Rimworld

When I first saw Rimworld I knew I had to try it. As far as space colony simulators go, this is the first one I’ve been in contact with that lets you be in direct contact with the people of the colony. You are thrown right into action as three survivors from a ship carrying people in cryostasis drops down in escape pods onto the world below. Your mission is to secure the survival of these three by telling them where to build walls, fields and power generators. Keeping resources in stock and loyalty up is a heavy task in itself but when raiders start raining down and psychotic squirrels (no joke) runs rampant, security becomes an issue. Auto-turrets, sandbags and armed colonisers are your only line of defence. You don’t have any weapons on your colonisers at start but you can get them from killed or disabled raiders or buy them from passing traders via the comm device.

Example of a base.

But before you start the game, you select the difficulty of the storytelling AI as it’s called. Then you get to look at and modify the people whom are going to fall down on the world below. There are different classes, skills and backgrounds that are randomly selected along with a rage of traits. Each class have different pros and cons such as the miner being good mining and gathering resources but maybe lacking in social skill that the noble and con artist have. You soon realise that a well rounded set of skills are good to have. Another thing to think about is how willing a person is to get her hands dirty. A noble character will not do any labouring duty but make up with it by being with high skill in social, research, doctoring or maybe combat (all depending on the randomly generated points). But after getting the desired characters and naming them the dire task of survival begins. Depending on the difficulty you choose for the AI you will either have a calm start or outright hell. With luck and perseverance you will make it.

And since it’s still in pre-alpha there are a lot of features that still aren’t implemented but given what is available I think this game will be great. The graphic is really basic. There is no music but good enough sound effects. With coming updates the graphics and artwork will be upgraded, according to the maker. But I personally don’t mind it as it currently is, on the contrary I get a good feeling from it as it reminds me of the great indie games of the early part of the 2k:s.

It’s totally worth a try and something to look forward to in the future as it develops.

Links: http://rimworldgame.com/