Rimworld

Today I started playing Rimworld, a game inspired by another favorite of mine, Dwarf Fortress. I’ve already nearly lost my entire colony to a crazed Megasloth.

I love games where you have imperfect control over your characters. The first time I experienced this was in a very old Commodore 64 game based on the movie “Alien” (Wikipedia Link). In it, you try to capture the creature in the airlock and blast it into space by giving the characters orders. But the characters can become terrified and ignore the orders!

Of course this is taken to the extreme in Dwarf Fortress, where your dwarves have minds of their own. You give orders by interacting not with them, but with their environment. You designate areas for storage, for construction, for mining and the dwarves get to work.

The best part about DF is all the crazy random events that can occur. Dwarves can go crazy and lock themselves in a workshop making strange demands. They can get sick. They can delve too deep and unleash demons.

Rimworld promises the same type of emergent gameplay, this time in a sci-fi world and with actual graphics and UI.

I can see this game keeping my occupied until Red Dead Redemption 2 comes out.

Purchase Rimworld

Written by Chris Chalfant. @chalfant