I have a soft heart for punishing games, so it’s no surprise that RimWorld was on my wish list for quite some time. Though after the week of Factorio I did 3 years ago, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that game, seeing how close they are in some ways.
I’ve grown to hate micromanagement games because they steal your time pretty bad. Over the holidays, I had some free days that I had nothing planned. I was checking the game for some days, so when I saw the Steam discounts – I gave up.
The next few days were mixed for me, as expected. The thing with such addictive games, is that your days blur. I played for more than 12 hours a day. Every important part of my day was delayed by an hour or two because I was always telling myself “okay, I do that, and then I’m taking a break”. Only to see that an hour and a half has passed since the first time I promised myself a break.
I caught up with the mechanics pretty quick, I think all in all I did 3 games, in the span of a few days. In the final one I saw how much time it might take me to grind, to even have a minor chance of completing the game, and I just gave up. I don’t have two months of free evenings for this. I just took all my characters on a few raids, and had a final laugh.
The verdict is – the game is great, but as with Factorio and other games of their category, you have to be a specific type of gamer to enjoy it. It’s too much micromanagement. Too much effort to have even a fighting chance in the final event. I doubt people can finish this game without investing at least 400–500 hours in it. Though this is not that much for some types of games.
I definitely had fun. You can really do A LOT in this game. There were some great and rewarding moments. It’s just not for me.
So, after a 50–60 hours of played time, I uninstalled it and took back my days. At least I finally found the time to try it.