RimWorld

Hark ye to the tale of Captain Kaleun

A former cadet on a three-hour-tour

A doughty old hottie of much-guarded poon

Faceplanted on <planetname> one fateful moon

 

 

She found herself whistling Robinson's tune

With a hermit called Alistair who hated to rassle

And a doting wife Fletcher who thought fights a hassle

So they all nearly died to a guinea pig hustler.

Kaleun then recruited some muscle to aid her

By beating them senseless and shooting their brethren

But the idiots died to wolves, goons or weather

Leaving more work to their glorious captain.

She quarried and sculpted, brought home the bacon

She hammered their steel into helmets and guns

She scienced technologies odd and arcane

But with each caravan her strength lastly waned

An arm lost to robots. Leg? - rabid bisons

Confined her to researching better prosthetics

Which Fletcher attached with stiff analgesics

In time for their captain to hold off the formics

Yet giddy with victory, the grizzled corsair

Tarried too long outside of their lair

Not sensing the fallout that dusted her lungs

Scanning and mining for wealth uncompared

Her sanity waning, her faculties faltering

She wanders forgetting, negotiates slurring

Yet the slayer of bandits and beasts beyond counting

Clings to her shotgun and stares down contenders:

"If you try to replace me, I'll buckshot your nethers!"

 

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If Northgard reminded me of Lords of the Realm, RimWorld reminds me of The Oregon Trail. Slightly off target, as RimWorld's closest relative is obviously Dwarf Fortress: digging, seasonal changes, room designations, animal breeding, materials of varying value, finished goods of varying quality, happiness metrics by the Stepford, more ways to die than you can shake a scythe at, etc. with the major caveat of a lack of three-dimensionality. It compensates for that lack by letting you mount expeditions outside your starter zone, which only partly accounts for my Oregon Trail comparison.

 

You start your adventure with only three colonists instead of seven and expansion is much slower, with ideal colony size seeming to peak around ten, one-twentieth the size of a dwarf tribe. They don't breed and while you can occasionally buy a slave or rescue a crashlanded survivor, you'll do most of your recruiting by capturing prisoners from the frequent raids sent against you and feeding them until Stockholm syndrome takes root. This can lead to some amusing situations down the line:

 

I built a monument to me kicking your ass. Best buds?

In fact it's lucky that scenario doesn't register as an official insult, because RimWorld encourages an almost Sims-level micromanagement of your colonists' moods. With so few workers, having even one drop into a depressive funk can prevent finishing a project on time, and lashing out against each other can quickly steamroll into crippling your colony's production until they're barely feeding themselves. The situation is even more grim for your original three, with any relevant gap in their skillsets rapidly becoming obvious. I wasn't joking when I said Kaleun's colony, with the other two incapable of combat, was almost wiped out by a single guinea pig. I have to reiterate my observation vis-a-vis Into the Breach: small numbers and randomness do not mix. If one of your first three dies you may find yourself lynchpin-deprived and might as well quit.

 

Of course, once you hit your stride, get some fields planted, climate-control your compound, set up barricades and traps, tame some livestock, you're much less susceptible to individual events. They may eat their weight in meat, but I've found a phalanx of mountain lions to be every bit as effective as the phrase "phalanx of mountain lions" suggests. Then, every time like clockwork, the events get tougher. Here's where we have to address RimWorld's official main selling point, the "storyteller" AI, really just a way of saying the algorithm spawning new objectives, hazards or enemies for you adjusts to your colony's success. A.k.a. level-scaling for a base-building game, a.k.a. treadmills, a.k.a. leveling sideways.

 

No matter the usefulness of such mechanics in keeping the action flowing, I still bristle at having an algorithm arbitrarily decide at exactly which time I should be punished for my success. In RimWorld it comes across as contrived as being notified that some occupant of my Oregon Trail wagon has spontaneously contracted and just as spontaneously succumbed to dysentery. Randomness is bad enough without edging into preordained calamity of a random nature. I'm getting a bit sick of killer robots raining down from the sky whenever I hit eight or nine colonists. I'm supposed to be playing the game, not vice versa; I'm supposed to be the one driving the action, not merely providing fodder for an algorithm to run my life. Though I don't play tabletop games, RimWorld's "storyteller" AI feels like playing with a G.M. who arbitrarily spawns a lich to attack you because you've looted your thousandth gold piece. Less storytelling and more like a jealous toddler throwing a tantrum.

I could cite other minor gripes, mostly having to do with colonists' skewed priorities, like running around hauling rocks with a gaping chest wound or going to sleep in a freezer because their last task happened to be storing food. However, I'm wary of unduly bashing RimWorld simply because it fundamentally grinds against my lycanthropic, hermit-past-the-edge-of-town mentality. To me, city simulators are about grand works, not citizens and the "Sims" precept of insinuating oneself into the private lives of others and manipulating their thoughts has always been inherently... creepy. I can certainly enjoy the propensity of simulators to fabricate personal or social dramas (exhibits A, B and C). I've been well amused by the antics of Captain Kaleun, the man-hating, half-senile, brilliant researcher, crafter and sniper, as well as the dashing young power couple (animal tamer / planter) who ruled my previous attempt at a colony... but building a base should still be about objects, not people, grand works and not the filthy workers.

RimWorld sticks laudably to its space western theme, and it truly does excel at weaving personal NPC narratives, but its main effect on me is rekindling my desire to fire up another Dwarf Fortress world and build my legendary monuments on the hundred-fold corpses of disposable nobodies.

 

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* Apparently I've reached that Grandpa Simpson age where everything reminds me of an interesting story. (Actually, it's not so much interesting as it is long.)