Rimworld, the sci-fi colony building game by Ludeon Studios, has been in early access development for five years. However, that will end next week when the game finally hits version 1.0 on October 17.
Rimworld is a colony building game first introduced back in 2013. The initial version of the game had you manage three people stranded on a planet as they build up a colony, gather resources, and fight off the occasional raid from pirates and mechanoids. Over the next five years, new versions added a variety of content, such as the ability to travel across the planet, the ability to create various types of drugs, and a skill dedicated to taming the various types of wildlife on the planet. The game is also highly moddable, including conversion mods to add features from things like Star Wars, the Cthulhu Mythos, and more.
Near the beginning of the year, developer Tynan Sylvester posted on Reddit that version 1.0 would be coming soon. He remarked:
This game can expand endlessly. That’s it’s nature. It’s not a closed story like Portal 2. It’s an open system endlessly moddable, expandable. You can always play longer, more colonists, more wealth, more colonies, more mods, again and again and again. There’s always more to want.
So faced with an endless treadmill of requests, I must draw the line somewhere. But where?
Five years. I figure five years is a decent enough place. Five years are enough for $30. Five years are enough to call a game finished.
Now, nine months after that announcement, version 1.0 is arriving. According to the official development blog post, not much has changed since Beta 19, which added features such as bridges and ally factions. The main difference is a variety of bug fixes and the ability to set restrictions on what your colonists eat.
Tynan also laid out future plans for the game. He’s planning to keep updating fan-made translations and creative content. There’ll very likely be a bug-fixing patch as well. Other than that, everything’s up in the air, although Tynan has some ideas on interesting directions the game could go.
Rimworld can be bought on Steam or its official website for $30