RimWorld is an amazing game about trying to survive on a remote Rimworld planet after your spaceship crashes. It starts simple: manage some survivalists building a basic colony. But chaos quickly erupts in hilarious and epic fashion. One minute you’re planting crops, and the next, a rabid tortoise is manhunting your colonists. This game delivers constant catastrophe in the most compelling way.
At its core, RimWorld is a story generator. You control colonists, who are little people with personalities and flaws. They make boneheaded mistakes, have mental breaks, get into fights, and generally screw things up constantly. But that’s what makes it so entertaining and memorable.
Unforgettable Colonist Sagas
I’ve had so many incredible stories from RimWorld. Like the saga of Bogdan, who ran a really crappy hotel in the desert. Or the time we accidentally cut off the wrong arm of a child pop star named Min (don’t worry, we hooked her up with a badass steel claw). My colonists are always bumbling into the most ridiculous situations.
Battling Colonist Idiosyncrasies 
Managing your colonists is both the joy and challenge of RimWorld. You prioritize their work priorities, but they have their own traits that impact what they’ll actually do. One might be an intellectual snob who refuses to do manual labor. Another could be a depressive who randomly breaks down crying. Maybe your best cook is a pyromaniac who won’t extinguish kitchen fires.
You never have full control, which leads to constant little fires (sometimes literal) that you’re putting out. A new noble settler might refuse to work while ravaging your food supplies with his gluttony. Half your colony could get gut worms, leading to a vomiting nightmare until you can treat them. It’s a never-ending cycle of hilarious catastrophes.
Strategic Colony-Building Chaos
Despite the pandemonium, RimWorld has you strategically construct your colony too. You plan out defenses, farms, power grids, workshops, freezers, and more. It feels awesome to efficiently design your little village. But of course, your chaotic colonists always disrupt even the best-laid plans.
Maybe your power will inexplicably go out during a heat wave, leaving you scrambling. Perhaps your lone researcher will have a mental break after your defense turrets gun down a trade caravan he was fond of. No matter how perfectly you build your colony, random disasters like raids, diseases, and colonist mental breaks will inevitably crack the surface.
Desperate Survival Decisions
When the chaos keeps compounding with no respite, your colony devolves into pure uncontrolled entropy. That’s when RimWorld becomes a harrowing story of survival at all costs. Desperate decisions get made as you fight to keep your colonists alive through the escalating nightmare scenarios.
Do you euthanize your prized grizzly bear for food after famine strikes? Do you harvest prisoners’ organs to save your colonists? If your colony goes full doomsday prepper, do you take the opportunity to practice surgical training by giving prisoners peg legs? The choice is yours, no judgment.
Exploring the RimWorld
As if the single colony wasn’t challenging enough, RimWorld has you interact with the whole Rimworld too. You can form caravans to conduct diplomacy with other factions, trade for resources, and even go on missions. Maybe you’ll get wind of some crashed ship you could raid for tech. Of course, sending out caravans also puts you at constant risk of being ambushed.
Colonist Attachment & Heartbreak
Despite grimdark circumstances, you inevitably become attached to your colonists. They gain intricate backstories, quirky traits, skills, relationships, and even art they create. Losing colonists hit hard precisely because you’ve invest
ed so much time developing these little digital people. A beloved character’s death can sting enough to make you quit the game for months.
Epic Narrative Payoffs
The tragedy and triumph are what make the amazing stories RimWorld generates so gripping. I’ve had grueling 100+ hour campaigns to finally build a ship and escape the Rimworld, only for waves of raids to decimate my colony just before escaping. Having that invested struggle play out into such cathartic life-or-death climaxes makes for an unparalleled narrative experience.
Simple Visuals, Unmatched Gameplay
Yes, RimWorld looks a little ugly and dated with its simple visuals. But its mind-blowing gameplay more than makes up for that. Between the deep-yet-accidental storytelling, challenging colony management, and just constant harrowing curveballs thrown your way, RimWorld delivers an experience you’ll never forget.
The Verdict: An Unforgettable Nightmare
So is RimWorld good? It’s one of the most unique, ruthless, and epically memorable games I’ve ever played. Be prepared to lose hours of your life to its gripping stories of colonist drama and rim world survival.
RimWorld delivers an unmatched, unforgettably ruthless experience through its blend of rich systemic gameplay that organically generates stories you won’t be able to tear yourself away from.
