RimWorld

Base-building is de rigueur these days, what with all those survival games, Minecraft, Fallout 4 and now Fortnite, but before all that we had tiny top-down or isometric worlds in which we diligently built cities and dungeons and theme parks and rail networks. The central appeal of management games was and is that they give us an idealised sense of what it is like to…

Tagged with Anno 1404, best games, best management games, bestest games, Championship Manager: Season 01/02, Dawn of Discovery, feature, management games, Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Rollercoaster Tycoon, RPS Recommended, rps-ultromegafeature, The Settlers II, Transport Tycoon, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Zeus + Poseidon, Zeus: Master Of Olympus, Banished, Cities: Skylines, Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress, Evil Genius, Factorio, Frostpunk, Planet Coaster, Prison Architect, RimWorld, Stardew Valley, Startopia, Surviving Mars, The Sims 2, Tropico 5.

Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months. Below is the full, hundred-strong…

Tagged with Age of Empires II HD, Call of Duty®: Black Ops II, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, feature, Final Fantasy XIV Online, Left 4 Dead 2, NBA 2K17, NBA 2K18, Shadowverse CCG, Steam, The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, The Sims™ 3, 7 Days To Die, Ark: Survival Evolved, Arma 3, Assassin's Creed Origins, Astroneer, Black Desert Online, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: WW2, charts, Cities: Skylines, Conan Exiles, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Crusader Kings II, Cuphead, Dark Souls III, Darkest Dungeon, Dead by Daylight, Dishonored 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Don't Starve Together, Doom, Dota 2, Dying Light, Elite Dangerous, Endless Space 2, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Europa Universalis IV, Factorio, Fallout 4, Farming Simulator 17, Football Manager 2017, Football Manager 2018, For Honor, Friday the 13th: The Game, Garry's Mod, Grand Theft Auto V, Grim Dawn, H1Z1, Hearts of Iron IV, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Hitman, Hollow Knight, Just Cause 3, Killing Floor 2, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, NieR: Automata, Northgard, Oxygen Not Included, Paladins, Path of Exile, Payday 2, Planet Coaster, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Prey, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, RimWorld, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, Rocket League, Rust, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Smite, Sniper Elite 4, South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Subnautica, Tales of Berseria, Team Fortress 2, Tekken 7, Terraria, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Forest, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, theHunter: Call of the Wild, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Tom Clancy's The Division, Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II, Wallpaper Engine, War Thunder, Warframe, Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War III, Watch Dogs 2, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, XCOM 2.

The planet is full of aimless people. Dozens of non-descript robots silently going to and fro, with no discernable purpose or meaning. Yes, I’m at Gamescom, the annual gaming conference in Germany, but I’m not talking about the visitors on the show floor. I’m talking about the on-screen player bots of Dual Universe [official site], a sci-fi survival MMO making big promises about player numbers…

Tagged with feature, Improbable, Klang, Novaquark, Seed, Spatial OS, The Sims, Dual Universe, EVE Online, Gamescom, RimWorld, Worlds Adrift.

'Terrible' only in the sense of their gaming capability. Honestly, I'm sure your laptop is lovely to look at and it was definitely a extremely sensible idea to spend all that money on it instead of buying a holiday or helping to save the pandas. Truth is, though, that playing recently-released games on the vast majority of laptops is about as effective as starting an…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, American Truck Simulator, Dead Cells, Dota 2, League of Legends, Night in the Woods, Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition, Prey, RimWorld, Rocket League, Scanner Sombre, Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Stellaris: Utopia, The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind.

Reed’s having a bad day: her spaceship crashed, she’s one of three survivors, and the other two won’t stop hitting on her. Unfortunately for her, she’s beautiful, which means that they’re immediately enamoured with her; unfortunately for them, she’s gay, which means the feeling is definitely not mutual. Her life is a constant hellish stream of corny pick-up lines and work for the colony. RimWorld…

Tagged with feature, Ludeon Studios, RimWorld.

We sent Brendan into sci-fi disaster simulator RimWorld [official site], where he quickly established a failing hotel in the middle of a scorching desert. In the final part of his diary, things fall apart. Is everybody ready? Okay, let’s smoke this shit. I order the staff to smoke their flake, and one by one they light up. Then we immediately move onto the next drug.…

Tagged with Diary, feature, Ludeon Studios, RimWorld diary, RimWorld.

We dispatched Brendan back into sci-fi disaster simulator RimWorld [official site], where he quickly established a failing hotel in the middle of a scorching desert. Last week, the hotel staff were in the grip of drugs and cancer. In part two of this three-part diary, a tragedy brings the hotel to its knees. Wide-eyes Pete was on another one of his binges. He’d gotten his…

Tagged with Diary, early access, feature, Ludeon Studios, mods, RimWorld diary, RimWorld.

RimWorld [official site] continues its march through early access, adding drugs and enticing modders, almost as if it wasn’t already wonderful. We sent Brendan back to the planet’s surface, where he decided to set up a hotel in the middle of the desert. In part one of this three-part diary, the colonists struggle to establish themselves. Shinichi needs a new kidney. He has been walking…

Tagged with Diary, early access, feature, Ludeon Studios, mods, RimWorld diary, RimWorld.

How does that old saying go - by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail? Or, in RimWorld’s [official site] case, by failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail; and even if you prepare really, really well, you’re probably best preparing for failure all the same. You see, even with the most meticulous preparation and planning, success is far from guaranteed in Ludeon Studios’…

Tagged with best mods, feature, Ludeon Studios, mods, RimWorld.

This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, RimWorld [official site]. Every player will have stories of their RimWorld colonists. Dramas set amid cabin fever, raider attacks, depressing decor, infected limbs, cannibalism and bloodthirsty local fauna. Personal dramas, tales of threat and victory, of small things and large things, tragedy and comedy. This colony-building…

Tagged with design, feature, narrative, The Mechanic, Tynan Sylvester, RimWorld.