RimWorld is one of those games that are heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress, which should immediately let you know what depths of complexity, creativity, strategy and madness lie within. What you might not expect is that the premise is remarkably simple - all you have to do is keep your small band of survivors alive for long enough to construct a rocket with which they can escape the hellhole of a planet they have found themselves on. What could possibly go wrong?

Unsurprisingly, the answer is pretty much everything. Your characters are probably going to go crazy and start beating the ever-living daylight out of each other because they're constantly cooped up in small houses, frequent bandit raids and bizarre random events will leave many of your favorite characters with significant and long-lasting wounds, while harsh environmental conditions will often force your survivors to resort to some... creative methods in order to find stuff to eat.

Be prepared for the worst, because sooner or later, it will arrive

RimWorld truly is a harsh mistress, but I never could bring myself to actually hate it. This is because all of the random nonsense and tragic events can create some amazing and unpredictable stories, stories that will stick around with you for many years to come. Personally, my favorite little tale is that of Steve the local psychopath.

One fine, misty morning Steve woke up with a mad look in his eyes, and after breaking the legs of the poor doctor that tried to stop him, he wondered outside of camp to fight a grizzly bear bare-handed... a fight he somehow ended up winning! And what did Steve do once the deed was done? Why, he went right back to sleep of course, completely ignoring the doctor that was still sprawled on the floor.

It's a silly little example, I'm aware, but when you consider how many events and interactions your characters will go through, you can hopefully get an idea of just why RimWorld is utterly captivating. There really aren't that many games that come close to its level of procedural storytelling, so if you're even remotely curious about the concept, I would highly recommend you visit either Steam or the official website to learn more.

If you're actually thinking about playing it, however, then you might want to wait for a little while longer as RimWorld will finally be leaving Steam Early Access this October 17th. The 1.0 release will bring with it a whole bunch of bug fixes and tweaks, which should make the experience quite a bit smoother. So until then, allow me to leave you with one of the recent developer videos, just to give you a glimpse of what RimWorld is really like. Enjoy!