So I’ve been getting back into Rimworld recently, forgetting how much of an enjoyable time sink it can be to manage a rag tag bunch of ship survivors and try to forge a living in an unforgiving landscape. I’d also forgotten how randomly insane moments in Rimworld can truly be, moments that have made me go ‘Well this colony is doomed, time to roll up a new one..’
Like when I welcomed in some Rimworld refugees through the goodness of my own heart, only to have them ultimately eventually burn my world down to the ashes..
What is Rimworld?
From the official website:
A sci fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller.
RimWorld follows three survivors from a crashed space liner as they build a colony on a frontier world at the rim of known space. Inspired by the space western vibe of Firefly, the deep simulation of Dwarf Fortress, and the epic scale of Dune and Warhammer 40,000.
Manage colonists’ moods, needs, individual wounds, and illnesses. Engage in small-team tactical gunplay. Fashion structures, weapons, and apparel from metal, wood, stone, cloth, or futuristic materials. Fight pirate raiders, hostile tribes, rampaging animals, giant tunnelling insects and ancient killing machines. Tame and train cute pets, productive farm animals, and deadly attack beasts. Watch colonists develop relationships with family members, lovers, and spouses. Discover a new generated world each time you play. Build colonies in the desert, jungle, tundra, and more. Manage quirky colonists with unique backstories, traits, and skills. Learn to play easily with the help of an intelligent and unobtrusive AI tutor.
For Windows, Mac, Linux. The game is distributed by DRM-free download. RimWorld is developed by Tynan Sylvester and Ludeon Studios, and we’ve been improving it since its first public release on November 4, 2013.
TLDR? Manage a bunch of people stuck on a planet, hope they don’t die. It’s a wonderful and equally brutal game.
There’s the classic Rimworld planning experience..
And then there’s me who likes his survival games with as much chance to do everything as possible. Which is why I like to set the difficulty to the easiest setting, increase the starting colonists to 10 instead of 3 (makes tasks go so much quicker this way) and start with enough food to last years (In my mind it’s the ship’s food generation system exploding along with the rest of the craft and raining down thousands of ration packs. And if they’re there, we should use them right?)
However even with 10 carefully selected colonists (avoiding traits such as pyromania and randomly rolling until they’re injury free) there’s absolutely no guarantee you’re about to have a trouble free Rimworld existence.
At least I haven’t in the last few games..
Trouble in Rimworld – an ever growing list
-Blood, blood everywhere. When you hunt animals for their food and skins, they leave blood trails all over the place. Same when you butcher them on the butcher table, it’s a gore fest. When a colonist in Rimworld gets injured (either from animals or occasionally punching on with each other) there’s blood all over the shop. And if you don’t set anyone to clean it, soon things look like something out of House on Haunted Hill.
-Smith and Becky were once married but no despise each other so much, they can barely talk to one another. Which is not good news for me, given they’re stuck on the same planet with the rest of my crew. One day they got so sick of each other, they beat absolute sacks of blood out of each other until I had them dragged off to hospital to recover.
Of course I didn’t have much in the way of medical facilities at the time and so they ended up right next to each other in recovery. I can’t imagine that did wonders to either of their moods (let alone the filthy facility they found themselves in – that’ll teach them to punch on when there’s work to be done!)
-The normal docile wildlife can often go feral when you least expect it, even the rabbits. Yes suddenly you might find yourself in a Monty Pythonesque moment when you’re trying to defend your colonists from a crazed bunny ready to gnaw their heads off. It doesn’t matter how much Rimworld planning you’re doing, the animals can go nuts when you least expect it.
-I’m extremely wary of hosting Rimworld refugees anymore after a couple of Rimworld refugee incidents. The first involved a small group fleeing persecution from their own lands. They wanted to stay for a week and agreed to help with the tasks around my tiny town so why not? I gave them beds, I gave them food, they helped to clean up the place…and then one of them set the town on fire.
Yes it turns out one Rimworld refugee was a pyromaniac and in a moment of ‘I haven’t seen anything burn for a bit’ she set fire to the crafting room, which conveniently was made of wood. And that fire quickly spread to the butchering room and food storage because you guessed it, they too were also made out of wood. As the blazing inferno quickly engulfed everything I quickly learned that while there’s plenty of wood about in some sections of the map, the game does warn you how flammable it is. Also maybe I shouldn’t have built every single room right next to each other?
(She kept burning things right up until I ordered her stopped by gunfire. Given the state of the town in ashes at that point, there simply was no coming back. Pyro Rimworld Refugees :1 My world: 0)
-In the next game I’d built up quite the thriving community but not without the occasional sad incident. Like the Rimworld colonist who fell pregnant but the baby didn’t last long after birth unfortunately, these things happen of course and welcome to Rimworld’s storytelling. A month later a fleeing refugee mother and her three kids showed up begging for help and how could I say no? So once again I found them a place to stay, rustled up some food to eat and secretly hoped none of them were mad about fire.
While this was going on one of my other colonists Art was having massive withdrawal symptoms from Ambrosia plant abuse and was having breakdowns left right and centre. And while I was finding ways to keep him borderline, some kind of psychic pulse hit the town putting all the males (including Art) into a deep dark bad mood. So naturally Art flipped out and hit a broken mental state. But even worse than that, one of the refugee kids affected by the pulse decided to dig up the grave from earlier and show everyone he could exactly what he found inside. I kid you not, he took the body for a walk and paraded it around Rimworld town. Which put just about everyone else in a broken mental state, especially the mother. You crazy little sadistic bastard! Again I hit that point where I figured ‘Clawing things back from here is going to be very very ugly…sigh, start it up again Sam.’
(Psychotic Rimworld Refugees: 2 My doomed world: 0)
TO BE CONTINUED (As I watch more Rimworld colonies come to a bitter end..)
P.s If you’re loving this game sick already, well get set for the next expansion on the way – Rimworld Anomaly!
Darkness stirs on the rim. Survive flesh infestations, cultist attacks, shambling undead, blood rains, invisible hunters, and other sanity-shredding perils. Capture and study entities to harness the power of the void. Conduct psychic rituals and awaken an evil machine god.
RimWorld – Anomaly is a horror-themed expansion inspired by classics like Cabin in the Woods, The Thing, The Cthulhu mythos, Hellraiser, and many more.
Holy Rimballs, what could go wrong with the refugees in this one? Keep an eye on this upcoming release right here!