RimWorld Review (Io Hetra)
Probably gonna get chewed out for saying this but it's rather expensive. There are a lot of things you can do, and a great modding community, but the game has a sort of false depth. It's like they have provided us a lot of tools, and its fun to use them while you are still figuring out as you wonder the extent of possibilities. But soon as you figure out the mechanics, you realize that its actually very simple. And while understanding the mechanics and triggers are essential part of arcade games, it's counterintuitive for simulations. It makes it very difficult to maintain the suspension of disbelief and the game quickly loses its allure(at least for me). I understand that simple mechanics are part of this game's design philosophy and as a result the game holds very well mechanically. However, I feel that if you wanna create a simple game, keep it at a simple price.
Some notes for players that are coming here after seeing hyped up videos from youtube:
* The notes on paintings are randomly generated, and while they do have your character's name the context rarely make sense unless you really force yourself to make sense of it.
* The pawns have relationships in the sense that they either really like or hate each other and begin fights when they have too much mood debuff. They don't actually 'talk' to each other. Just randomly generated logs ("talked about politics/dogs") if they are in the vicinity.
* The pawns have traits like neurotic or pyro or beautiful. They affect either their skills or social standing. They don't have a personality as such. And traits are just a representation of what work they are good at (shooting, cooking), some of which they are better at learning.
* You can do a Warcrime playthrough. But the only effect in game you will notice is that your pawns and other colonists will have a mood debuff. It just another Wednesday in the Wild West.
* And the other colonies are pretty much non-existent. They don't really interact with each other or have an influence on the world. They are just.. filler.
If the price was half of what it is, I'd highly recommend it. But this price seems to be for what the game appears to be and not what it actually is. If you have great imagination or need some inspiration for worldbuilding or not worried about the price, go for it. (Really, its good). Otherwise depending on what you are looking for, there might be other games that are better. Hell during sale you can get entire Fallout 4 for cheaper. Subnautica if you want exploration-survival, Frostpunk if you want colony, Surviving Mars if you love Tech Trees.
I also need to add that, there is this growing popularity of a new metric of measurement where people see the 'hours of entertainment a game provides'. And honestly that's not a good metric. Spending 3 hrs playing Rimworld is not the same as spending 3 hrs watching Dune/Oppenheimer or swimming in a rented pool or watching TV. And on the same note 40 hours playing a beautiful linear story is worth much more than 100 spent in something like counter strike. People please stop encouraging this metric. I know we need to 'support the devs' but this is not the way. There is a growing trend of newer indie games being priced like AA games. When the best thing about indie games apart from their innovation was their reasonable cost.