Help me understand what this game actually is?

[Peculiar Head]

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this game and would love someone to help me understand it better. It *looks* like Factorio, but reads like about three totally different games that are sort of like in on Steam. Can anyone who is actually playing it offer a summary of what it's like to play it so I can decide if I want to buy it? Thanks!

[brian_va]

colony builder where you have to build and gather sufficeintly to keep your people alive while the storyteller (think of it as the difficulty setting, depending on what you select) tries to kill them.

[Monoxide]

This is a colony simulator. In some* ways its like factorio, but I really wouldnt make that comparison personally.

You start off with a small group of people (1, 3, 5) with varying degrees of resources (you can edit your own as well). And the whole point is to "survive" on the RimWorld (a foreign planet).

You will deal with weather, raiders, animals, food shortages, power shortages, etc. The game essentially tries to kill you.

There are 3 "story tellers" that determine what happens to you; standard, slow build, and random are their quirks. You can also set the overall difficulty between 6 tiers I believe.

You have control over where you start (which biome) each with different resources. Mountain areas have lots of stone/iron, forests have tons of wood, plains have wood and berries, deserts are hot and barren, ice sheets are barren and cold.

You will start with basic knowledge based around the starting type you chose, you can then research new things to make life easier. Such as starting with the ability to make shivs, then learning to make bows, then learning to make swords (similar with guns).

The "goal" is to build a space craft to escape the planet. However, majority of the players dont even go for that and just keep playing.

You can interact with other factions in both positive, negative and neutral ways. They will ask for trades and offer rewards, they will send traders, and they will also send raiders.

You can never be truly safe, as the game with throw sticks into all your spokes. Strong defense of turrets? Raid during a solar flare. Walls protecting your base? Sappers blow them up. Plenty of food being grown? Cold snap kills the plants.

EDIT: If you decide to try it, I say play vanilla a while to get the hang of it, then consider looking at mods. I personally do not care for mods in most games, but RimWorld really has a strong set of mod creators. There are a number of mods that make an enjoyable game even more enjoyable.

Were also close* to full release, with a pretty sizable patch on the horizon.

[stevasaur]

You may find this relevant. It's a couple updates out of date as far as the details go, but it covers the basic game conceits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj2o3YwlpaI&list=PLj_Goi54wf0d_XCoWEEQyK8XZaaY_LsS2

You control a variety of colonists (with various skills) who, for some reason (depending on the scenario), are on this Rimworld with a certain amount of starting supplies, but no shelter. You generally won't be controlling your colonists directly (except in combat), but you control them by managing work priorities, jobs and zones.

Work Priorities decide who does what. A colonist will basically run down the list of work types according to priorities you set, and whatever "job" has been assigned and has the highest priority for that pawn is what it decides to do.

You assign jobs by either placing blueprints or by using various tools: for example, the "Cut Trees" tool allows you to designate which trees should be cut to turn them into resources.

Zones determine where certain activities take place. Growing zones tell pawns where they should grow what, while more general "zones" are ways to designate where colonists will or will not go.

You use various resources to build objects, whether workstations (where certain types of work take place, like crafting/cooking), or structures like walls (which enclose areas as "rooms," giving various modifiers).

If you want a TLDR: it's Dwarf Fortress-lite, sans beards.

[Admiral Obvious]

As mentioned above, if you're familiar with how Dwarf Fortress works, even if you've never played it, this game is the easier to understand, graphical version of it, just with no magma.

[Morkonan]

Some people with various abilities and stats, sometimes benficial, sometimes not, crashland on a hostile planet.

They need to build shelter, get food, clothing, start developing some essentials, take care of themselves, fight hostile wildlife and even other colonists, deal with pirates, manufacture their own weapons, devices, clothing, power armor... All so that they might one day be able to build or find a spaceship to escape the planet.

There are difficulty levels as well as different "Storytellers" that determine the sorts of events and frequency of them that you'll be faced with.

You'll have to plan out your base, farm if you can, gather energy for electricity, find new colonists to invite to your colony, repel pirates and rival faction attacks, tame animals and harvest them, hunt, go on trade missions, rescue missions, destroy settlement missions, build defenses, research new technologies, trade with other factions, even pirates, repel invading aliens, defeat insect hordes, run from or defeat mad animal attacks and, of course, try to do all of this while ensuring the colonists don't go crazy and try to kill each other.

If you like building/simulation/crafting/exploration games, you'll like this one. It's got pretty good depth and the replayability potential is built-in, guarranteeing every game will be dramatically different from the previous one.