Question before purchase

[Mash]

I have been thinking about getting RimWorld. I have been watching some videos, but cannot make up my mind. I like complicated and difficult/challenging strategy games.

1. Does the game provide a good challenge in regards to developing a strategy or do you go through the same steps each time and can win without much difficulty?

2. Which aspects of this game make it difficult or challenging?

3. Any other thoughts?

[UnknownSeeker]

1. Does the game provide a good challenge in regards to developing a strategy or do you go through the same steps each time and can win without much difficulty?
A: As with many strategy games there are many different ways to play. Rimworld gives you a lot of freedom of to play and how difficult you want to make it on yourself. (By not only choosing the difficultly level but also choosing your starting location. If you make a base in the desert you have to worry about cooling your colonists. If you make a base in the Tundra you have to worry about keeping them warm and about managing your food because 8 months (or more) of the year you can't grow anything.)

2. Which aspects of this game make it difficult or challenging?
See above. Also the randomness of the encounters you never know if the enemy is going to drop right on your door or if they are going to siege you or if they are just going to rush you. For that matter you don't know if your going to be fighting alien robots or tribesmen with clubs. Not to mention in the next update it looks like the enemies will be getting a lot smarter and starting to avoid known ambush spots.

3. Any other thoughts?
There is no real* end game yet (yes there is a part were you make your own ship but after I did it once there was no real motivation for me to do it again... I hope in the future he adds a way for the ship you launch to land in a new spot with the colonists on board so you can start all over with your same people...) You basically just see how long you can last until you get overrun.

It seems you are interested enough in the game to watch people play it and to post on the forum. Go watch someone play it on youtube or twitch and if it seems like something you can enjoy and you still don't buy it then that seem a bit masochistic to me. 

[Regret]

1. Does the game provide a good challenge in regards to developing a strategy or do you go through the same steps each time and can win without much difficulty?

That depends on your own creativity and willingness to take risks, I find that playing it safe gets really boring really fast.
Just try stuff, its a sandbox.

2. Which aspects of this game make it difficult or challenging?

Climate, certain pawn character traits and health issues. In theory alphabeavers could be horrible if left unchecked, but I haven't tested letting them live.

3. Any other thoughts?

[Mystic]

I have been thinking about getting RimWorld. I have been watching some videos, but cannot make up my mind. I like complicated and difficult/challenging strategy games.

1. Does the game provide a good challenge in regards to developing a strategy or do you go through the same steps each time and can win without much difficulty?

There are certain aspects of the game that you will eventually develop patterns for dealing with that work more often than not, but there are many elements that vary dramatically from one game to the next.  (See next answer for more details.)

2. Which aspects of this game make it difficult or challenging?

Each map you start on is unique with regards to feature locations and availability: hills/mountains, water, good growing areas, availability of wild growing food and raw materials, etc.  Then throw in the fact that you will be starting with three colonists who have very unique capabilities and penalties that require you to employ them in the best way, and the fact that the specific enemies and other problems you will be facing vary as well, and the result is that each and every game quickly develops its own unique character.  In one game you'll be scrambling to power your base sufficiently to keep your turrets operating, while in the next game the problem will be food, and then the next game you'll have trouble keeping your colonists healthy or getting enough new ones to grow the colony, and in a game after that you'll set up camp in an area that is very convenient for resource gathering but which leaves you vulnerable to attack from too many angles.  There is always a new challenge (or more than one) in each new colony in Rimworld, or at least that's been my experience.  Sometimes it is frustrating and there seems to just be no way to keep a colony going (man, I hate malaria) ... which makes those times when I am able to build up a substantial colony with 10+ colonists, good defenses and lots of money to spend on high tech very satisfying.

I highly recommend getting it, and can't imagine you'd be disappointed.

[Lady Wolf]

Watch a few let's play videos (Such as Splattercat's https://youtu.be/1jWXa0hMgaI?list=PLWIol4T7LuSjnpwoIJ0PxJHteFaANsIy- ) and you'll quickly get a better sense of how deep and challenging the game is.

The variety of planets and colonists as well as random events should make it necessary to continually adapt your strategy with every play through, not to mention the variety of mods that seem to be available.

[milon]

3. Any other thoughts?

I bought RimWorld back in Alpha 3, and it was worth the $30 then.  It's definitely worth $30 now, and it keeps getting better!

[Dave-In-Texas]

I find the simplest way to change the challenge level (aside from the difficulty setting lol) is to change the biome I land in and the amount of flat land where I land.

for example, landing where there are no hills or mountains means a limited amount of steel/stone; so even if you land in temperate forest (the easiest zone in my book) you might end up with lots of food and wood but not much else without trading.

[Mash]

Thank you for your feedback. It looks like it is worth a purchase. I will wait until the next Alpha release.

Cheers.

[RickyMartini]

I have been thinking about getting RimWorld. I have been watching some videos, but cannot make up my mind. I like complicated and difficult/challenging strategy games.

1. Does the game provide a good challenge in regards to developing a strategy or do you go through the same steps each time and can win without much difficulty?

You can set the difficulty to be so high that there is almost no chance of surviving. With many different biomes, enemies and starting points there is a huge possibility to never experience the same playthrough again.

2. Which aspects of this game make it difficult or challenging?

An extremely intelligent, diverse and efficient AI. The combat system is a challenging contrast to the rest of the gameplay, which is survival. And survival is a separate challenge within itself.

3. Any other thoughts?

Tynan, the only developer at this time, is active almost daily in the forums and frequently leaves comments. He shows his last work in a changelog, which he updates almost day by day. The work he does is very clean and professional and the whole game development feels very immersive. Funnily it is still an alpha, but sometimes people forget.

[jaeden25]

Thank you for your feedback. It looks like it is worth a purchase. I will wait until the next Alpha release.

Cheers.

There are a lot of mods that completely change the gameplay that are really fun and can be extremely hard also.

[milon]

Thank you for your feedback. It looks like it is worth a purchase. I will wait until the next Alpha release.

Cheers.

You can certainly wait for the next release, but I want to make sure that you understand that you only need to buy it once. When you purchase RimWorld, you get the current alpha, all future alphas, and the Final release of the game.

[Lady Wolf]

It's also worth bearing in mind if you plan to play with mods (there's many that really add to the game, such as prepare carefully and the UI enhancement mods) the current version has a wide array available so picking it up now will let you enjoy them sooner.

With every new release it can take a few weeks or so for people to update their mods so playing now  gives you a bit more content then you'll have in the early days of alpha 11.