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RimWorld is a colony management survival game, which allows the player to oversee the growth or demise of newly crash-landed colonists.
Throughout the journey you will encounter various random events, raids from rivals and in-fighting between the members of your colony, which will hinder your progress and will require creative ways to deal with. RimWorld offers uniquely immersive characters that have needs and interact between each other, a feature not present in most other titles of the same genre.
The end goal of the game is to slowly make technological advances in your colony to be able to leave the planet you ended up crashing into.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Replayability
In RimWorld each playthrough is distinct and different from the previous one, through the usage of random events, different traits of your colonists and your storyteller choice (storyteller is basically an AI, that generates events during your playthrough). While the core game mechanics of building, getting raided, gathering materials and so on remain the same, it's not uncommon to see new events and interactions even after spending hundreds of hours playing the game. Players on the forums and Reddit constantly share stories of funny occurrences in their colonies during their playthroughs, like their pet cat turning alcoholic and after drinking all of the booze going "Berserk", somehow starting a wildfire and wiping out all of the food supplies of the colony, leaving the colonists to starve. The possibilities can seem endless with so many factors at play while managing your colony.
Pro Large modding community
RimWorld has a large community that actively make and update mods for the game, which greatly enhance the vanilla experience or offer entirely new ways of playing the game, adding to the replayability aspect. For example, a mod like 'Medieval Times' introduces new weapons, apparel and buildings to your colony and acts as a player-made expansion pack, which changes the early stages of the game completely. Suddenly, you can find yourself not being raided by pirates, but having an army sent to your little colony by the local medieval warlord, or if you are lucky, a trading caravan might arrive, offering weapons and armor from distant lands.
Pro Immersive storytelling
RimWorld offers a unique approach to the colony management genre by having the characters feel human. They have traits that impact what type of work they are able to do and how they interact with fellow colony members. Personalities can clash affecting the growth of the colony negatively and if not managed properly colonists can go rogue and act in unpredictable ways. If colonists feel unhappy due to being insulted by their fellow colony members they can go "Berserk" and start attacking everyone around them. If colonists are not fed properly they can turn to cannibalism. However, if colonists are taken good care of and build relationships, they can marry each other, or attract new colonists, increasing the colony size. Each playthrough can feel like watching a different story recapping the survival of a small group in the wild and what challenges they faced along the way, and what prosthetics were put in place of a lost leg during a fight with the local wildlife.
Cons
Con Lack of tutorials in game
RimWorld doesn't provide a full tutorial and can be very harsh on new players, requiring a lot of trial and error to figure everything out. Alternatively, there are a lot of guides and tutorials available online that would help you get into the game, but a good in-game tutorial would be a great feature.
Con A simplistic, minimalist approach to graphics
If you have played 'Prison Architect' you might have noticed that the graphics of RimWorld seem very similar, as a lot of the models were borrowed from that game. While some people might enjoy the minimalist graphics of RimWorld, they are definitely not for everyone and people used to more advanced graphics might be left disappointed to find simple 2D models with few animations in RimWorld.
Con Basic User Interface (UI)
The panel that is used to manage the colony is pretty basic and lacks polish, which can sometimes make it difficult to understand and operate properly. Some players say that they end up finding helpful features (like changing the build materials) used entirely by accident or after spending 10 minutes searching for them. For more veteran players this is not a problem as after getting used to it is easy to navigate, but for newer players the UI could be more helpful or explained better.