Episode 154 - A Farm Upstate - Rimworld

A Warg is hunting the podcast for food! Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Rimworld, a colony sim strategy game. Rimworld is one of those games that you probably either already love or have never heard of, which is to say, it is exactly what its audience wants it to be, but appears absolutely inscrutable from the outside looking in. In Rimworld, your goal is predominately just to survive by collecting resources, managing colonists, and handling combat, all of which can become vastly more overwhelming than it appears on the surface. That sense of not being able to quite manage everything feels like it is an intentional decision, though. The game bills itself as a “story generator,” and a well-oiled machine of a colony, while satisfying, doesn’t exactly generate many stories. Having to handle unexpected breaks in the system, and in your colonist’s emotional state, keep things feeling tense and unexpected. As a simulation-heavy game, and one made by an extremely small team, there isn’t much power left for the cutting edge graphics, which have not been pumped up on level three, that you may be used to in modern games, but it’s simplistic style fits well and is part of a presentation that does not slouch in other areas. The sound design in particular is outstanding, with instantly recognizable sound cues for different actions and events, and a soundtrack that will, subjectively, rock you into another dimension. The UI, on the other hand, can be a bit confusing at times and lends the game its notoriety for being immensely difficult to get into if you’re new to the genre. It is a complicated game with a lot of deep systems and a lot of strategies to learn and develop, so you’ll have to listen to see how we adapted. We’re going to be talking about the struggles of starting the game, the wackiness the mechanics can bring to the table, and determine which famous work of Spanish surrealist art it most resembles. Thank you for listening this week! Once you listen to the episode, it will become abundantly clear that one of us in particular is a massive fan of this game, so it comes highly recommended if you can stomach the learning curve and the amount of time it will suck out of your life. But I also get that it’s a tough game to start, so we’d love to hear your experiences. Have you been playing for years, or did you pick it up recently? Have you played with the DLCs or only vanilla? What do you think about Thrumbos? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord. Next time, we’re going to be finally talking about Kingdom Hearts 2, the last in the main trilogy we haven’t talked about so expect that to be kind of the reverse of this episode. We hope you’ll join us then!