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RimWorld

RimWorld - Early Access Impressions

We've immersed ourselves in managing some rather peculiar characters in RimWorld, trying to keep them sane, clothed, and fed.

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Lucie was the outsider of the colony, and in a colony with only three people, the impact was greater. She suffered from drug withdrawal, and often refused to contribute. She would come apart so often, wandering into the woods late at night, shirking what duties she deigned participate in. Val the deep space miner wound up building almost everything out of the wood that was scrounged, and Patel the novelist was the hunter, the cook, the butcher, the farmer. Lucie wasn't pulling her weight, and it wasn't hard to imagine colony life without her being much different, except less of a drain on resources. That is, until the raid came.

The Hammers, a hostile tribe that plagued the other groups scattered throughout the region, had sent a scout party to steal from the colony. In the firefight one of the attackers was severely wounded. If the colony would make room for the prisoner, the already dwindling medical supplies and precarious food situation would worsen. But the alternative was letting this person bleed to death, or executing her, as little mercy as she might deserve for threatening their lives.

The appointed warden wasn't making headway with the prisoner, every attempt to get her to see things their way was rebuffed. After the battle, Lucie's stress levels had dropped since she'd been allowed lighter duties and longer time to sleep, but her mood was still volatile. Late one night, Lucie, having recovered from her latest fugue, tried her hand at making the prisoner feel welcome. What Lucie lacked in so many skills, she shined in communication. In only a few days, she and the prisoner made a genuine connection, and before long the former Hammer raider recovered from her wounds became a valuable member of the tribe, contributing greatly to its research and work ethic. Lucie conquered this former aggressor in a way that bullets never could. And so the tribe grew.

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RimWorld is a survival management game reminiscent of games like Dwarf Fortress, where you indirectly control a semi-autonomous group of workers stranded on a hostile world full of resources to exploit and things to build. It takes a bit of getting used to, the interface is multi-tiered and there are a massive amount of things you can command the workers to do, even more as technology upgrades are researched, but these actions are fairly logically laid out, with some in-game help menus for objects and commands. While there are keyboard shortcuts, the game encourages clicking in menus making the learning curve reasonably straightforward for a game this complex. The game is full of objects: different materials, weapons, animals, and machinery, though one need not worry about things like seeds or ammunition. While you can start primitive enough that electrical equipment is a long way off, the standard game gives you enough materials that electricity, solar panels, gas stoves, and later radio communication and turrets are possible, though implementing these things adds difficulty when maintaining power connections, and building your setup in a way that prevents short-outs and damage.

Your main struggle is to keep everybody fed, clothed, and sane, and some of this may feel a bit repetitive when there isn't much for them to do but do their tasks, but the amount of things you have to keep up in the air at any one time means you're rarely bored, especially when planning for the long-term. In the example above, culled from a post-tutorial standard game, Lucie the counsellor began as a liability but as we adjusted our playing style to accommodate for her quirks she became a valuable negotiator, and as her stress levels dropped and her withdrawal symptoms receded, she became stronger and more reliable.

It doesn't seem like psychology ever changes for adults, despite traumas, which is a shame, but the personality system in the game adds a lot of depth. A lot of care should be taken when starting the game to get a good mix of skills, as characters tend to refuse to do certain types of work, and some work is more important in the early game. Characters can be re-rolled, which gives you some idea of the breadth of possibilities as well as helping you guard against setups you may not want. In another game the group consists of Red, who obsesses about getting a bionic body part, and until this need is met his mood is affected; Sofia, the pessimistic brawny builder; and Fleet, the pacifist who has a way with animals and plants. Getting these people to work well together creates a little narrative in your head, a good sign in what might manifest as a mechanical exercise in a game with less personality.

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In addition to raids there are plenty of events, including caring for refugees, fighting off vermin, flash fires during thunderstorms, alien-induced phenomena, and debris falling from orbit. These events are moderated by one of several "storyteller" systems that inject some drama without (necessarily) overwhelming your colony too early. These events can still wreck you, though, and you are often forced to make interesting/tough ethical and logistical choices.

It is a bit disappointing that one is confined to the starting map, despite being able to pick that location out of a large, randomly generated world full of different biomes and resource types. Trade caravans, animal herds, and raiders come to you, but you seem unable to go to them, or explore new areas in general. There are places on the map to mine, which rarely reveal things, but there isn't much emphasis on taking a group and going anywhere; it is a game about base building and growing a colony. There are hints of larger threats in the time we've played, and as your technology grows you are capable of initiating trade and better defending your home. It will be interesting to see if game features are expanded, but the core experience so far is satisfying.

Rimworld is currently in Steam's Early Access program. It is still in alpha, and as such the game may change from that depicted here once released from Early Access.

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