I recently gave Rimworld a whirl after seeing some youtube coverage of it, and i'm impressed!

It's for sale on steam for 30 bucks USD and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who loves the stories that come out of dwarf fortress but thinks its too hard to read through a guide to learn it. The developer cites DF as a main inspiration for the game. If you haven't tried DF, you really should, get the starter pack, it's free, it creates amazing stories and I've put at least 50 hours into and loved every minute, there are also some great guides out there. But if you've given DF a chance and just couldn't get into it due to its use of ASCII and keyboard-only controls, give Rimworld a try.

Rimworld holds your hand through the learning process and has a straightforward mouse-driven interface that is easy to use. It's a colony management game where you build, defend and populate an alien world. The setting is similar to Firefly, with lots of colonists with cowboy hats and pistols, and others with tribal gear and spears.

You start with a number of basic scenarios that can be customized to your hearts content, and choose 1 of 3 starting AIs to challenge you, with unique personalities.

The random elements of the game make for really entertaining playthroughs, My last game saw my fortress end with all 5 of my colonists gong mad for different reasons and tearing eachother to pieces. My current playthrough on a lower difficulty has gone well and allowed me to build an elaborate cave-base complete with heating and cooling, walls and bunkers.

It's fun stuff, hopefully someone else will check it out, i'd love to hear what people think.

Nice to hear. I was real curious about this game. Played quite a bit of DF back in college and this seems to be made to scratch the same itch of building a colony only to watch it fail over and over.

Will have to look into it, DF was always scary for me but loved the idea and Daves attempt to play the game. I'll have to look into it. On steam?

EDIT: It's early access? Damn, I don't want to go through this like I did with Prison Architect (both look similar in a way too...) in that I play early and get an unfinished version and after sometime never touch the game again. I literally haven't touched prison architect in....3 years or so.

Once I get paid I am buying this for sure.

Yah I've played about 4 hours and restarted a couple of times. It seems super cool! It seems fairly overwhelming at first but it doesn't actually seem that complicated, there's more just lots of niggly little things you'll have to figure out like cooking took me a little bit to conquer. I think I'll restart again on a more challenging difficulty that allows more random shit to happen before making any kind of proper judgement on it. Really looking forward to playing more of it though.

Idk.... I love the idea of Dwarf Fortress (was really excited when Dave was thinking about a series before he ventured off), but for some reason just couldn't get past the UI and awkward key commands (even with graphical mods). It's kinda the same way I feel about WWE and EVE Online: Love hearing and reading the stories from them, but I just can never see myself actually getting into them. Might be different with this depending on people's reaction to it and seeing it in action. $30 is just a steep price for an early access game IMO.

Yeah It's pretty neat, way simpler than DF but still very complex.

I've been playing it on and off for about 2 or 3 years

@nightriff: it is in early access, i had forgotten in my 6 hours of playing that it was if that means anything.

Prison architect had gaps that had me wondering why something was missing, i haven't felt that in my fairly short time with Rimworld so far. But i totally get the play it early disease that comes with buying in early access, it can be easy to lose interest.

Hmm, I might have to give this a shot. I remember reading someone's game and it sounded pretty much exactly like 99% of Dwarf Fortress stories (we're doing amazing! oh god why is everything lava!?). I've played a bit of DF but never end up finishing a game, but I've read so many stories. Mostly community forts (Boatmurdered, Syrupleaf, Deathgate, Drunk Fortresses, etc) and they've always been amazing.

Thanks for posting. Was going to make a thread asking for impressions on this. I want it bad but the only reason I might wait is to get a fully fleshed out experience later.

how good is the base game at teaching you how to play?

I was looking at this the other day and the main question I had, which I couldn't find an answer for, was does this game have multiple Z-levels like DF?

@thomasnash: It doesn't, and the developer has said that he doesn't think he will add it.

@smushroomed: it has a dynamic tutorial system which tells you about concepts as you go, it's not perfect but it covers the basics, you'll need to go online to find some specific bits, i didn't know how to make medicine for a long time until i looked it up.

So I've sunk in about 2 nights of play into this game and I have to say if you've wanted to get into Dwarf Fortress but were put off by the visuals or intimidated by the systems and UI this game is worth a look. There are a ton of systems but they come at you at a nice pace so they don't feel overwhelming IMO. With that said be prepared to lose your early colonies to disasters. I lost my magnificent wood compound after one of my power generation systems got hit by lightning and started a fire that eventually killed everyone. Next game something similar could have happened but I ended up being saved by a rainstorm only to lose everything to pack of enraged feral boars. It's differences like this that make the emergent story events really cool. Highly recommend.

There is no z-layer.

Looks really interesting, I decided I wouldn't buy another game until Deus Ex but...

This sounds very interesting to me. What are some good playthroughs so I can check it out for

I'd also recommend playing on basebuilding difficulty with the chillax AI if you want to see all the systems in a playthrough.

If you want a real intro to rimworld do cassandra on the difficulty above basebuilding... It's only ever gone horrible in the worst way. My current base is super built up but i've lost a couple people to a cougar and a group of raiders, only 2 colonists are actually capable of using violence so if i lose another we'll be basically defenseless!

@mikemcn: Also worth noting that I think from the options menu you can actually change the difficulty and ai mid game. The option was there but I didn't actually try it, presume it works though. So you could build up a cool base and then turn on the wild shit and see how long you can last like that

This popped up on my steam recommendation a few days ago, but im weary about the price especially early access.

It seems fantastic but I'm having a hard time getting around what is essentially a nonexistent tutorial and some very rough UI.

I am a long time Dwarf Fortress player and I am right at home with space Dwarves...I mean Rimworld. I played some super early access Rimworld and now its even better, its has all the things of Dwarf Fortress I love, I shot and wounded a raider captured him convinced him to join me and I noticed his left big two had been shot off....so I cut off his leg and replaced it with a simple prosthetic leg I bought from a space trade.

Later I had a major food shortage....why? Cos all the animals I was hunting was dead....no by me....but by a toxic cloud....which claim my pet bear!!! So I needed more steel from mining and more power from a steam vent...buuuuut I did not want people to go out in the air. So I dug into a nearby rock! Which soon became my walk in freezer when I learned I could put air coolers into the walls and such out the hot air.

So much fun.

@akyho: i kind of instinctively dug my base into a cliffside after all the dwarf fortressing i've done.

I wouldn't describe it as "for the masses" but it is MUCH more approachable than DF. You can at least bang your head against this one and make some significant progress without looking up tutorials or buying a text book.

Then again, where's the fun in that? :P

One thing I feel like I should mention if you're new to DF style games and want to give this one a shot: chances are you've read about all kinds of interesting stories of weird and amazing unique things that can happen. This is totally something that can happen and it *might* happen right away, however, chances are it might take a bit so give it an hour or two because you make your mind up one way or the other. The "amazing thing" when it happens may come up out of nowhere in a way you totally didn't see coming.

Also be prepared a thing you've worked on to be utterly and completely destroyed. Sometimes THAT's the amazing thing.

@mikemcn: I do believe I may be able to recreate our past Dwarf Fortressing and make a golden penis as a living quarters. Reference...http://www.giantbomb.com/slaves-to-armok-god-of-blood-chapter-ii-dwarf-fort/3030-21594/forums/the-story-of-shimmeroiled-554987/#47

It really throws me off how much this games visual style looks like Prison Architect. Even the UI for drawing your buildings, from what I have seen in the trailer, looks exactly like it PA.

@ssully: yea, it's super similar in that respect, almost too similar, but i suspect the main developer is more of a coder than an artist so he went with what he knew?

Hmm. I remember playing RimWorld some time ago. A couple years, maybe?

Been so long. I came across it somehow and took a chance on it. Got super addicted to it for a bit.

Cool game. I wonder how much has been changed or new stuff.

I want to try this but it seems immoral, my base is really nice and i don't want it destroyed but also thats the point of the game... argh.

@slax I originally watched EnterElysium play some of it, I believe. A favorite youtuber of mine is DasTactic, he's a bit more down to earth and easier to watch. He also just started a playthrough, probably in time for the steam release.

@mikemcn: Could make a different save branch

Absolutely everything looks like they just took it from PA, so much so I thought it was their new game, but there's not even so much of a mention on the Rimworld website acknowledging the obvious reuse.

This is the most overpriced early access game I've played to date.

This is the most I've seen the dev comment on it I think. He probably mentioned it in the Reddit ama he did recently but I can't remember/didn't see anything

He says the PA artist gave him his blessing and I haven't heard them guys kick up any kind of fuss about it. It's a weird one

I found a colonist (Lets call him Colonist A) who had gotten run off from a nearby colony who joined us, he was there for 6 months and made pretty deep friendships with my existing colonists. About 6 months later another colonist emerged who was running from some pirates and I was given the choice of having him join the colony and fight off the pirates and another set of hands around my 4 person colony seemed like a good thing as we hunkered down for winter. I took 3 of my colonist and equipped them with weapons and killed a handful of the pirates and drove off the rest. One of the dead pirates turned out to be Colonist A's brother who then slowly turned mad with grief. After a few weeks of erratic behavior he woke up one morning, equipped a weapon and starting to attack everyone he came across. I tried to subdue him but he was accidentally killed in the melee which was a bummer

I actually just found this thread from three years ago: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=23.0 , when trying to figure out, if the PA and RimWorld are from the same developer/designer.

Relevant parts from the developer:

I drew some inspiration from PA. ... But they do look somewhat similar; that's my fault. I'm not a good enough artist to come up with a really good original look. There are only so many ways to render characters on a tiny grid without using animations.

And later, as you also mentioned, he says that he has talked to the graphics artist of PA:

Just to update this, I have talked with Ryan Sumo, the artist on PA, and he's fully supportive of RimWorld. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

I haven't myself played the game (yet), but based on every video I have seen, it indeed looks and sounds awfully similar to PA. But if the PA folks are OK with the style...

I want to try this at some point.

I started to learn how to play Dwarf Fortress thanks to Dave’s introduction as part of the Dave Fortress series. Just watching the first part, you get a lot of the basics down. It’s actually not that complicated and offers some of the richest simulation/emergent gameplay combination.

Spacebase DF-9 is another game I wanted to get into, but it just seemed too simple.

i probably shouldn't have spent thirty bucks on this, but here we are.

it's also pretty cool. i am afraid to go back to my game as my colonists are pretty much going crazy and are doomed. plus man, the userbase on steam really has a type of game they champion, don't they? (this, factorio, stardew valley...)

Oh woops , I had meant to link that thread in the first place. Silly me

Glad to hear people like it, a friend of mine is one of the developers. He's just 21 :p

Finally pulled the trigger on this and man, I've already sunk like 8 hours into it.

First run was a wash, everyone starved because I didn't really understand food and temperature. Second run is going much better (except for three apocalypse fires in a row from different sources on 3 reloads, only time I decided to savescum because dear god fire is just the worst) and I have a good understanding of the basic systems now.

Playing on the base builder difficulty (I think it's one up from the easiest?) with Classic Cassandra. I love the names for the storyteller AIs.

Hmm, sounds interesting. I've always heard of people having a lot of fun with Dwarf Fortress, but the presentation was too rudimentary for me.

No z-levels! How else am I suppose to build my prototype drowning trap that is 20 stories of gleaming green glass! What kind of mechanism are there in the game? Are there pressure plates and levers?