At this point, I have been playing Rimworld off and on for about 3 years, and there's never been a point where I really felt I was done. There's something so satisfying in progressing in this game. Personally, I think that it is the perfect balance between mechanical progress and the stories that your characters come to create that gives this game its incredibly unique charm.

The core workings of the game by themselves are rock-solid. A few hours into a first playthrough, most people will realize that seemingly everything on the map has some sort of consequence. Every rock, tree, and wall has its own cover effectiveness; every wild animal has its own individual health and needs, and each room you come to build has its own effects on your colonists. The beauty of Rimworld comes from the fact that in terms of the game itself, there is no protagonist to speak of. The game never centers its focus upon any one object, giving a true sense of equality and consequence to every event that happens, and this is what makes your decision-making feel even more meaningful.

Rimworld is clean-cut. Its UI is straightforward, and the graphics strike a remarkable balance that allows for an easily comprehensible visualization of the environment without compromising much of any possibility for individual interpretation of how things may "actually" look. Rimworld also doesn't ever seem to over-expand on anything. Its systems for diplomacy, warfare, trade, society, imprisonment, etc. are all there and are all finely polished, but are sure never to lend themselves toward a certain tone. This is not only pivotal to the storytelling of the game being so strong, but also is what makes the game so versatile for different modding capabilities. I've found myself a few times wanting something more out of some of these systems, but then thought about how if this idea were implemented in the game it would throw off this sense of roundness among the game design. And that's okay, because the game is so well-tuned that it leaves this job to modders, who have done absolutely wonderful things in order to allow you to really make the game feel specialized to your exact preferences.

All this and it is clear to see that Rimworld is a feat of mechanical excellence on its own, but the way it harnesses these mechanics in order to tell a story is really what makes it one-in-a-million. The game goes out of its way to make sure that there's opportunity for stories to be made. Each pawn has their own name, backstory, list of skills, social relations, emotional needs and more. Every game you play will be filled with surmounting situations ranging from crop blight to prisoner ransom and everything in between. Pawns will have ongoing conversations on a variety of different topics. There's even more that I haven't mentioned, but here's the main thing: all of this is there to give you more opportunities to tell a story in your own mind. I see a few people complain that the game "claims to be a story generator" but only does so by generating "annoying and tedious events." But this idea comes from taking the game at purely face value. Rimworld never comes out and writes a story for you. You're never given one goal, one enemy, one protagonist; there's some guidance in each game, sure, but it's totally up to you if you actually follow it or not. If Rimworld were to be as absolute as this, it would hardly be a story generator at all. Instead, the path the game takes proves to be potentially limitless. It lays out all of this living, breathing world for you to see, and at the end of the day, it's up to you what story you remember.