Kickstarter: Rimworld

[Peter McCoy]

Just watched this video by Quill18 on Youtube who specializes in strategy games.

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He plays a lot of games like Civilisation, SimCity, Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis - if you like those sorts of games check him out. The game in question is Rimworld, a space colony building/management game currently on Kickstarter. It's similar in gameplay to Dwarf Fortress but in a sci-fi setting and with a better UI and user-friendly controls and graphics.

Check out the Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tynansylvester/rimworld) which has a short video showing off some gameplay as well as a message from the (currently) sole developer (who worked on Bioshock Infinite for 4 years!) detailing his aspirations for the project as well as how he plans to spend the funding if the Kickstarter succeeds.

What's good about this Kickstarter is that it's not a concept - there's something playable right now and if you back appropriately you'll have access to the pre-Alpha build as soon as it ends on November 1st. If you watch the Kickstarter video you'll learn that the dev plans to hire an artist and musician, which means the funding will be used to essentially replace existing assets and improve the current game as well as add more content, rather than to plan, design and possibly fail in making something from scratch.

[Peter McCoy]

So the Kickstarter ended a few days ago and I got my hands on the Alpha yesterday. I have to say that so far I'm really enjoying the game. It's very easy to play and get started the moment you load up your colony. The basics of your colony can be up and running in a few minutes - walls, floors and doors for rooms (along with lights if you're a kind overseer!), plop down some power-buildings such as solar or geothermal generators, a nutrient dispenser and you're set. The rest os up to you. Anybody else who gets their hands on this any time soon - I advise you to grow crops sooner than later. It's surprising how fast you can run out of food!

My current colony is in a great defensible location and I've secured it with three turrets guarding the entrance area. But an attack from a raider with molotov cocktails ended up setting one of them on fire. And before I could put out the flames, the turret exploded and took out the other three as well! I'm thinking it was due to them being connected by the same power node so I may experiment with separate power for each one and see how that fairs. I also recruited my first prisoner so my colony is 4-men strong!

One of the goals of the Kickstarter is for better art assets but personally, for now I find the current sprites quite charming.