Rimworld

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Dog Pants
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Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

Lets get this out of the way first:

Pfft, rim.

Okay. This is an alpha I bought into that looks a lot like Prison Architect but plays more like... erm, well it's a city builder type affair. Set in space. I was playing it this morning after downloading the second build released a while ago, and I've been quite enjoying it. So far I've got into a fist fight with an alien squirrel, fended off a few very antisocial drifters, had my battery explode and take out both my solar power and one of the wall of my living quarters, and shot at alien cows for eating my potatoes. I'll write more about it once I've got to grips with it better, but it feels quite promising for such an early build. I have a feeling that one of my guys is about to flip out because of low morale.
Dog Pants
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Re: Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

Yep, one did flip out. He petrol bombed a squirrel just outside the shelter then attacked the others. The ensuing fire burnt down half my crops and almost took out the sleeping quarters. He was knocked out by another colonist and bled out because I didn't know how to capture him. Another one, meanwhile, had a nervous breakdown and became melancholy. She wandered about refusing to eat, buried the space cow I shot and one of the raider corpses, then died of starvation. With only one colonist left I abandoned and started again.
shot2bits
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Re: Rimworld

Post by shot2bits »

Oooh i remember seeing some articles and such on this a while back and meaning to keep an eye on it and forgot so cheers pants!

Also every time i do see anything about this my immediate thought is of Red dwarf's Rimmerworld.
Dog Pants
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Re: Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

Not seen any Rimmers yet, although my colonists are so quirky that they could be. Of my current colonists only 50% will do any manual labour, the rest presumably having some sort of back problems or muscle wasting disease. This makes food production tricky - the remainder will harvest their crops in a big swathe and then it gets left on the ground rather than the food store next to the kitchen. You only start with three colonists (crash survivors), so that's not great.

I did work out how to recruit more people - a crazy fat naked woman attacked us and one guy shot her so hard with a Lee Enfield (fuck knows how space colonists have got one of those) that it knocked her out. I locked her in a room and romanced her until she agreed to join the crew, and it turns out she's a scientist with OCD. So while she won't carry anything, it does mean she has a lot of time for researching and cleaning. Maybe I shot her too hard.

I tried to 'recruit' a few more people like this. In another attack I captured a raider, but he was so unstable that even if I did convert him I'd be worried he'd go feral again. I built another prison just in time to pick up another crazy woman in the next attack and she seems more promising. Problem is I still had this psychopath raider. I tried beating him up to see if that made him less volatile, but that just scared him, and the prisoner next door, and upset the guard. So I shot him, which scared the other prisoner even more and upset the guard even more. Maybe I should have kept him and sold him as a slave instead.

I think I'm approaching the end of what I can do in this version. I've built all the basic stuff and researched a few things, but the research doesn't really go anywhere. Once more systems are implemented though it's looking like it'll be quite good.
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Re: Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

I've played a good few games of this revision. Not a great deal has changed, mainly the trading system and the introduction of factions. The latter means I can spend cash uselessly on inproving my standing with people who now turn up and hang around my camp. It also means more pirates arrive, generally because they hate me more every time I kill some of their guys. The former means I could buy an assault rifle and an LMG with which to defend myself.

Unfortunately it didn't prevent my ultimate demise - a party of half a dozen or so raiders versus my equal number. I put up a defensive line of pistols and shotguns behind some rocks and hid my heavies on the flanks. Unfortunately they brought a rocket launcher. The tactics worked to an extent - I killed all but two, but as they fled I had three of my own dead and three down injured. I got to watch two bleed out and the last one starve to death behind a rock, presumably because he couldn't walk. So it's looking up as a story generator, but it really needs more meat.
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Re: Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

I've been playing this again after a few big updates. There's a lot more to build and a more DF style injury system. It's pretty playable now, although there's still room for improvement. My biggest criticism of this build is the AI storytellers. It's narrowed down to three now, a classic mode, a building mode with fewer attacks, and a random events mode. I've tried random and classic and both are hard as nails. On classic though it seems to deliberately set you up for catastrophe in a synthesised version of Dwarf Fortress. I say synthesised because it feels forced - whereas in DF you're often the cause of your own demisen because you dug too deep, here you seem to have a string of unrelated events forced upon you in quick succession. Most recently a large group of pirates with automatic weapons, which I fended off with about 80% casualties. My two remaining healthy colonists trying to nurse two badly injured and one captive back to health when an off-map AI 'psychic drone' reduced their morale and sent them crazy. The captive broke out and escaped, one injured colonist starved to death before they could recover, and the other recovered but starved to death anyway because his leg had been blown off. Every game seems to end fairly similarly, and it never really feels like it's my fault or that I've learnt how to avoid it next time.

Even so, it's turning into a great game.
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Re: Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

Many new versions later and I've returned to Rimworld. It hasn't changed dramatically since last time, but after adding a bunch of new systems last time they've fleshed it all out again. I'm pretty sure it's getting weirder too - in my current game there was a toxic gas cloud covered the whole map for about a month. My guys were safe enough in doors, and it wasn't toxic enough to do too much damage if they went out, but it killed all of the wildlife and a lot of the vegetation. So the map is brown and covered in animal skeletons. I also, later, got attacked by a horde of killer rabbits after a psychic disturbance sent them all crazy. There was an eclipse at the time so my solar powered auto-turrets were useless. They injured several of my guys and the rest hid inside until some visitors showed up and distracted them. Anyway, it's still pretty good.
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Re: Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

Rimworld is now on Steam. It's still pretty good. Like a space-Dwarf-Fortress, but not as complex (which is both good and bad).
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Re: Rimworld

Post by Dog Pants »

I've come to the end of another stint on this. It's still quite hard, took half a dozen attempts on easy mode (not passive). My last colony was doing pretty well despite over half of them refusing to do physical labour - even to the point that they were starving to death because nobody would haul potatoes to the fridge. Until a fucking insect hive appeared in the dining room and insta-kersplatted all my combat colonists. Cheers game.

Incidentally, that's the one thing that stops Rimworld competing with Dwarf Fortress - in Dwarf Fortress disaster is inevitably of your own making, because you dug too far. In Rimworld it's arbitrary.
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