RimWorld isn’t your normal kind of game. The official description gives you a
hint of this:
RimWorld follows three survivors from a crashed space liner as they
build a colony on a frontier world at the rim of known space. Inspired
by the space western vibe of Firefly, the deep simulation of Dwarf Fortress, and the epic scale of Dune and Warhammer 40,000.
But before you think this is just another game like so many others, there’s a big twist:
In RimWorld, your colonists are not professional settlers –
they’re survivors from a crashed passenger liner. They’ll be
accountants, homemakers, journalists, cooks, nobles, urchins, and
soldiers.
There’s a lot to like about this game – though it’s technically still in alpha (and has been since its first release at the end of 2013), it’s more polished and developed than many other independent final releases. It’s also very actively developed, with new releases bringing performance and feature improvements. Like many indie games, graphics aren’t its biggest draw, but they’re stylized and quite acceptable.
It’s crossplatform – Windows, Mac, and Linux – and whether you use Steam or a direct download, there’s an active modding community which lets you tweak and enhance gameplay significantly.
RimWorld has aspects of worldbuilding, RTS, and 4x games, and should appeal most to those who enjoy those kinds of games.
Rimworld is $30 (which includes all updates and the final game), and is well worth it.