Rimworld is a deep management game \u2013 an AI-and-numbers-driven colony survival simulator and story generator that, since its full launch in 2017, has been one of the most persistently played games on Steam. Being a descendant from legendary (and legendarily obscure) colony sims like Dwarf Fortress, it\u2019s a game about managing peoples\u2019 needs, stockpiling and hunkering down for harsh winters, defending against (and invading) rival tribes, establishing ideologies to unify your people, and \u2013 whether for fun or necessity \u2013 cannibalism. Its simple visual language belies one of the most moreish and compelling management and building games out there.<\/p>\n

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Until recently, \u2018simplistic aesthetics\u2019 and \u2018complex management\u2019 would\u2019ve been precisely the kinds of concepts that would prevent a game from coming to consoles. These games require keyboard shortcuts, endless mouse movements, and the kind of attention spans that, historically (and probably erroneously), haven\u2019t been associated with console gamers. But times have changed, and in recent years we\u2019ve seen 4X games like Civilization and Humankind, as well as deep grand strategy titles like Crusader Kings 3 and Stellaris, come to consoles \u2013 undiluted in their depth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So Rimworld, which is coming to consoles on July 29, is riding something of a wave, but the depth of tinkering and micromanagement in this game arguably goes beyond even those games listed above. This is a game where you can make priority tables for each individual colonist, ranking the level of priority they should give to the 16 or so task categories in your colony; it\u2019s a game where you set and adjust work schedules and uniforms depending on the season, organise what goes in which stockpile, and set automation on such things as deciding whether a dead colonist should be sent to the cremation chamber or the butcher\u2019s block.<\/p>\n
But Rimworld designer Tynan Sylvester and the console version\u2019s producer <\/strong>Kevin Mann believe they\u2019ve figured out how to make one of the most complex PC colony sims work on console. And it turns out that to make a console port of such a game capture the magic of its PC version, you have to pretty much completely abandon the UI that worked so well on PC.<\/p>\n
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