Colony management game Rimworld certainly has a fairly unique reputation. Simply browsing the game’s subreddit for a few minutes will turn up a range of stories regarding the strange and sometimes horrific things that players and their colonists can get up to. And that’s just the base game, with an active modding scene cranking the shenanigans up to eleven.
The highly acclaimed isometric simulation game is now on its way to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5. Players can pre-order the Xbox and PlayStation ports now or wait until the Console edition officially launches on July 29th.
Xbox and PlayStation announced Rimworld’s console port with a new trailer and blog posts yesterday. The Console Edition’s trailer summarizes the struggle of a small colony as it clings desperately to survival. The narrator explains how his settlement was attacked and pillaged by Outlanders, who left him for dead after kidnapping his friend. However, the arrival of a mysterious stranger saved the Colony from destruction. He nurses their wounds and teaches the Colonists how to rebuild their settlement better and stronger than before. Thanks to his guidance, the Colony was ready when the Outlanders one day returned. However, even that eventual victory was not without a high cost.
The trailer helps to showcase some of the things new players can expect from jumping into Rimworld. Starting from humble beginnings, the Colony grows in size and technology, finding new resources, more advanced generators, and more robust defenses. The latter include newer, more powerful guns, stronger walls, traps, turrets, and other powerful weapons. The accompanying blog post goes into further detail about the day-to-day operation of a Colony, reminding players Rimworld is about managing ordinary people, not hardened soldiers or settlers. Colonists will form friendships and rivalries with each other, and players will have to keep track of both their mental and physical wellbeing.
The posts also bring up one of Rimworld’s more unique mechanics, the Storyteller. At the beginning of the game, players choose between one of three AI Storytellers to determine the frequency, type, and difficulty curve of Rimworld's various challenges. While there are other survival management games with similar mechanics, the AI Storytellers are one of Rimworld’s most iconic features.
One unanswered question is whether mods will work on the Xbox and PlayStation. Mods are an important part of many players’ Rimworld experiences, and their absence would be a significant downside to the console ports. Skyrim players can use most popular mods on the Xbox One and Series X/S versions of the game. However, it’s unclear if an indie game like Rimworld will benefit from the same feature.
Rimworld is out now for PC and in development for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Xbox, PlayStation