RimWorld

RimWorld thrives when it's at its most unpredictable, never letting you get too comfortable

It can be confounding at first, not to mention the ugliness of those grey boxes. But it doesn’t take long to realise that this is something special. A management game that feels like you’re in charge of people – beautiful, flawed people – instead of a handful of impersonal bots. And it’s those little people who will keep you going.

I really love RimWorld. It's a game I waited too long to play because of the price tag, and I am not usually that into colony management games in general. However, a friend heavily recommended the game for me, and now I am stuck! There aren't that many games that I can call "forever" games, or games I will come back to constantly like Terraria, but RimWorld, if anything, has enough content to last you for a long while depending on the kind of gamer you are. I strongly recommend you give it a chance if you can!

In general Double Eleven and Ludeon have gifted console players with one of the best and most rewarding strategy games of all time. RimWorld is still difficult to master, complex and demanding, and the port to console hasn’t changed that. But, surprisingly, it’s entirely possible to sit on the couch, controller in hand, and have the same intriguing and addictive experience PC players have enjoyed since 2018.

RimWorld Console Edition is a fantastic addition to anyone’s game library, regardless of whether or not they’ve played the PC version. When the only criticism of the game is that it doesn’t go on sale very often, you know you have an absolute winner on your hands. I wish I could have seen all the text better without having to scoot so close to my TV, but the fact that it’s my only complaint in an otherwise addicting and enjoyable experience speaks volumes. If you’re looking for a game that breaks expectations in terms of depth and discovery, RimWorld Console Edition will sate that storytelling hunger.

As a PC player of Rimworld, I’ll be returning to the more bespoke experience I’ve turned the game into on its home platform, but I’m also delighted that games like this are coming to consoles, and being ported with this much care and attention. This is one of the best management sims and story generators around, brought to console in almost all its glory. The quality of this console implementation should be a guiding light for other games in this traditionally PC-only genre to do the same.

RimWorld has become a lauded classic on PC, and with the Xbox port, Double Eleven delivers a master class in how to bring games designed for mouse and keyboard intuitively to console. RimWorld is an utterly brutal survival sim where cutesy simplistic graphics belies endless depth, and you get procedural drama on a scale I have never before experienced in video game form. This game is a masterpiece, and RimWorld for Xbox faithfully shepherds the budding franchise to a brand new audience.

RimWorld Console Edition is not without its faults and flaws, but there's nothing else out there quite like it.

A satisfying colony-building sandbox with a lot of replayability that suffers from a lack of polish in the UI. A great aesthetic and quirky sci-fi take on the genre mean there is a lot to like here, it just takes a little digging to get there.

Some minor flaws turn RimWorld into a slightly flawed diamond. It is a truly unique game, one that appears every few years. I have been following RimWorld's development from the beginning, and every session with this game was superb. The same comment applies now.