So, you want some games like RimWorld? As Charles Caleb Colton said back in the days of the Commodore 64: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. But what must also be remembered is that without imitation we wouldn’t have innovation, and without innovation, we wouldn’t have variety.
Dwarf Fortress, iconic for its deep, emergent gameplay and ASCII graphics, actually innovated on games like King of Dragon Pass. That older but just as classic text-based clan manager is near unrecognisable to our modern town-builders, but its influence is still felt. Dwarf Fortress has since gone on to inspire its own new generation of best city-builders and narrative best management games.
While the free version of Dwarf Fortress is great, its arcane UI and losing-is-fun design does turn off a lot of potential players. So the design was innovated and along came RimWorld, but now RimWorld has been around for years and it’s time to see what new innovations have come along since. Let us present to you our top picks of games that are like RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress for those who are wanting more, but are struggling to know where to look.
These are the best games like RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress:
Going Medieval
Going Medieval blends city-building with colony survival mechanics, offering a medieval mash-up of RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress ethos. You’re in charge of a struggling Dark Age settlement, emerging from the ashes of a plague that wiped out most of the population. You must build up your fortress and expand out into the wilderness to forge a better future for your people.
Amazing Cultivation Simulator
If RimWorld was based on Asian mythology, it’d probably have ended up looking like Amazing Cultivation Simulator. Now available on Steam with a full western localisation, you too can embark on a magical journey to rebuild your sect through training and the cultivation of mind and soul.
It has that top-down 2D RimWorld style, while also offering plenty of deep management systems to sink your teeth into. You’ll need to recruit new apprentices and deal with rival sects in your quest for enlightenment in this fictional world inspired by Buddhist and Taoist philosophy.
First Feudal
For a while, First Feudal used to be the first game that Steam recommended on the RimWorld store page. It does have some similar elements: you collect resources, craft workbenches, and build workshops and homes by placing walls, doors, and floors. You even control villagers, giving them tasks and tools and satisfying their needs for food and sleep.
First Feudal doesn’t just copy the format though. Instead, it is more like a town-building RPG where you control a character and must build up the town by leading the villagers as opposed to RimWorld’s omniscient overseer. The concept is good, putting you in the thick of it with the villagers theoretically adds more investment into the colony. However, at time it can end up feeling more like a tower defense game. It’s been in early access since late 2017, but may also be good if you like Factorio.
King Under The Mountain
The Kickstarter promised an experience that for all intents and purposes is identical to RimWorld except with a high fantasy wrapping and a few unique selling points. First up, you’re dwarves! Yay!
As it currently stands King Under The Mountain feels closer to Prison Architect with the furniture available to rooms being decided by what ‘zone’ they are rather than the other way around. That isn’t a bad thing though as it means the UI is kept simple and straightforward.
Civitatem
Civitatem is similar to First Feudal in that you get an avatar that is physically present in the world but doesn’t depart much from the RimWorld ancestry and keeps you in your omniscient position. It’s also similar to RimWorld in that the art style is nearly identical but that’s about as far as it goes.
Civitatem is more like sadistic town-builder Banished albeit with a tighter focus. It also gets flak for having a generic appearance it seems to have some original ideas under the hood with promises of an “exploration mini-game” to discover other settlements.
As an alternative, you might also like Medieval Dynasty, which is also an open-world survival and builder game, but it’s fully 3D and resembles Life is Feudal more than it does RimWorld or Dwarf Fortress.
Oxygen Not Included
Probably the biggest name on this list, and one that most RimWorld fans will have heard before, Oxygen Not Included is one of the best alternatives we can recommend.
Swapping the top-down for side-on, Oxygen Not Included puts you in charge of a clone-filled asteroid base and ramps the difficulty up to 11. Not content with just managing colonist’s mental states and physical health, you are also in charge of dealing with the temperature, water quality, and pollution. Put the bathrooms next to the reservoir? Yeah, everyone’s going to get sick.
Originally I felt that Oxygen Not Included was too difficult and had little in the way of content but Klei has continued to update it at a frantic pace and has expanded and improved pretty much every month.
The biggest challenge is managing the rising or falling temperatures, moving gasses, and dealing with build-ups of polluted liquids from the small-bladdered colonist. Everything about it is bursting with character from the build-up of tears from sad replicants to the way they curl up like cats in their beds.
Space Haven
This is another wildcard in that its comparisons to RimWorld are few, but it IS one of the recommended games on the RimWorld store page. Space Haven is a colony/survival sim set in space. You’re able to build up your ‘haven’ any way you want, and must travel to explore a procedurally generated galaxy in search of new crew, resources, supplies, and, crucially, a new home.
It probably has more in common with FTL or Crying Suns than RimWorld, but this isn’t a roguelike. It also sports a “simulated gas system” which, while neat, is not something I’d expect to be touted as a game-selling feature. But hey, you are in space. The efficient and safe transfer of air is probably quite important out in the void.
Surviving the Aftermath
Surviving the Aftermath doesn’t have RimWorld’s frontier setting, nor its bleak take on interstellar outback life, but it is a game about building up a colony and surviving in a harsh world. In this game’s case, you’re attempting to guide and protect a group of survivors from an apocalypse.
One of the strengths of this game is that the ‘event’ can be whatever you want: before starting each game you get to do some set-up that will determine what kind of events you get (very RimWorld), how bad the apocalypse was, how frequent disasters happen, and so on. Other strengths include a strategic layer where you can go out, explore, meet other colonies and also fight against bandits. It’s still in early access, but it gets regular big updates every couple of months and is shaping up nicely.
Dwarf Fortress Steam
The only thing better than a game like Dwarf Fortress… is Dwarf Fortress itself! This is a bit of a cheeky entry but it’s worth bearing in mind that the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress isn’t the exact same game that legend speaks of. Developer Bay 12 is formalizing the habits of some players by giving it an official skin pack that will enable graphics comparable to any of the modern successors.
The developers are also looking at adding additional premium features themed around creating a version of Dwarf Fortress for a more mainstream audience, although it pretty much plays the same and will be updated in line with the classic version. Dwarf Fortress on Steam includes the original game in all its retro glory, as well as skinned-up modes such as ‘Fortress’ and ‘Adventure’.
And there you have it, the best games like Rimworld. You may want to check out our list of the best strategy games if you want to stay within this genre of games. If you want to try something completely different, we highly recommend checking out our best PC games list.