RimWorld

RimWorld is a 2018 colony management game from Ludeon Studios, designed by Tynan Sylvester and funded on Kickstarter. A few colonists crash on a frontier planet and try to survive. They build, farm, research, trade and defend the colony against raids, animals, diseases and the weather.

An AI storyteller chooses what happens next, with different storytellers for different kinds of story. The game runs in real time and can be paused at any time. Colonists are people with traits, relationships and moods, and when raiders attack, you draft them and control them directly in combat.

It is one of the best story generators in games. Its colonists' lives, their friendships, feuds, breakdowns and deaths, are what players remember. Its combat is simple but its consequences are not: a wounded colonist may never work again.

It is a colony game first, and its combat is only part of it. It can be grim, by design.

RimWorld shares Fallout Tactics' world on the edge of collapse, its raiders and its pausable real time. Its colonists, with their moods and relationships, are a squad you also have to keep alive between fights.