight. Eventually, after minutes of struggling, all the pirates died. Jamal had died on this very day because no one noticed his internal bleeding caused by a punch to his foot.
We managed to recruit more people into the Colony and it was really flourishing. But our supplies were running low so we had to eat Jamal and the pirates. Bad mood was spreading amongst the two lovers and the rest of the colony members. The mother died while fiercely fighting a boar. Her lover, that was actually her son, had a mental breakdown upon hearing the news and started attacking the other guy in the colony. Kyle being a wimpy-ass died while fighting the other guy.
There was still the problem with the food supply, so he had to eat Kyle and his mother. This resulted in him having a mental breakdown. He just wanted to get away from this place and never ever thing about this incest and raping family. He set fire to everything, but he actually put fire to everything while he was still inside the building. He was hysterically trying to find a way out of the now burning building and accidentally touched the wall that was on fire, he then went up in flames and died.
Welcome to Rimworld where stories like that will happen all the time and the funny thing about it is that they will stick with you forever and you'll never be able to forget even a single one of your colony members. Essentially Rimworld is Dwarf fortress with a lot better graphics and interface. Actually, the game developer perfectly summoned it up: "the game for everyone who wanted to get into Dwarf Fortress but couldn’t because ASCII."
For the most part, they run around of their own volition but you can still take direct control in a number of ways. Colonist will follow a predefined task list that will show you their priorities in the game, which assignes them each to an specific task. But you can still take control of them in something like combat or you can force them to attack and take prisoners.
There’s a task grid that gives some order to it all. You can select which jobs you want each individual colonist to do and which jobs you want them to ignore. An advanced version lets you organize these even further by priority, fiddling with the numbers until you have each person specialized in a strict set of tasks. This is hidden away under “manual” control but it is something that soon becomes essential to learn.
It actually looks far more complicated that it is and everyone should be able to play the game within one hour of playing.
Building your base is really straight-forward and doesn't require a lot of skill, it only requires some intelligence to choose the right place for your colony. You drag the lines to build a wall and can place items like lamps, beds, workshops and other things that you will need to keep the mental sanity of your coolant to an maximum. Your Colonists will require light to see in your base and that is where the electricity comes into play. You are able to build a wide range of different power-generating things like solar panels, or windmills that will produce energy for you. This energy can be stored in batteries inside of your place and will provide you with power, even at times when you are currently not generating any.
But be careful accidents can happen, a faulty wire can explode your whole setup and ruin your day.
As far as I’m concerned RimWorld is already worth the entry fee. And it was probably worth it last year too. If its creators can muster even a fraction of the stamina that the Adams brothers have with its ASCII ancestor, we can all look forward to a PC classic.