RimWorld

Gameplay

The main objective of the game is to expand a colony made by the survivors of a spaceship crash. When enough resources are procured, the player can escape the planet. The game has a top-down two-dimensional view. The story of the game is generated randomly by an AI storyteller.

Storytellers

How the game makes events that improve the difficulty of the game is named "Storytelling".

The game ships with three preconfigured AI storytellers:

Characters

The characters have different backgrounds depending on random professions divided into two stages- childhood and adulthood. These have a very strong influence on the character and abilities of the character. The characters also have needs that will keep a person stable, these needs go from the basic to the more complex. The basic ones include food, shelter, and having well built and undamaged clothes on; while the more complex include having a place to sit to eat, or have enough time to increase their joy through various activities like stargazing or playing chess. There are two different points which will mentally break a character, they include a hard and a soft breaking point. A hard breaking point is more dangerous because it can cause a character to go berserk and attack other colonists, while a soft break can just make them go into a broken daze and be unable to do anything for a period of time. In the Alpha 13 build, there is a new social aspect to the game. Characters can have prior relationships to each other including, ex-lover, father, mother, sister, brother, etc. These relationships can benefit or detract from the needs and joys of a character.

Animals

On August 21, 2015 Alpha version 12 was released which introduced animal taming, trading, training and reproduction. Animals can be lured and tamed with food and will "nuzzle" its master giving a mood boost or in rare cases attacking the tamer if they fail the attempt. Intelligence has been added as a factor and will determine which skills the animal is able to learn. These skills vary from carrying and storing items to rescuing and defending its master. Eleven animals have been added including an elephant, two breeds of dog, cows, chickens, a Boomalope which "explodes and sets fires on death" among others. Reproduction, a feature that was highly requested by fans, has been added which allows the player much more freedom in managing their animal populations.

Map change

On December 20, 2016, Alpha version 16 was released. It introduced a wide variety of features to accompany a map change from a 2D world made of hex tiles to 3D spherical one. Added with this update was also the ability to make caravans that travel from one location to another, the ability to have multiple colonies and a new victory condition, the Travel Victory, where an event offers a ship, but it is far away from the colony on the map. Travelling there completes the game by allowing the colonists to escape the planet.

Plot

The plot revolves around several in-game characters who have landed on a stranded planet when their own spaceship crashed. Combat and psychology of the characters is very detailed; similar to Dwarf Fortress, every colonist has a different personality. Initially, the player starts with three in-game characters; if the player does not like one of their character's attributes, they can keep generating new characters until they find a character they like. The initial starting characters can be renamed if the player wishes.

As time goes on, more colonists will join the colony. They can either join of their own free will, or they can be taken prisoner and talked into joining the colony.

While the game is playing, the storyteller will occasionally throw a random event at the player, which is announced by a message icon on the right-hand side of the screen. These random events can be good (for example, a new colonist joins the colony), neutral (travelers passing through the area) or bad (pirate raid, solar flare, etc.) Each of these random events will affect the gameplay; for example, during a pirate attack, the player will have to defend the colony either by drafting the colonists or by building defense mechanisms around the colony.

Electricity is central to the game; almost all devices, from gun turrets to cooking stoves to heaters require electricity to function. It can be generated by various means, for example a wind turbine, a solar panel, or a geothermal power station. Electricity is distributed using conduits. If more electricity is produced than is currently required, the player can build a battery to store the excess energy. In addition, new features have been implemented which include less effective alternatives to electricity. For example, there is a wood fueled stove, which is less effective than the electric stove but doesn't require an electricity source.

The game ends when all the people of the colony have escaped the planet on a spaceship or when all of the colonists die. However, the players are given the choice to keep playing when this happens, as it's possible to wait for a wanderer to take residence on the ruins of the colony and continue the game.

Plot Update

On July 15, 2016, Alpha version 14 was released. Along with other additions to the game, this update added a scenario system, allowing users to choose and modify different starting plots, with different numbers of characters, starting items and map effects available.