What I like about RimWorld

Started by Hypolite, September 22, 2013, 12:06:25 PM

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Hypolite

I see a lot of people around here telling they love Rimworld, reporting bugs, telling their first impressions, asking for more features, sometimes complaining about existing ones (fire anyone?), but I wanted to write about the very reasons why Rimworld, even at that point, has been that compelling to me. I'll put aside the graphics in my critic, not that they aren't good at all, but we are talking about a storytelling-oriented video game, and I wanted to specifically talk about the gameplay.

First of all, except the first few minutes where everything is new and there's a lot to take in at once, I found the handling of Rimworld very smooth. Most controls are intuitive and don't require an extensive tutorial to be mastered. Even stacked items on the same square are easy to separate with a few clicks.

About the simulation itself, even though the colonists are autonomous, there has been almost no time where I would wonder why a colonist would perform a bizarre action or venture far from the base camp. Except for running into fire, but hey, bright light and heat make a very good reason to get close. Without going into a deep comparison, I had this sort of WTF moment in Towns where one of the villagers would make a trip across the whole map just to gather the bones of a dead critter. Of course, he would eventually get wounded or killed by the same exact threat that killed the critter.

The overview screen is also very convenient. Although the priorities are currently set in stone, I liked the idea of being able to assign specific colonists to specific task, and being reminded the proficiency of each one of the workers on the same screen.

I also enjoyed the Thoughts screen. It gives a very clear picture of what is affecting the mood and how much. It is a very good support of player-conceived story as well as giving priorities if the player's goal is to improve the mood of its colonists. The Character screen is less original, but does the job well to give a quick glance at what the colonist is good at as well as giving additional story material by the means of the Traits.

Combat was one of the best feature I had experienced in that kind of games. Especially firefight. AI fighters take covers, sometimes try to flank player-controlled targets, and the graphics to represent the aiming is clear and well-thought. Moving targets are more difficult to hit with a firearm, and going straight to hand to hand is seldom a good choice against an armed enemy.

Overall, RimWorld in his current state is an unbalanced but really solid game, with no big design flaw that I can think of that would seal its fate even before its launch without major rework. I would like to extend my congratulations to Tynan who did a fantastic job so far. I realize that it is far from over but the player experience is already very good.

Tynan

Thanks very much!

I'm glad the stuff I've worked on is benefiting you. Especially all the interface and clarity-assisting features and redesigns.

I really do think that no part of the game is worth having if it's not comprehensible to players. Which is why I try really hard to make sure that not only are interesting simulations of interesting things in the game, but that they're designed in such a way as to be accessible to human understanding. You can't tell a story about a sequence of events unless you know what happened and why.

Priorities actually used to be modifiable. You could set each colonists's work priority for each type to a number and they'd do the work in the numbered order. It turns out to be a bit too complicated. I want to see what other arrangements might work to make their prioritizations clear and powerful yet sensible and comprehensible and adjustable.

About combat - the game is actually descended from a tactical combat game I made late in 2012 (same engine and basic tech) which is why there's such a weirdly deep system for calculating hit percentages over cover based on angle, skill, weapon, distance, etc, and why the AI can flank you and so on. I hope the combat (which interacts a lot with the structure of the space) can be better than all other such base-building games because of this.

Working on getting it done for you and everyone else!
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Hypolite

Thanks for the answer, I just wanted to point out the things you did right so far so that you know exactly where you are in terms of what's right/what's wrong/what's missing feedback ratio :)