Rimworld vs Stonehearth (with a poll!)

[Paperclip]

I want to play "builder" games again and have been eyeing these two. Which one would you pick? Don't say Dwarf Fortress please.

I'm more concerned about the development pace of the game and whether it will survive for years to come (and still being updated). It has come to my knowledge that Rimworld is basically being developed by a single guy, but that didn't stop Minecraft from achieving success.

 

[Paperclip]

Well, I think I've got my answer. In their latest dev cast, a Stonehearth dev said that they are starting to describe their game as a town building sim with events going own and everything has a "life". I think they were inspired by the look and feel of old jrpg towns. On the other hand, Rimworld is more like a DF lite (which probably says a lot) game without Z level.

Since I'm a graphic and building sim fag, I'll probably pick Stonehearth. Rimworld does seem to have more players and a far bigger score though (96% on Steam - can you believe that?).

 

[Musaab]

I just picked up Rimworld. Haven't played it yet, though. If boss leaves, I will fire it up.

 

[Severian Silk]

Stonehearth graphics are kinda cute.

 

[MediantSamuel]

I am quite fond of Rimworld, though I've never played Stonehearth.

A lot of crazy random events can happen, a la DF, and even the rudimentary combat is kinda fun. One of my earliest colonists went berserk after losing his bonded animal and tried fist-fighting the local turkey population. Ended up covered in turkey bites, one even bit off his finger before I got them under control.

I feel like Rimworld is slightly more about weathering the storm than purely building. I imagine Stonehearth is more building focused, though I could be completely wrong.

I'd say pick based on whichever gameplay focus you prefer.

 

[Ellef]

Rimworld is a safer bet, but it's less of a building sim and more of a group survival thing.

 

[Paperclip]

I just bought Stonehearth a couple of hours ago. Let's see how it goes....

 

[moraes]

Please post impressions if you have the time, I'm curious about Stonehearth myself.

 

[Musaab]

I've been playing some RimWorld and first impressions are pretty good. Looks like there's a bit of depth. Doesn't seem too politically correct. Runs great on my Skylake Dell XPS 13 although I had to drop the resolution down to 1080p since the UI doesn't scale (as far as I can tell).

 

[Paperclip]

...my Skylake Dell XPS 13

Quite a pretty laptop you've got there!

Buat real men use Thinkpads dekstop PCs!

 

[Angthoron]

Been giving RimWorld a try, too. Got invaded by wild beavers destroying my good wood, and now all my colonists also have food poisoning because nobody can cook for shit.

 

[Paperclip]

Please post impressions if you have the time, I'm curious about Stonehearth myself.

So I've clocked around 6 hours of Stonehearth playtime and I'm at day 13th in the game I think.

It's a pretty cool little town building game. Your hearthlings (villagers) only have basic needs like sleep and food so they are pretty easy to keep up and running. The game progression is slow-ish which is good since you can only get more grandeur as the game progresses. Another good thing is that the environment progresses with you with bigger badder monsters coming at you as the time passes and they could also build camps which generate more mobs! Better traders also stop by as your town gets bigger.

I'm currently playing on the desert map which is harder than the temperate one with Rayya's children as hearthlings (harder since they don't start with a Carpenter) on hard mode. It's basically the hardest game mode possible currently. All in all, it's still manageable though. It says something when you consider that I'm a new player!

 

[Paperclip]

The game is still buggy so it might frustrate you. When that happens, I like to remind myself that I bought an alpha to support the devs!

Currently, it's pretty much a god-game version of Minecraft with better mobs, town building, and combat. I hope that in future versions/releases they will start to implement more personalities to the hearthlings and more interactions between them.

 

[asfasdf]

Dwarf Fortress.

 

[Paperclip]

I've done some reading and watching on Rimworld and I could say that it's more fleshed out compared to Stonehearth currently maybe because of longer development time and being 2D instead of 3D. Regarding the latter, Rimworld will always offer far more interactions in the game world because of the sheer number of abstractions it can do (the visual is very simple, they don't have to show everything like when your colonist is missing an arm etc.).

 

[kris]

Bought Rimworld yesterday and it is plenty of fun and addictive, I will have trouble detaching myself for training this evening! (and almost regretting taking on extra work this weekend). what really sold me on getting it was customising and making your characters or for that matter the world. I directly took the mod that let you customise your starting party as that I found that much more fun. Even with that Courtesan that do like no work at all.

Only thing that kind of nag me is that I think things go way to fast. You build a house with beds in like a few hours at most, food is really used up, but also grow fast like hell.

will be interesting to see in which ways it will be fleshed out. Like will I be able to build a henhouse? Fences? (maybe I will get after research, but I haven't got far). spaceship visit? Aliens?

and now all my colonists also have food poisoning because nobody can cook for shit.

A cook just wandered into my colony. but then I need to reload since I failed badly in an pirate attack.

 

[Arrowgrab]

will be interesting to see in which ways it will be fleshed out. Like will I be able to build a henhouse? Fences? (maybe I will get after research, but I haven't got far).

No fences presently, but if you need them because you want to limit the free movement of domesticated animals, you can just mess around in the, IIRC, Zones menu to create zones and limit your animals' movement to them.

 

[kris]

will be interesting to see in which ways it will be fleshed out. Like will I be able to build a henhouse? Fences? (maybe I will get after research, but I haven't got far).

No fences presently, but if you need them because you want to limit the free movement of domesticated animals, you can just mess around in the, IIRC, Zones menu to create zones and limit your animals' movement to them.

i already did that, but also found a fences mod

 

[Arrowgrab]

i already did that, but also found a fences mod

Well, that was going to be my second suggestion.

 

[rezaf]

Bought Rimworld yesterday and it is plenty of fun and addictive

That was my first reaction to Rimworld also when I tried it maybe a month or two ago. The game fizzled out on me pretty quickly though.
At least in vanilla, everything ends up feeling kinda shallow, at least to me.

 

[kris]

Bought Rimworld yesterday and it is plenty of fun and addictive

That was my first reaction to Rimworld also when I tried it maybe a month or two ago. The game fizzled out on me pretty quickly though.
At least in vanilla, everything ends up feeling kinda shallow, at least to me.

i am sure you are quite correct. But I would go and say that it was worth the money already.

It is quite clear what needs to be done to improve it to, I seen some of the things mentioned here. There is so much potential for improvement.

 

[Musaab]

Isn't Rimworld still in early access though? We can torture the dev until he does what we say.

 

[Saark]

I don't think he cares much about what people want in the game, he has a clear method on how to release patches. Quoted from his AMA on Reddit after the Steam Release:

The real key is to not ask this question: "Would this be cool if added to the game?" That's a very easy question and people gravitate towards it because it's cognitively comfortable.

The real question that needs answering is, "Of every possible thing we could do to this game, what would add the most value per cost?" That's a very hard question because its scope encompasses every possible change to the game, which is an essentially uncountable and unimaginable set. It's cognitively uncomfortable and actually impossible to answer in your head. You have to do it systematically.

If you feel like the game is getting too stale too quickly try out some of the mods. There's also other storytellers available through mods, I'd suggest using Pandora for an increased challenge. Or just activate the dev-tool, make every colonist a cannibal and psychopath and try to survive only on human meat. The sky's the limit.

 

[Agesilaus]

I've played a lot of Rimworld over the months/years. It's great stuff, and there is a lot of content now. The modding community was big, too, and with the Steam release it's only gotten bigger. Right now I don't use any mods, as I'm still enjoying all the new content contained in the latest patches, but in the past I've added various factions and weapons.

It's basically a base-building/survival game with a little bit of trade and diplomacy. You try to create a self-sustaining settlement that can survive any number of ridiculous events. There's an ironman mode now, too, which is fantastic. It forces you to live with disasters, and there's actually a lot of things that you can come back from.

Combat is good in Rimworld, too. It's very intense, involves lots of tactics, and is a real challenge. I remember one battle where wandering mechanoids effectively closed off the east side of my base; most of my guys were wounded or dead from other disasters, so it seemed like it was the end. I had access to a building with a wall that faced them, though, so I got inside and built a whole bunch of turrets. Then I knocked down the wall to let the turrets engage the mechanoids, and used my other settler to flank and throw EMP grenades.

There's a constant sense of development and adaptation as the settlement grows. You can't rest on your laurels, or the events will fuck you hard. For example, I like to build early stuff with wood. Unless I remember to replace my old buildings with stone or metal structures, I invariably wind up seeing my base go up in flames. There's some fire-fighting tools you can develop and use, too, if you want to try solving the problem that way.

There's an endgame, too, if you want to call it quits. Just build a spaceship and blast off. Good luck if you're using the new game-mode where you start with 5 tribesmen who are yet to discover electricity.

 

[Agesilaus]

Also, boreal forest is best, fuck all other climates


Anyway, if you want another suggestion, try taking a look at KeeperRL.