In RimWorld, you play as crash-landed survivors who should eke out a brand new existence on a hostile planet, surviving and maybe thriving between raider assaults, AI uprisings, and swarms of hostile bugs. The sport has a handful of expansions with new occasions, and the most recent, Anomaly, is the scariest one but. If you happen to solely have the spare scratch to choose up one RimWorld enlargement, Anomaly is by far your most suitable option.
RimWorld is a sport about rolling with the punches, that are doled out by the sport’s storyteller, who manages the speed at which random occasions happen. For instance, Phoebe Chillax traits towards the Stardew Valley facet of the sport, permitting the participant to construct farms, stockpile meals, and give attention to the colonists’ day-to-day lives. Cassandra Basic, in the meantime, slowly ramps up the strain with escalating occasions, solely pausing after significantly powerful encounters.
A troublesome colonist would possibly be capable of fend off a raider assault solely to get a lethal an infection. I would come across a temple filled with riches just for it to be filled with killer robots. A jail warden will get so mad over his girlfriend saying no to a proposal that he punches a turret till it explodes, killing him immediately. It’s this inevitable tragedy that makes RimWorld so compelling.
The sport’s different expansions are Ideology, Royalty, and Biotech, every of which provides new methods to construct up your colony and alter your colonists. Having to comply with a set of non secular tenets in Ideology makes for a captivating social problem, and I all the time have enjoyable creating new genetic templates for my colonists in Biotech. However not one of the expansions really feel like they dramatically change the cadence of the sport. I all the time simply construct up my base and look forward to bots, bugs, or bullies to assault me. As soon as I win that battle, I put out all of the fires (each bodily and metaphorical) from the aftermath and construct again up — rinse and repeat. It’s definitely enjoyable, however on an extended timeline, it makes the sport really feel somewhat stale.
![A laboratory in RimWorld, showing containment cells built to lock in dangerous monsters and cryptids from the Anomaly expansion pack.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UsrsTwUNC1G9OwqlPz2jMvvB4Dc=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25407434/ss_a5ceed3b193c143c7eb58747e828334c869aa461.1920x1080.jpg)
Picture: Ludeon Studios
Enter Anomaly, an enlargement impressed by The Factor, The Cabin within the Woods, and different horror media. New settlements are all the time full of ruins and sources, however now there’s a brand new characteristic: an ominous monolith. Attuning a colonist to the monolith triggers Anomaly occasions. This consists of new enemies, in fact, like stealthy shadow figures and big slugs that may gobble down my poor settlers in a single gulp. If I wish to overcome these new challenges, I must construct containment fields, seize these baddies, after which research them for brand spanking new applied sciences and rituals.
As anybody who has ever watched a single horror film is aware of, this can be a scenario that’s completely ripe to go mistaken. However there are tons of latest, non-monster-related occasions that dramatically change the sport and power me to play in an entire new method. I management the escalation of occasions by finding out the monolith; the extra I poke at it, the larger an issue it turns into. This implies I can’t get too overwhelmed by new occasions, and I’ve to take my time finding out check topics and getting ready for the following step of escalation.
Take, as an illustration, the troubling occasion of the golden dice. I received a name from a trusted ally asking me to take one thing off their palms. They’d even give me an entire bunch of additional provides and navy gear as a thank-you. Maybe I ought to’ve been suspicious, however I’m a giver at coronary heart, so I agreed. They despatched a cargo pod, and inside was a fist-sized golden dice.
At first, every little thing was nice. My villagers appreciated to have a look at it, and it put them in a great temper. I had my lead researcher take a gander at it, however she didn’t see something alarming at first look. However issues shortly received sophisticated. My settlement’s cleric started to cease doing her common duties in favor of wandering round and pondering absentmindedly concerning the dice. Then, she began constructing little dice statues from dust and metallic scrap. Lastly, she stopped engaged on issues altogether. Different colonists began to affix her, and earlier than lengthy, you couldn’t stroll just a few steps in my settlement with out tripping over a dice.
![An obelisk in RimWorld’s Anomaly expansion has backfired, creating dozens of clones of one colonist, who is trying to fight them off to no avail.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oowrHAc_VFIab55jZSjwK7qSByQ=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25407420/ss_4a4426e7627d3f214803c6df43f4e2588ffc72bf.jpg)
Picture: Ludeon Studios
Bothered colonists weren’t doing something productive as a result of they had been too centered on the dice. They couldn’t depart the colony, both, or they’d get too upset about leaving the fantastic dice behind. By the point my researcher realized there was a technique to break the bond, a great chunk of my inhabitants was . Breaking the bond made all of them go berserk, and a civil warfare broke out in my colony between the cube-afflicted and the cube-immune. I misplaced my cleric and a few different guys, however I made certain the funeral was good.
You’ll assume that’d be the tip of my troubles, however shortly after, one other faction provided me a nonspecific present. This time it was a mysterious obelisk that duplicated my greatest miner, Paul. I now had two equivalent miners, each of whom claimed to be the actual Paul. This appeared like an awesome useful resource, and I began harnessing the facility to pump out a mess of Pauls. However then I discovered every clone would inevitably get organ failure. Fortunately, RimWorld permits you to harvest organs out of your enemies, and raiders nonetheless often confirmed up at my base. So I managed to improvise an answer for Pauls’ numerous failing organs, and all it required was for me to arrange a shady harvesting room.
This wild number of occasions in Anomaly signifies that RimWorld feels rather more contemporary. The opposite expansions will have an effect on what occurs in your downtime, however the common move of fight and battle feels the identical. Anomaly provides so many bizarre and absurd occasions, and few of them will be boiled right down to “a bunch of unhealthy guys are working at your base.” These new types of battle can come from inside, as a The Factor-style entity takes over your cultists’ our bodies, or they’ll come from beneath, as a large pit filled with fleshbeasts opens up within the floor. Both method, I like these new and horrible tales that emerge from Anomaly, and it feels important for shaking up a well-worn RimWorld expertise.
RimWorld Anomaly was launched on April 11 on Home windows PC. The enlargement was reviewed on Home windows PC on a Steam Deck utilizing a model purchased by the author. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You could find further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.