RimWorld Review

RimWorld: A Story Generator Disguised as a Colony Sim

RimWorld is one of those games that never leaves my library. Not the "installed on a drive somewhere and forgotten" kind of library either. I mean the short list I keep coming back to, year after year. And a big part of the reason is simple: no two games of RimWorld will ever be the same.

Ludeon Studios calls it a "sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller," which is accurate but undersells it. My best description? If Dwarf Fortress went to finishing school, picked up The Sims' obsession with feelings, and then got stranded on a hostile planet with the crew of Firefly. It's a survival game, a base builder, a strategy game and a soap opera all rolled into one, and it somehow does all four really well.

Crash Landing 101

Every game starts the same way: your little group of colonists (the game calls them pawns) crash lands on a planet that is already home to other villages, tribes and outlander factions. Some of them will trade with you. Some of them will want you dead. Most will change their minds at least once.

Your first job is survival, and it's urgent. You need shelter, beds, food and some kind of plan before night falls, the temperature drops or the first wild boar decides it doesn't like your face. Where you land matters too. A temperate forest is forgiving. An ice sheet or extreme desert is a whole different conversation.

Then there's the AI storyteller you pick at the start, who decides what the planet throws at you and when. Cassandra Classic ramps up the pressure steadily, Phoebe Chillax gives you long breaks to build, and Randy Random is exactly as stable as his name suggests. Same map, same crew, different storyteller? Completely different game.

You're the Boss... Sort Of

Here's where RimWorld really gets interesting. Your colonists' skills decide a huge part of how successful you'll be, but you can only ever guide them. You don't click a colonist and tell them to chop that tree like an RTS. You play from a god view, setting work priorities, schedules, zones and rules, and then they go do things based on those rules... plus their own quirks, traits and beliefs.

One colonist is a great shooter but incapable of violence thanks to their backstory. Another is a brilliant cook who happens to be a pyromaniac (what could go wrong in a kitchen?). Your best doctor is abrasive and nobody wants to sit beside them at dinner. You're less of a commander and more of a very stressed HR department.

Going Rogue

And when HR fails? They will totally go rogue on you.

If their needs aren't met, colonists will snap and take things into their own hands. Sometimes that means a food binge that wipes out your stores, wandering around in a daze, or locking themselves in their room. Sometimes it means a tantrum where they smash the furniture you just built. And sometimes it means going berserk and taking a swing at whoever is closest. Sometimes they do it for no good reason at all, just because that's the way they roll.

It sounds frustrating, and it is, but it's also what makes every colony feel alive. The stories this game generates are the reason it has such a huge community. Everyone has a "you will not believe what my colonist did" story.

Clubs, Guns, Bigger Guns... and Mechs

Once you've got the basics covered, defense becomes the priority, because the other factions will raid you, early and then consistently after that. Your starting arsenal is usually pretty primitive (think clubs, bows and maybe a pistol if you're lucky), but the research tree lets you work your way up to:

• Guns (finally)
• Bigger guns (miniguns are exactly as fun as they sound)
• Automated turrets (for when your colonists are busy having feelings)
• Explosives, mortars and IEDs (boom goes the raid)
• And eventually mechs of your very own (only fair, since the planet keeps sending its own)

Base design becomes a strategy game all on its own. Walls, choke points, sandbags, traps and the infamous killbox, which might be the RimWorld community's favourite piece of architecture. Plan it right and raids become target practice. Plan it wrong and you'll be digging a lot of graves.

Fine Dining and Fancy Floors

But survival and defense can't be your only focus. Ignore your colonists' mood for too long and they'll all go crazy and stop listening to you (or worse). So building up the luxury and beauty of your base is just as important as building walls.

Ugly, cramped, dirty rooms drag everyone down. A proper dining room, nice floors, sculptures, a rec room with a horseshoe pin and a chess table? Suddenly people are smiling. Food matters too. Nobody loves the nutrient paste that keeps a young colony alive, so stocking fine and lavish meals, chocolate and beer goes a long way.

You can give them drugs too... but that doesn't always work out well. A little smokeleaf after a rough raid can take the edge off. A full-blown addiction with withdrawal in the middle of winter? Not so much. And luciferium is a deal with the devil, and the devil does not offer refunds.

Road Trips

Eventually your colony gets big enough that you start looking past your own walls. You can form caravans and head out on expeditions to other settlements to trade, take on quests and missions, and even launch raids of your own. Just remember that every colonist you take on a road trip is one fewer colonist defending home... and the planet knows it.

And if the base game ever starts to feel familiar, the DLCs shake things up big time. Royalty adds psychic powers and an empire to deal with, Ideology lets you build entire belief systems for your colony, Biotech brings genetics, children and those mechs, and Anomaly turns the whole thing into a cosmic horror game. Add the massive Steam Workshop modding scene and you will never run out of new ways to play.

Your Colony, Your Rules

Whatever you want to make of RimWorld and your colony, you can. Seriously.

A lot of players lean into some dark territory. Organ harvesting. Prisoner "recruitment" programs. Entire empires built on human leather hats. (Yes, really. Yes, it's a whole community meme.)

Other players go the complete opposite extreme: strict vegan, zero-violence, open-commune sanctuaries where colonists refuse to harm a single creature and defend themselves with nothing but traps, walls and trained animals. And with Ideology, the game will happily back you up either way, making colonists genuinely happy about the cannibal feast or genuinely upset when someone eats a chicken.

The same game supports both of those colonies, and everything in between. That's pretty rare.

Final Verdict: Who Is This For?

RimWorld has a 98% "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam at the time of writing, and for $39.99 CAD you get a game you can play for literally years. It does have a steep learning curve with a lot happening under the hood, and the simple top-down art won't win any beauty contests, but once it clicks, it really clicks.

One thing to know going in: there isn't much of a written story here. There's a backstory for your crash and an escape-the-planet ending if you want it, but nobody is handing you a cast of scripted characters or a big plot twist. The drama comes from your colonists, not a script. And the menus and work tabs take some getting used to before the controls feel natural.

✅ A must-play for colony sim, base building and strategy fans
✅ Perfect for anyone who loves games that tell their own stories
❌ A miss if you want flashy graphics or a hand-holding campaign

If watching your carefully planned colony fall apart because one guy didn't get his fine meal sounds like a good time, RimWorld is your next 500 hours.

Just maybe don't ask your colonists where that new hat came from.