Ever time I see games like Rimworld and Factorio they sound very cool, but I watch the video’s of them and the only feeling I get is overwhelmed. I see screens crowded with a million things going on and going fast, and it just fills me with slight panic. ;)
I never got that feeling with the Sim Cities for some reason. But I read the concepts of, say, Factorio or Rimworld and I get this close to getting them, then I watch the video demos and leave skid marks running away.
I think Rimworld is easier to approach than you imagine. Knowing that 99.99% of games end in some bizarre tragic act of cannibalism or some such, embrace the failure and just jump in, learning bit by bit.
I suppose the worst that could happen is I buy Rimworld, play it, feel overwhelmed, and it joins my few dozen other Steam games I’ve purchased but never played for very long. ;)
One problem is my game time is fairly limited and is almost all eaten up by RDR2 on my PS4. However, I travel a lot so I’m always on the lookout for good notebook games.
If you play through Factorio’s tutorial machines, it does a good job introducing you to supply and production chains slowly so that by the time you’re building those ridiculous machines, it all makes sense.
It’s not out yet, but people are playing it in Alpha. My most anticipated game for next year is Satisfactory, which I want for several reasons: 1) It’s basically 3D Factorio. 2) It has an ultimate goal. You’re working toward a specific objective. 3) Coffee Stain has the best community manager of any studio I’ve encountered.
Rimworld’s not that. There are people who play it that way, and who make crazy things, but it’s pretty approachable. I can’t climb the learning curve of all the other games mentioned, but Rimworld is pretty intuitive.
I love management games like Parkitect and various tycoon games, or the wonderful Capitalism games, but I gotta day, Factorio broke my brain.
Now, if you want Spaceship management, Interstellar Rift is your best bet. It’s still in early access, but damn if it isn’t awesome.
Ooooh I looked at Parkitect, I like that! I loved SimGolf back in the day, FWIW. Just purchased Parkitect.
Huzzah! It’s so great!
I play Factorio without the little person that has to run where you want to build and no enemies which makes it a lot easier to learn and is still fun trying to figure out the best way to build things.
So you can ease into Rimworld pretty well. There are a ton of settings, and sure it might be overwhelming at first but since your early colonies will create memories and lasting learning experiences, you can tweak and learn as you go. There is also a tutorial. It’s not great but serviceable.
Yeah, so I started my first Parkitect and I’m about to go bankrupt. i think I need a tutorial but don’t see one anywhere; for example, I can’t even find where to change admission prices. Also no idea how to connect the depots to whatever they are supposed to connect to. But it’s fun even as I am trying to figure it out.
I like that they added the settings to where you can set it to nest frequency of none (or size none I forget which) instead just setting them to peaceful. It stops you from getting certain achievements, but no dealing with biters.
Damn you all! Now I’m hooked on a management game again! Argh! Playing Parkitect. Found the tutorial (not sure why it’s hidden in “Campaign.”)
Has anyone played both Parkitect and Planet Coaster? Wondering if it is worth grabbing Parkitect since we already have Planet Coaster.
My daughter and I prefer Parkitect to Planet Coaster, we own both. Parkitect is easier to use and in my view has more fun gameplay similar to Rollercoaster Tycoon than Planet Coaster. Although the latters 3d and camera views are far superior.
But yeah thumbs up on Parkitect from me and my daughter.
@JeffL we turn off money but leave on research. (when you start a new game there is an option). We found the game more fun without money hassles.
We’ll have to grab it then. Planet Coaster was bought to play with my daughters as well :)
Awesome, they both scratch different itches imho so two good purchases.
A trillion times YES!
I wish planet coaster trashed their entire management/sim model and used everything Parkitect instead.
I have had some problems in Parkitect with getting the underground paths to work easily. I am just not good at going from different levels from one connection point to the next ( at least before it was published). I watched a few YouTube videos and it seems you should be able to drag from one point to the other but I just can’t get it to work right. I am talking about creating the storage supply paths.
Factorio starts off small. That’s the best part. Everything is incremental. You don’t start off with a megafactory; it’s built up over hours as you figure out how to expand things and solve little puzzles at every step. The base game is not that complicated except maybe for oil refining, and they have a decent tutorial for that now. Factorio is great because it can be as complicated as you want it to be, it is very modular. You can play on peaceful mode so biters never attack, remove them altogether, make ore patches infinite etc.