The day is finally here. RimWorld is now available on Steam! You can buy it at the RimWorld Steam Store page. It’s got full support for Steam Workshop and Cloud saves.

Also, Alpha 14 – Scenario System is out! For full information Alpha 14, including the change list, look at the Alpha 14 preview thread.

More good news – everyone who owns the game can move it to Steam. Hooray! You get a Steam key! And you get a Steam key! To get your Steam key, go to the automated link and key sender.

(EDIT: The following no longer applies. Due to fraudster attacks, we’ve been forced to cut off Steam keys for new purchases from our site. You can still buy directly on Steam, of course, at the same prices.) A business note – If you want, buying it from our site is better for us. This way, we get significantly more of the money, since Steam isn’t taking their cut. You can still immediately grab your Steam key and put the game on your Steam account. Obviously we’ll still be very happy if you buy it either way!

Here’s the Alpha 14 features rundown video! It explains the scenario system and other new features:

On a final, more serious note – please don’t buy Steam keys from third-party sellers. The only ways RimWorld has ever been sold are on our website or on Steam itself, which means that any key being resold is a stolen or improperly sold one. The common scam is this: Hackers steal thousands of credit cards, use them to buy copies of the game from our website, redeem the Steam keys, and then sell these keys at half price. The credit card holder eventually notices the fraudulent purchase and gets it reversed. The end result is that the scammers keep the sale money, and we lose a sale, and we lose the chargeback fees incurred by payment providers (which can be $15 per copy!). It can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So buying these keys is much worse than piracy, because it takes money directly from us, and gives money to thieves. We will be working to make it more difficult for scammers to pull this off, and disabling stolen keys where we find them, so any key bought at a third party likely won’t work. Buy original and all should be good.

Alpha 14 will be released with the Steam release, on July 15, at 1pm EST.

The game is not released yet! You can’t get it yet! But it’ll become available on Friday. For info on how Steam keys will be distributed, please see the FAQ.

For now, here’s a preview! Below the video, you can find a summary of all the changes we’ve made for Alpha 14. Steam up the hype train!

Change summary:

Scenario system

• New scenario system allows you to choose, randomize, and customize special situations to play in. Determine starting situation, your type of community (tribe, colony), permanent map conditions, starting items, animals, health conditions, and traits, and change special rules.
• Several built-in scenarios, including one matching the classic RimWorld experience, are included.
• You can randomize new scenarios.
• You can customize scenarios with a special interface that allows creation of any scenario you like.
• Scenarios can be uploaded to or grabbed from Steam Workshop with a single click.
• ScenPart: Permanent version of all map conditions (eclipse, solar flare, etc).
• ScenPart: Planetkiller scenario part: World is destroyed on X date.
• ScenPart: Climate cycle which makes the world get warmer and cooler over a period of years. Winter is coming.
• ScenPart: Disable building a given type of building.
• ScenPart: Pawns start with health condition.
• ScenPart: Start with items.
• ScenPart: Map is scattered with items.
• ScenPart: Configure arrival method (pods or standing)
• ScenPart: Starting pawns are all between ages X and Y
• ScenPart: Pawns explode on death (configurable type and radius)
• ScenPart: All pawns from source (game start/all) have trait X
• ScenPart: Starting animal(s)
• ScenPart: Disallow mining
• ScenPart: Disallow hunting
• ScenPart: Disallow taming
• ScenPart: Disallow growing
• ScenPart: Disable incident
• ScenPart: Multiplier for any stat on the game (move speed, mining speed, etc)
• ScenPart: Disallow building

Pawn overlapping

• Pawns can no longer overlap during melee combat (unless they’re really small). No more animal deathstacks! This also creates new tactics around blocking, surrounding, or back-line shooters. We had to write a bunch of AI and blocking code to make this function.

AI

• Raiders can now enter “steal” mode if they see enough value. They’ll grab your stuff and carry it off.
• Kidnapping raiders now work together much better to kidnap. Instead of everyone fleeing at once, some will kidnap while others cover them.
• AI dressing algorithm is now better at making outfits to withstand cold temperatures. If there is no way to make a survivable outfit, pawns won’t arrive at all. No more raids arriving and keeling over in -60C weather.
• Predators no longer hunt boomrats and boomalopes.
• Pawns will be smarter about avoiding traps in various situations.

New stuff

• Full Steam Workshop support for mods.
• You can now play as a tribe in some scenarios.
• Added torch lamp
• Added pemmican for low-tech food preservation.
• Research difficulty is now related to your faction’s tech level. Researching techs above your level is harder. So if you’re a tribe, researching spaceflight will be difficult.
• Added research (needed for tribes only): complex clothing, electricity
• Added research (needed for non-tribes only): pemmican
• Added research: air conditioning, autodoors, gun turrets
• Added ‘ransom demand’ incident. Can fire after one of your people is kidnapped.
• Added “killed my X” social thoughts so people dislike their loved ones’ killers
• Added new class of “minor” mental breaks, which can happen at mood under 40%.
• Added minor mental break: food binge.
• Ground fertility is now reported on mouseover.
• Added moisture pump, which slowly converts wet terrain to dry terrain. Requires power.
• Hives now pop out glow pods – bug light sources that glow for 20 days (as long as they’re installed) and can be reinstalled or sold.
• Added traits: creepy breathing, annoying voice. These are socially repellent.
• Added trait: pyromaniac. Will go on firestarting sprees when stressed, and never puts out fire.
• Added panther for jungle biome. Because I discovered panthers aren’t real and I need to cope with this somehow.
• There is now an orange glow to help you identify very hot areas.
• Added/replaced animals created by the excellent Kay Fedewa:
  • Caribou
  • Cassowary
  • Deer
  • Emu
  • Arctic fox
  • Fennec fox
  • Red fox
  • Gazelle
  • Husky
  • Ibex
  • Lynx
  • Megatherium (prehistoric giant ground sloth)
  • Ostrich
  • Raccoon
  • Rat
  • Turkey
  • Arctic wolf
  • Timber wolf

Interface

• Added a row of colonist icons along the top of the screen, with various status info. They can be clicked to select, double-clicked to jump to, or box-selected to multi-select. These icons can be turned off.
• Trading interface now lets you type in the number you want to trade instead of dragging to the number.
• Animals tab now has gender and life stage informational columns
• Animals tab now has a “slaughter” checkbox column to allow easy slaughtering of many animals
• Animals tab now has checkbox columns for each trainable, to allow easy training of many animals
• Reworked the right-click menu to be prettier, more readable, more solid, and better handle large lists of options.

Exploit solutions

• Traders, visitors, raiders, kidnappers, animals, etc will now escape if surrounded by walls with no way out.
• Manhunters and insects will attack doors if colonists try to hop in and out of them while getting shots off.
• Hives must now be tended by insects, so if insects are all instantly killed by a turret wall, the hives will die out.
• You can no longer avoid the ‘executed prisoner’ mood impact by just shooting or starving the prisoner; pawns will get a “prisoner died innocent” thought. A similar solution applies to the deaths of colonists.
• Solved various powerleveling exploits. Once colonists have learned a certain (high) amount in a day, they’ll learn at a much-reduced rate until the next day.
• Flowers are no longer good animal feed (reduced nutrition).
• Fixed exploit where players would give prisoner to raiders for kidnapping, to make raiders go away without a fight. Solution: Raiders only kidnap colonists.

Other

• Updated to Unity 5.
• World generation is now part of the new game process, instead of being separate.
• Roofs must now be manually built and torn down by colonists; they do not appear and disappear instantly any more.
• Reworked AI food selection algorithm to take into account personal mood impacts, rottenness, and other new factors. e.g. Now cannibals will actually seek out cannibal food because they get a mood bonus, while non-cannibals will avoid it.
• Flow for opening worlds and savegames from old version is now improved; the “warning, old version” dialog comes before you open them instead of after.
• Deworked mods config menu to have a much nicer selection and ordering interface.
• Humans can now eat unbutchered corpses (though they really don’t like it).
• Infestations are easier and grow less exponentially.
• Infestations only appear deeper underground now.
• AI now runs away from grenades thrown by their own faction.
• Tortoises aren’t so deadly any more.
• Animals no longer do incest.
• Humans now do incest.
• Seeds for world gen are now generated from actual words instead of random letter strings.
• You can now set both minimum and maximum skill on a bill.
• Beauty trait now has four stages: Staggeringly ugly, ugly, pretty, beautiful.
• Some backstories now force pawns to have a given trait (e.g. Model->Beautiful)
• Trade caravans can bring pack dromedaries.
• Projectiles fired by hunting colonists no longer intercept random targets.
• Some traders buy and sell furniture now.
• Gut worms and muscle parasites vanish sooner.
• Reworked ancient tomb loot generation. Plasteel is sometimes found on pod people. So are components.
• Nuzzling is now a visualized, recorded social interaction.
• Various refactorings to make modding easier and code easier to maintain and more flexible. Much more functionality is now implemented as composable ThingComps.
• Many, many, many other balance changes, gameplay and interface refinements, and bugfixes.

I’m stoked to announce that the next version of RimWorld, Alpha 14, will be released on Steam Early Access on July 15, 2016. You can add it to your Steam wish list on the RimWorld Steam page. On Steam, the game will have full Workshop support, for sharing mods and scenarios. It will also support Steam Cloud.

Non-Steam users will, of course, still be able to access your DRM-free downloads as you always have. They’ll update just as before.

EDIT: For those asking whether they’ll get a Steam key, please refer to the FAQ answer about this.

Alpha 14 is a large update, since it’s been several months since Alpha 13 and we’ve had 2-3 developers working continuously. So, it’s got about 5-6 developer-months of effort in it (the original pre-Alpha for the 2013 Kickstarter had about nine developer-months). However, it is also a refinement-oriented update. I could’ve packed more mega-features in addition to the scenario system, but instead chose to focus on fixing a lot of old issues. Veteran players will notice a huge number of subtle improvements at every level, which newcomers should have an even more polished experience.

I’ve also been reworking the code to try to support modding better. Making it easier to mod the game makes it more fun to mod, which modders like, so they make more and better mods, which players like. I think it’s a powerful and often under-emphasized way of turbocharging a game community. I’m still soliciting requests in this thread: What would make the game easier to mod?

Being Early Access, we’ll continue to release new alpha versions of RimWorld with new features into the foreseeable future. We’ve already started some new mega-additions for Alpha 15. We can’t squeeze them into Alpha 14 because it’s too late and they’d introduce bugs. But momentum is good and we’re poised to leap forward in the months ahead.

I’m also going to be doing something unusual, which is trying to actively market the game. I much prefer game development work to marketing work, and so have usually followed the Field of Dreams marketing strategy (“If you build it, they will come.”) But, for something as important as the Steam release, I think it’s worth making some effort to get the word out. Wish me luck! And, if anyone has any ideas for ways to spread the word, I’d be happy to hear them in the comments here, or on the forums.

I’m planning on releasing RimWorld into Steam Early Access this summer.Steam release will also be the release of Alpha 14, which will be very content-rich and have at least one major new system. Check out the Steam page here.

Non-Steam players will also get the same updates at the same time, through the current SendOwl distribution system.

Regarding giving out keys, I’m afraid I can’t promise this because of Valve’s policy. The old answer from the FAQ still applies.

The current tentative release month is July (though this could be delayed if something unforeseen happens). I considered pushing it sooner, but I want to have time to make Alpha 14 really juicy for you, and to pump up a bit of hype. June is also a bit crowded.

For Alpha 14, we’ve been working intensely on two tracks. The first is just refining everything that was there. We’ve consumed a massive amount of feedback and applied that to the game. So there have been hundreds of balance changes, interface tweaks, systems adjustments, and bugfixes to solve the issues that are coming up.

The big feature is the scenario system. The classic RimWorld experience is to survive with three crash-landed passengers – but the game isn’t limited to this any more. Now you can customize, trade, and randomize different scenarios. In each one, the starting conditions, items, characters, research, and persistent game rules are different.

For example, we have a scenario where you play as a lone rich guy out seeking adventure, trying to build a colony on his own. He starts with a lot of wealth and research, but is alone. Another scenario has you playing six lost tribespeople trying to build a new home. As a tribe, they start with less tech (though they do have some tech that the space people lack) and get research penalties when researching high-tech projects. However, they have advantages in numbers.

Scenarios can also be randomized and manually edited. A random scenario might have a permanent toxic fallout, but start you with a pile of golden spears and ten pet bears, but not allow you to tame animals. You can edit that any way you like, write your own summary, description, and game start dialog. Here is a list of the editable scenario parts as they are now (we’ll likely add more):

• Permanent version of all map conditions (eclipse, solar flare, etc).
• Planetkiller: World is destroyed on X date.
• Climate cycle which makes the world get warmer and cooler over a period of years. Winter is coming.
• Disable building a given type of building.
• Pawns start with health condition X.
• Start with X items.
• Map is scattered with X items.
• Configure arrival method (pods or standing)
• Starting pawns are all between ages X and Y
• Pawns explode on death (configurable type and radius)
• All pawns from source (game start/all) have trait X
• Starting animal(s)
• Disallow mining
• Disallow hunting
• Disallow taming
• Disallow growing
• Disable incident
• Multiplier for any stat on the game (move speed, mining speed, etc)
• Disallow building X

Scenarios are integrated with Steam Workshop, as are mods. Both can be easily uploaded from within the game, and you can subscribe or unsubscribe in the Workshop interface while playing – the mod and scenario lists will update in real time in-game.

We’re still adding and fixing more stuff. Let’s get the hype train started!

I’ve just uploaded a new cut of our trailer showing some of the newer features added since the last trailer. Now you get to see animal taming and training, infestations, marriages, and more!

Here’s Alpha 13 – Trapped With Your Ex!

To get your update, you can re-download from the same link as last time. Your personal download link never changes. Update emails with your links are being sent out over the next few hours. If anyone lost their download link, they can also get it resent at the automatic link resender.

Old saved games and worlds won’t work in this update, I’m afraid. So please don’t try to load them; they’ll just generate errors.

The end-user license agreement has been fully released this time, so be sure to take a look at it before downloading. It’ll apply to you when you download the update, and is also included with the game.

Below is the video and the major additions list, including permadeath mode, which I forgot to mention before. Have fun!

Permadeath

• New permadeath mode. One save file, save on quit or autosave only, no take-backsies when something goes horribly, insanely, or laughably wrong. The way RimWorld was meant to be played.

Relationships

• Colonist family and social relationship system / Social relationships with friends, rivals, family, chats, arguments, and fights
• Opinion system; pawns care about dozens of memories and situations to determine their opinions of each other
• Family members out to cousins and beyond
• Lovers, fiancees, marriages, ex-lovers, ex-spouses
• Lovin’
• People may get in social fights with those they dislike (even neutrals and enemies do this)
• Animal bonding
• People who leave the map while traveling, fleeing, being kidnapped, etc. can come back later as raiders, visitors, joiners, etc.
• Marriage ceremonies and parties

Prison breaks

• Prison breaks. Prisoners pick the locks, get out, seek weapons and work as a group to escape.

Infestations

• Self-reproducing, spreading underground insect hives
• Insect hives are dangerous but produce succulent insect jelly

Animals and predators

• Many more animals, some of which will hunt people
• Some animals are now predators, including colony pets (e.g. cats catch squirrels)
• Animals can gnaw corpses apart directly now

Threat response mode

• Decide how colonists should auto-respond to threats: flee, attack, or ignore?

Economy

• ‘Components’ resource used for machinery and electronics
• Ground-traveling trade caravans from other factions
• Deeper research tree with more low-tech options and more things to research
• New fueled buildings: stove and generator
• Various new lower and higher-tech production buildings
• Two research tables: simple and hi-tech. Hi-tech is required for some projects.

Misc

• New exotic infections: Gut worms, mechanite infections which give abilities at a cost of pain or fatigue, trauma savantism
• New chronic diseases: Carcinoma, asthma, hearing loss
• New “firefoam popper” provides a way to combat fire besides punching it.
• Character records which keep stats on each character like number of kills, injuries, surgeries, etc.
• Extreme desert biome
• Colonists in relationships can share beds
• New double bed; royal bed is now gold-trimmed and fancy
• New flatscreen and megascreen TVs
• Colonists can now visit sick people in bed to cheer them up
• Sick people in bed can now watch TV
• Building damage overlays
• Days are now twice as long as before, with years being half as many days. (This means that years are exactly as long as before in actual play time, just divided into a smaller number of longer days.)
• The year is now split into seasons instead of months.
• Animal kibble
• Deep rooms stay cool in the heat
• Richer tale recording and better art descriptions
• Hundreds of balance improvements, optimizations, tweaks and fixes

Hey all, just a quick update here.

Here’s a quick rundown of the features you can expect in Alpha 13. We’ve got no release date for it, but it’s in the testing and polishing phase. However, keep in mind that this is a big update and even with smaller updates this phase lasts for weeks.

On to the features!

Relationships

• Colonist family and social relationship system / Social relationships with friends, rivals, family, chats, arguments, and fights
• Opinion system; pawns care about dozens of memories and situations to determine their opinions of each other
• Family members out to cousins and beyond
• Lovers, fiancees, marriages, ex-lovers, ex-spouses
• Lovin’
• People may get in social fights with those they dislike (even neutrals and enemies do this)
• Animal bonding
• People who leave the map while traveling, fleeing, being kidnapped, etc. can come back later as raiders, visitors, joiners, etc.
• Marriage ceremonies and parties

Prison breaks

• Prison breaks. Prisoners pick the locks, get out, seek weapons and work as a group to escape.

Infestations

• Self-reproducing, spreading underground insect hives
• Insect hives are dangerous but produce succulent insect jelly

Animals and predators

• Many more animals, some of which will hunt people
• Some animals are now predators, including colony pets (e.g. cats catch squirrels)
• Animals can gnaw corpses apart directly now

Threat response mode

• Decide how colonists should auto-respond to threats: flee, attack, or ignore?

Economy

• ‘Components’ resource used for machinery and electronics
• Ground-traveling trade caravans from other factions
• Deeper research tree with more low-tech options and more things to research
• New fueled buildings: stove and generator
• Various new lower and higher-tech production buildings
• Two research tables: simple and hi-tech. Hi-tech is required for some projects.

Misc

• New exotic infections: Gut worms, mechanite infections which give abilities at a cost of pain or fatigue, trauma savantism
• New chronic diseases: Carcinoma, asthma, hearing loss
• New “firefoam popper” provides a way to combat fire besides punching it.
• Character records which keep stats on each character like number of kills, injuries, surgeries, etc.
• Extreme desert biome
• Colonists in relationships can share beds
• New double bed; royal bed is now gold-trimmed and fancy
• New flatscreen and megascreen TVs
• Colonists can now visit sick people in bed to cheer them up
• Sick people in bed can now watch TV
• Building damage overlays
• Days are now twice as long as before, with years being half as many days. (This means that years are exactly as long as before in actual play time, just divided into a smaller number of longer days.)
• The year is now split into seasons instead of months.
• Animal kibble
• Deep rooms stay cool in the heat
• Richer tale recording and better art descriptions
• Hundreds of balance improvements, optimizations, tweaks and fixes

Hey everyone, just a quick update here. I’m back from travelling and am now working full-time on RimWorld. I’ve largely dealt with the paperwork tsunami that awaited me upon my return, so with my near-full attention as well as ongoing work from Piotr, the game is making smooth progress towards the Alpha 13 release.

The private testers are currently banging on the test version, while we fix bugs and sneak in some final improvements. Usually this phase takes a couple weeks, though this one could last longer because there is so much stuff in this update. Because of the long period since the last alpha (when Piotr was working and I was working quarter-time), this is the largest update since the initial pre-alpha in 2013.

I don’t have a release date, I’m afraid. I just wanted to let you all know that everything is moving along well. And I’m quite excited to see what you guys think of the new relationship system, marriages and lovers and breakups, social fights, fueled buildings, animal bonds, much more research, more better art, prison breaks, insect hives, on-foot trade caravans, and hundreds of other improvements to the game.

After Alpha 13 comes out, we’ll probably target doing the Steam release. However, the Steam release is a game’s most important moment. One does not simply release a game on Steam. It takes a lot of effort and time to prepare a proper, decently-marketed Steam release, plus any time Valve might take to approve the final build. So there’s no date – just know that it is coming.

Everything is rolling forward smoothly just as it was described in the last blog post. I’m working reduced time, keeping up with website, PR, paperwork and legal essentials, while writing designs. Piotr is working full time, slamming those designs into the game and refining the technicals.

Things are progressing as fast as they ever have, so the next alpha will be the biggest jump in features you’ve seen by far.

Here is a quick overview of some stuff that’s been added:

• Colonist family and social relationship system.
  • Brothers, sisters, parents, children, aunts, uncles and so on are all randomly generated. So e.g. your colonist’s brother can appear as a refugee (or a raider!)
  • Colonists develop lover relationships – and break them off.
  • People have opinions of each other which change with circumstances (e.g. you botched my surgery and cut my eye out – I hate you! Or, you’re my brother – I love you!).
  • Social interactions play out different ways with different effects, depending on who is communicating and what they think of each other.
  • People can have “social fights” from social interactions gone wrong.
  • Marriages with ceremonies. Divorces. Love and heartbreak.
  • Multi-person beds.
  • Social bonds with animals.
  • Tons more in this system. But no kids (yet – that’s a whole other ball of wax).
• People who leave the map while traveling, fleeing, being kidnapped, etc. can come back later as raiders, visitors, joiners, etc.
• New diseases with new mechanics.
  • Carcinoma (on any body part).
  • Fibrous mechanites, sensory mechanites.
  • Gut worms.
  • Muscle parasites.
  • Trauma savant.
  • Asthma.
• New “firefoam popper” provides a way to combat fire besides punching it.
• Prison breaks. Prisoners pick the locks, get out, seek weapons and work as a group to escape.
• Tons of other over and under-the-hood improvements.

Can’t wait to get it to you guys. I’ll be back in March. (edit: I’m not sure when the alpha will actually be finished. It could be after March – just to be clear).

Hello everyone! As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m still on a bit of a break here until early next year. However, I just wanted to update you on our ongoing progress.

With the magic of laptops and Internet, and excellent work from coding prodigy Piotr ‘ison’ Walczak, progress on the game itself is continuing at full speed even while I’m not at home. Currently I’m working something like quarter-time on finance, business, game design, PR and code consultation, while Piotr provides most of the mental muscle and keystrokes to actually write and refine the code. The end result is that we’re adding features almost as fast as we ever have.

We work iteratively, so things change a lot, often in unexpected ways. So I won’t go into detail about exactly what’s being added. But I can offer some generalities. So far, we’ve added:

• Self-reproducing, spreading underground insect hives
• Social relationships with friends, rivals, family, chats, arguments, and fights
• Many more animals, some of which will hunt people
• “Components” resource used for machinery and electronics
• Ground-traveling trade caravans from other factions
• Character records which keep stats on each character like number of kills, injuries, surgeries, etc.
• Extreme desert biome

I appreciate all discussion but please don’t ask for more details on these! Check the FAQ for more info on why we don’t release detailed descriptions of unreleased designs.

I’m afraid there won’t be any releases until I’m back. I want to be fully present to manage the tricky and sometimes hectic process of testing and release. So I’m sorry you won’t see these goodies for a while. But that should mean the next version will be a bigger content jump than any before.