The SF game RimWorld was released in October 2018 on Steam. It is one of the highest-rated games on PC. With 173,000 reviews, an overwhelming 97% are positive. This elevates the game to the Olympus, making it one of the “God Tier” games on Steam. And the reviews read fantastic.
What is RimWorld? RimWorld is a colony simulation: you land on an alien planet and must build a civilization there. You can decide whether to land as a well-equipped pioneer on the planet or as a group of Stone Age people or as a vampire.
In its storytelling, RimWorld draws on many well-known tropes from science fiction: there are aliens that dig out of the ground and want to eat you. There are laser guns, exploding wildlife, and futuristic drugs. You can found your own religion, breed fur animals, or engage in organ trafficking. The possibilities are diverse.
So far, 4 expansions for RimWorld have been released, which further deepen the gameplay experience. The game has also been available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 since 2022:
RimWorld gives you maximum freedom, maximum malice
What is special about RimWorld: RimWorld is clearly a spin-off of games like Dwarf Fortress, the complex and legendary dwarf fantasy simulation. Compared to Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld is more readable and more enjoyable to play.
Essentially, the game gives you maximum freedom to shape your civilization as you wish. Your colony inhabitants have various traits and can get better at their tasks. You can choose to build a futuristic civilization where offspring are bred or cloned. Or you can build a cannibal tribe that ambushes, abducts, and eats enemies.
This special appeal of experiencing your own stories makes RimWorld a game with endless replay value and ensures that great stories arise in the reviews on Steam.
The Turtle Farmer
A player KingKuma, who spent 430 hours in RimWorld, wrote one of the most agreed-upon reviews on Steam:
“My entire colony was saved by a turtle.
This won’t be a review as I normally write, listing the pros and cons. RimWorld is a story generator, so I thought I would share my story. I bought RimWorld about two weeks before writing this article and started a small colony. The first animal my colonists tamed was a 212-year-old turtle, which I named “Old Timer.” We set up a small farm, and when we found a female turtle (which I named “Henrietta Peach”), they had offspring. And their offspring had offspring. Soon, I had more turtles than I could use, so I tried to sell them, and the settlers nearby loved them. But things took a dark turn.
About 5 days after buying RimWorld, my dog, who was 15 years old, passed away. It was sad, but what hit me particularly hard was the death of Old Timer just a few hours later. Both were blind, both had bad backs – it hurt, and I cried. I dug a large grave for Old Timer in a mountain and laid him to rest there. But his story isn’t over yet.
A few game hours later, I got a quest that offered a resurrection serum as a reward. At that moment, I knew what I had to do – to reach the ultimate goal of my playthrough.
I couldn’t save my dog from aging, but I could definitely save this turtle. Old Timer was going to fly into space.
After quickly taking out a few tribesmen and obtaining the serum, I needed a way to prevent Old Timer from dying again while I gathered supplies for the ship. Fortunately, there was an ancient ruin on my map, and after a fierce battle with some killer robots, I was able to safely put him in a stasis chamber guarded by the robots.
Not much happened in regard to him. Henrietta died of old age herself, and in the roughly four years it took me to finish the ship, Old Timer’s children numbered over 500. I regularly traveled to the nearby towns to trade turtles for the ship’s supplies like plastic and uranium, and eventually, I placed Old Timer into the now-completed ship and switched on the reactor.
When the escape reactor is activated, RimWorld basically turns into a kind of wave defense game, where a new wave of enemies appears every day for about 15 days while the reactor charges. That wasn’t a big deal – I had troops in power armor with miniguns, and we made it to the end of the 15 days without anyone dying. Just as the reactor reached full power and I called my colonists to board the ship, things took a dramatic turn. A solar flare took out all my defenses, leaving me without any fire support. I hurried to get my colonists onto the ship, but just as the last one was making his way across the fields to reach the ship… pirates swooped down on my base. I was done for.
I was just about to launch without him when help came in a way I didn’t expect: A turtle (number 493, to be precise) took issue with someone coming from the sky trying to shoot at its guardians and bit a pirate enforcer in the leg. The pirate then hit it with his mace, causing the OTHER pirates to start shooting at the roughly one hundred turtles in the base, who promptly fought back. In the ensuing chaos, my last colonist boarded the ship, and we escaped.
Old Timer, a blind, crippled, undead turtle, repaid me for saving its life – by siring countless offspring that not only funded my escape but also protected me in my darkest hour of need. This game is a gift, and I can’t recommend it enough. Even when reloading saves to tell the story the way you want, it’s still a story worth telling.
10/10: The first game that made me cry.”
A cable fire with dire consequences
Problems in RimWorld often arise from accidents that spiral out of control due to poor building decisions. One such cascading function is described by user Crazy Cat Man, who has spent 700 hours in RimWorld:
“Fully underground base, chemical fuel stored in a granite room with no wires in the walls, so I thought it was safe—when a cable fire set one colonist on fire who fled into the chemical fuel stockpile, the stockpile exploded and destroyed the wall between him and the corridor.
The initial explosion could be contained relatively well, but the heat from the fire raised the temperature in the communal room to several hundred degrees within 15 seconds, causing all the furniture to catch fire. The heat had nowhere to go, and there was only relatively little space to heat, so the whole room transformed into an oven. The communal hall contained all the corridors that ran through my base (ironically to facilitate temperature control), so there was no way to leave the base other than through the communal hall.
One fool died in the first explosion, three caught fire in the corridors before reaching the safety of the adjacent rooms, those who were already in those rooms caught fire as they died of overheating, and the communal hall reached over two thousand degrees Celsius.
There were no survivors.”
The Wooden Leg Raccoon
One mechanic in RimWorld is injuries and wounds. In the game, all characters can lose limbs or be injured to organs, but fortunately, there are replacements. User glockamole, with 210 hours in RimWorld, writes:
“I still get gloomy when I think of my raccoon Willy. Willy had already lost all four legs when he defended me from earlier attacks by bandits. When we were attacked again and the raiders broke into our base, a bandit cornered me in my bedroom, and I was done for! Willy crawled on his belly across the floor and bit the bandit in the ankle, who started shooting at Willy, giving me time to attack the bandit and take him down, but Willy was shot!
Willy saved my life, but he was severely injured and lay dying. We quickly took Willy to the hospital and were able to stabilize him. Willy wouldn’t only survive, but the doctor could also give him four new wooden peg legs during the operation! When Willy woke up and healed, he was able to bounce over the potato fields on his new wooden legs, a hero and protector of our village!”
How much does RimWorld cost? RimWorld costs €32 on Steam. It is so popular that it only gets a maximum discount of 20%, still costing €26. Many might speculate that it will eventually become drastically cheaper. But so far, it doesn’t look like that.
MeinMMO demon Cortyn has had her experiences with RimWorld: In my favorite game, I enslave children and make them work in mines
