There aren’t that many options when it comes to simulation/building/management games set in space.
Surprisingly enough, one of the top contenders in the genre is a crowdfunded indie title called Rimworld.
There’s no doubt that it’s come a long way since launch, building a large fanbase despite the clunky interface and ugly graphics being commonly cited areas for improvement.
A large part of what makes the game so addicting is how passionate the modding community is. There are tons of mods out there, from quality of life improvements to complete overhauls.
The Steam Workshop alone already has more than 15,000 entries. But don’t worry, I’ve already gone through the lists and organize the best-of-the-best right here for easy browsing. Enjoy!
RNG plays a huge role when starting a game of Rimworld.
At the beginning of the game, available colonists spawn with randomly generated traits which basically dictate the way they act.
The EdB Prepare Carefully gives you a bit more control of what you get, allowing you to customize your colonists beforehand.
You can choose available gear, change their names, and even assign skill points as you please. There are options to limit point distribution, but this can be removed as well. Just be careful with this as creating OP starting characters can get boring pretty quickly.
I would recommend starting a game without this first so you get a feel of the original game. Then throw this on once you have a better idea of what you’ll be needing from your starting characters.
Another quality of life mod that will make you wonder why the game was designed to give you such a hard time – Draggable Corners.
It’s pretty weird now that you think about it, why does Rimworld only allow you to build walls in individual lines?
Making buildings can get quite tedious this way, and you’d think there should be a simpler way of doing it.
Lucky for us, modder sparr made it possible. With Draggable Corners, you can now make conduits and sandbags in L shapes, and create walls and other impassable buildings in squares or rectangles.
Managing colonist moods is a big part of the game.
As with pretty much any management game, you are given a god-like role in Rimworld. Here more than any other game however, colonists seem to have minds of their own and things can get chaotic pretty quickly.
While there has been a lot of progress around making moods easier to manage, this mod makes it just a bit easier by adding a simple color-coding scheme.
The base game includes a depleting mood bar behind colonists, and this mod just adds some color to make it much easier to tell if they’re happy or dissatisfied.
How about we take a break from all the quality of life improvements so far and spice up the game’s visuals for a change?
FashionRIMsta adds a lot of apparel options to the game, adding some variety to the way your colonists look.
The mod isn’t purely aesthetic though, as it ties in to some of the games base mechanics as well. A lot of the clothes will require research before being craftable.
Once they’ve been unlocked though, they do provide job bonuses as well.
Now this is what really makes this mod special. Specialized clothes improve job performance – a chef hat will make you cook faster, scrubs improve your medical performance, etc.
There are a lot of mods for adding hairstyles to the default options in the base game.
While the vanilla options can be quite boring, and some mods can get pretty outrageous, Ods’ Men’s Hair aims to strike a balance and offer more realistic presets for your colonists.
This mod offers a few new hairstyles to choose from, along with facial hair options as well.
Ods also has a pack for female hairstyles so you might want to check that one out as well.
Interaction between colonists doesn’t seem to play that big a part in Rimworld, and adding to this aspect can make a big difference in how you play the game.
Starting of with the Hospitality mod by Orion, addressing the pointlessness of visiting factions.
Every once in a while, visitors from other factions wander into your colony, walk around a bit, and eventually head back to their homes.
There’s really no point to it. They just come and go as they please without any real impact to the game whatsoever.
This mod changes that, making it possible for you to interact with visitors in a number of ways.
You can convince visitors to stay, provide them with nice rooms to sleep in, allow them to shop from your inventory, and even trade with them.
The dullness of interactions in the game doesn’t start with visitors though, as dialogue between colonists isn’t even paid much attention to.
Interaction Bubbles is a great way to remedy that, making your colonists much more interesting to observe as they go about their daily lives.
Instead of having to go into a separate log, the mod adds speech bubbles for when colonists talk to each other, letting you read what they’re chatting about real-time.
It doesn’t do much in terms of gameplay.
But it definitely makes Rimworld feel more alive overall.
When it comes to AI behavior, Common Sense is probably the most useful mod you can get.
Your pawns are usually not smart enough to figure things out on their own, and like most AI, mostly end up not doing what you actually want them to do.
Common Sense tweaks pawn AI to add a host of new actions for them to perform, each being easily enabled/disabled with a quick click of the mouse.
You can set your AI to clean their room before sleeping, stop eating too much sweets, or prioritize food that’s about to spoil.
There’s a lot more in there – overall it just makes the AI feel much smarter which is always good.
This is one of the more interesting mods, actually adding a whole new level of depth in terms of gameplay.
Children, school, and learning does exactly what it says – allowing you to have kids in the game.
Pregnancy now affects pawns in the same way it affects animals. Children are born after 45 days, and inherit looks and skill traits from their parents.
There’s even a school system where skilled adults can teach kids to increase their stats.
The mod is actually pretty well-thought-out, as there is even a mechanic for researching and crafting birth control drugs to manage population.
Another interesting new game mechanic is introduced by the Colony Leadership mod.
Your colony can now be either a Democracy where pawns vote to elect a leader or a dictatorship where you pick and choose who will be in control.
Leaders in this case will generally be better colonists once elected, having better stats than everyone else.
They’re also given new skills like an aura buff that affects nearby colonists, the ability to inspire others improving their mood, and improved trading prices.
Leaders are also capable of teaching others, so you have a means of helping your other colonists improve.
All in all, it’s an interesting concept. Snd adds a whole new dimension to colony life in Rimworld.
Animal behavior can be altered as well, making our furry companions all the more useful.
The More Pack Animals mod allows more animals to be taken along on a caravan to carry your belongings.
Where only a few animals were capable of doing so in vanilla, including alpacas, bison, donkeys, elephants, and horses – More Pack Animals allows other types of animals to carry equipment like bears, big cats, cows, and more.
Another mod that generally makes animals more useful – Hunt for Me actually let’s you train your animals to hunt.
That’s right, mostly any tamed animal can be taught to hunt with this mod.
Once trained, a predator can now hunt solo or in packs, determining the size of the prey they take home.
The mod gives you control over how predators hunt as well, allowing you to enable/disable revenge, or giving you the ability to control which animals your predator hunts with the supervised mode.
Cats are even useful in hunting now, as they can bring you gifts.
Similar to Common Sense, animal behavior has been drastically improved through modding as well.
Animals Logic gives you a host of new animal behaviors that are much smarter, making your pets less of a nuisance as they’re actions will make more sense overall.
The mod allows animals to own beds and hunt more effectively, makes egg-laying animals find beds to lay eggs on, and even prevents animals from eating random things.
There are a lot of other configurable options to explore as well, including medical emergency alerts, hauling efficiency, and training decay speed among others.
Other than pawns and animals, there are a couple mods that improve or build on current gameplay systems as well.
An example would be Pharmacist – which gives you more control over how medication is administered within your colony.
It changes the way doctors make use of medicines by adding four levels of injuries – minor, major, life-threatening, and operations.
With the mod enabled, you’ll be able to set maximum amounts of medicine that can be used per injury type, making it easier to manage supplies.
Pharmacist’s advice can also be tweaked depending on the recipient of the treatment, as max levels can be set differently for colonists, guests, prisoners, and animals.
Modders Oskar Potocki and Trunken decided to focus on the weapons system, as they felt that it was one of the most lacking aspects of the game.
They took it upon themselves to make major tweaks to get it to where they thought it should be.
In what ended up becoming Vanilla Weapons Expanded, they were able to add a total of 47 weapons which they though better suited the developing eras of the game.
Neolithic weapons now include an axe and a longbow, industrial weapons include different types of guns from handguns to grenade launchers, and spacer weapons include charge rifles for the more advanced colonies.
Weapons have been spread across the technology tree so progression plays a big role. More advanced technologies are harder to research but are more rewarding to obtain.
While we’re on the topic of weapons, why not enhance the battle mechanics a bit as well?
RunAndGun does exactly as the title suggests, allowing colonists to move and shoot at the same time.
It may seem like a small change, but the mod offers different options which were actually pretty well-thought-out.
Shooting while moving actually impacts your movement and accuracy for one.
While many fans assume that this mod makes your colonists OP, the modder argues that the mod settings available actually makes it possible to tweak how powerful or balanced it is.
Take note that RunAndGun doesn’t only affect you, but enemy AI as well.
This time we’re taking a look at a mod that makes tweaks to the game’s research system.
Rimatomics adds a completely new branch of technology that deals with nuclear power and energy weapons.
You’ll actually be able to build nuclear reactors, with different options available for cooling systems, turbines, and reactor cores.
Nuclear power translates to different energy weapons becoming available, like microwave area denial systems, tesla coils, high energy lasers, and railguns.
Nuclear weapons will eventually become available through research as well.
Now I’m not sure why you’d want to be a nuclear-capable colony in space, but I’m sure you’ll find interesting ways to use this one.
If you’d like to add a fantasy twist to your Rimworld experience – you can do so with A RimWorld of Magic.
The mod actually adds different classes with unique abilities, making your game a completely new fantasy experience.
There are 12 different magic classes including mages, paladins, and necromancers. There are also 6 fighter classes to choose from, including gladiator, sniper, and ranger.
Unique apparel and equipment are also included, so the look of the game changes drastically as well.
A fun take on a Rimworld scenario that’s actually based on the popular TV series Survivor.
In this scenario mod, you actually become the producer of Rimworld: The Survival Reality Show.
You start the game with 10 colonists. Your role is to help guide the contestants through the drama of determining who will be voted out.
The scenario includes a planetkiller which will destroy everything in 46 days and a tribunal event every 5 days where a new colonist will be voted off.
This continues until only two survivors remain, wherein the final round will be determined by overall mood.
The remaining survivor will safely leave the planet. And it’s up to you who will be the last one standing.
A tribe of women warriors have identified Rimworld as their new home and will destroy anything or anyone who gets in their way.
In Amazons Challenge, only women are allowed in the colony. While males can visit the colony, they are not welcome. Other than visitors, all men shall be killed or banished.
To make things more interesting, your 5 starting characters have a 70% chance of being misandrist and a 50% of being gay.
The Luciferium Addict offers a much deeper backstory than the previous scenario mods.
Here you play as a solo pawn. You are the sole survivor of the Urbworld Wars. Found bleeding to death by a nurse, you’re given a drug called Luciferium in order to keep you alive.
Known as “The Devil’s Bargain”, Luciferium continues to keep you alive as your dependence has grown.
You must now have a fix every 6.667 days to prevent the fatal withdrawal symptoms from taking over your body.
You start with only 10 doses left. It’s up to you to fight your way through the world to survive.
Fallen Marines is a Rimworld scenario mod based on Halo marines.
You start with 3 UNSC ODST marines and help them fight there way to survival on a hostile planet.
The marines’ starting traits are bloodlust, jogger, iron-willed, and hard-worker. You also start with knowledge of gun turrets, hydroponics, geothermal power, and autodoors
machining tables.
There are components, chunks of steel, steel slag chunks, and packaged survival meals scattered across the map.
It’s up to you to keep your marines alive. But can you do it?
You are the sole survivor of Vault 13, and enter a world that has been destroyed by nuclear war. Permanent toxic fallout makes the game all the more difficult, as the poisonous air slowly kills anyone who isn’t safely indoors.
Your character will have an 80% chance of starting with iron-willed or industrious traits, while NPCs have a 60% chance to start creepy breathing or ugly.
Your colony was technologically advanced, so you start with all research completed.
Just one man and his dog – how will you survive the toxic wasteland?
Start With Nothing is one of the more hardcore survival scenarios out there.
The backstory is basically that your ship was taken over by AI, everyone has been either killed or imprisoned, and you’ve been living under the rule of your captors for 6 months.
You’ve grown tired of the situation and have formulated a plan to escape, which eventually brings you to Rimworld.
As the name of the mod suggests, you start with absolutely nothing.
You have the freedom to customize your character’s skills as you like, so choose carefully. You’ll only have yourself to rely on to survive.
The Darkest Rimworld is based on the turn-based RPG The Darkest Dungeon.
For those who aren’t familiar, The Darkest Dungeon sees you playing as a band of varied heroes fighting their way through different creatures, famine, and disease.
Similarly, in The Darkest Rimworld you start as a band of 4 heroes chosen from 10 options including Dismas the bandit, Reynauld the knight, and Paracel the doctor.
Your starting research will be based on the characters you choose as well as their respective classes, so you’ll have to choose carefully.
