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RimWorld (Unstable 1.0) Review – Even Better, if That Were Possible

RimWorld
Ludeon Studios

After patiently awaiting the long-anticipated release of RimWorld’s final 1.0 version, I recently broke down and jumped back into it. I played the classic experience of controlling three survivors (you can also choose a single person with lots of resources or five with limited resources). As I always play the game in a “pure” sense—accepting whatever randomly generated characters the game allots me and landing at whichever random spot it designates—I had a pretty poor draw of characters and landed in a frozen tundra as well. My little colony didn’t last that long.

After that game, I perused some of RimWorld’s recent Steam reviews and learned of a mysterious Unstable 1.0 version that had recently been released. Then I found out that in order to try it I merely had to opt into the beta from the game’s Steam library “properties” option, just as you do with most betas. I purposefully didn’t read any of the beta version’s notes so that I could learn about them naturally as I played.

In RimWorld you control survivors who have jettisoned from a destroyed space liner and land via escape pod onto a randomly generated rim world. Rim worlds are mysterious planets on the fringes of known space. Since your characters aren’t professional explorers or adventurers you can end up with a wide assortment of personality types from all kinds of backgrounds. Farmers, nobles, pop stars, etc. When you factor in RimWorld’s advanced AI on top of that, each combination of survivors will interact with each other in almost lifelike ways.

For my first 1.0 beta game, I ended up with an ex-dancer, Silvi; her husband, a rancher who was good with animals, Darcy; and a pacifist, Darren. Fortunately for me, this time around the escape pod deposited me into a forest. Although this environment had pretty cold winters it also contained abundant numbers of wild animals which could feed my trio through said winters.

One of the first things that I noticed about the 1.0 beta version is that the UI had been drastically improved and is less cluttered. The graphics also look a little more detailed. For instance, stoves now have little ovens attached to them and a perceivable stovetop as opposed to resembling a white box. I also found that my trio of survivors had a few pieces of armor from the get-go.

I also realized that you no longer start off with the ability to construct a solar-paneled generator. However, you now have access to a watermill generator which you can build next to rivers in order to meet your electricity needs. Unfortunately, all that I had on my starting map were a few stagnant bogs, so I opted for a couple of wind turbines and a wood-fired generator. There still isn’t any fishing as well.

My colony was doing pretty well, Darcy was building everything efficiently while staying very happy due to getting lots of lovin’ from Silvi at night. Darren helped with a lot of things as well including mining, crafting parkas for the winters, and skinning and cooking game that we’d killed. Another thing new in 1.0 is that the leathers that you accumulate from animals are much more organized into stacks instead of being randomly strewn around.

A plodding oaf named Jeff randomly crash-landed in an escape pod not far from my flourishing base so I sent Silvi to go and rescue him since she also had the best medical skills of the trio. Strangely, it appears that in 1.0 you can only capture your fellow jettisoned survivors, not rescue them as in older versions (although I’m pretty sure they’ll correct this in the official 1.0 release).

Silvi nursed Jeff back to health and convinced him to join the group. His skills were a great help to the colony and although at first, he insulted Silvi, he began heavily flirting with her from then on.

Suddenly, a gaggle of bandits assaulted the camp. As the menacing marauders planned their attack, I erroneously kept my gang working instead of setting them up into defensive positions. My reasoning was that since it usually took so long for bandits to begin their actual attack why not get some extra productivity out of my survivors. Big mistake…

As the bandits started approaching my camp I tried to get my trio (one was a pacifist) into position but by the time I got them back to my base the bandits were already there. We engaged them in a dramatic firefight and although we won in the end, all three of my combatants were wounded. Worst amoung them was Silvi who was rushed to a medical bed by her loyal husband, Darcy (Darcy can be a male’s name but mostly not in North America FYI).

Since Silvi was the camp’s medic so Jeff took over in that field and tried his best. By the morning Silvi had bled to death, which caused Darcy to go berzerk and attack the nearest person. He killed the camp’s resident pacifist, Darren, and everything went downhill from there.

Even though RimWorld can be as tragic as ever, I did get to see a good sample of the features we can expect to see in version 1.0. We can expect better graphics, and updated UI, new starting equipment, AI behaviors, trading mechanics, bridges and other new building and power options, and more. Try it out for yourself, just be sure you clear your calender.

SCORE: 88%

RimWorld features great graphics that make its colony survival gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:

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