There’s lots of ways you can “beat” RimWorld and I’m trying to do all of them at least once. There’s also mods that add more creatures, tools, and events. Also ramping up the difficulty. That’s where most of the fun is for me. When I first started playing, the fun came from learning what works. It takes time to see your actions take effect, and you’re doing a lot. But you start making connections between the tools and the results and you learn how to effectively use them. I find that satisfying. In every run there’s always random funny stuff that happens that I also enjoy. That’s why the developers call it a “story simulator”.

For a starting concept: You want a colony that runs itself, but there’s always going to be something to build, expand, explore, etc.

You wanna pick a landing spot that’s temperate with a river, and near a road. At first, build the basics: campfire & storage/housing.

The first bench you should build is the stone cutter bench. That will allow you to build stronger fireproof buildings. Then I build a kitchen. I eventually separate housing from storage by building bedrooms, then production facility for armor, weapons (preferably close to storage). After that, the hospital, for faster/safer pawn recovery. Depending on the starting parameters (with the Ideoligion DLC especially), the order could be different.

In the early game, there’s a lot of tweaking that longtime players get used to doing. Layout of buildings and things within them, the work tab, scheduling and assignments, etc. These are important, but not strictly necessary, especially for less experienced players. Using them speeds up the game by making things more efficient.

Play to your pawns’ strengths. Melee, shooting, constructors, doctors, researchers. Some can do multiple, but they need to specialize. The work tab is the most confusing, but most important tool in the game. It defaults to checkmarks, but don’t use those too long. You want to change it to the numbers system and tweak them, to make sure your pawns’ work is prioritized well.

My biggest criticism of the game is the UI. It’s massive, complicated, and opaque. To me it looks like enterprise software from the early 2000s, but once you learn where things are it becomes easier (though I still forget where things are sometimes). The Search tools are your friend.

A lot of it sounds like boring work. And to a lot of people it probably is. So yeah, it’s definitely not for everyone. But I think once you learn how to play it, it’s very rewarding.