RimWorld is getting a new expansion in April 2024, although it may not be for the faint of heart. As announced, Rimworld – Anomaly is an eldritch horror-themed expansion that introduces “all manner of monstrous, mysterious, and maddening threats, containment facilities to capture and study dark entities, and a new reality-twisting endgame.”
For those who enjoy torturing their tiny RimWorld heroes, this pack looks like it’ll bring plenty of new options for torment and terror. As described, the plot of the expansion kicks off when RimWorld colonists accidentally provoke a “mad superintelligence” who then unleashes an array of madness including strange creatures, “mind-bending” mysteries, parasites, and “sanity-shredding phenomena that twist the whole world around you.”
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Anomaly is inspired by psychological horror tales, with developers describing roots in The Thing, Cabin the Woods, Hellraiser, and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology. Some of the scenarios players will be able to work through in the expansion include:
- A plot directly inspired by The Thing, where some of your colonists will be mind-controlled by an alien parasite, requiring medical testing and monitoring.
- A plot inspired by The Blob, where a massive flesh creature begins absorbing everything on your map.
- You will need to solve the mystery around a “pulsating obelisk” which may mutate your people, Color Out Of Space-style.
- You will need to deal with the arrival of an invisible hunter that feeds on human souls.
- A mysterious cube appears, and you must figure out what it is – and why your colonists become obsessed, and worship it.
- A corpse turns up that looks exactly like one of your colonists and proceeds to stalk them – you need to unravel its mystery, fast.
To combat these threats, there will be new tools and gear to help out, including flamethrowers, special IEDs, pulsers, insanity-inducing weapons, and more.
“I wanted to give players new kinds of emotions they haven’t encountered before in RimWorld,” Tynan Sylvester, Ludeon Studios founder said of the expansion. “We’ve explored feelings around dramatic combat tension, family warmth, problem-solving and many more. Now I wanted to provoke new emotions – dread, psychological tension, suspicion and mystery. The horror theme unlocks a new emotional landscape for us to explore.”
For those who prefer a less horrifying approach to raising colonists in RimWorld, there are also other goodies on the way.
Alongside Anomaly, Ludeon Studios has also revealed a free game update for all players, which has been over a year in the making. This update provides a range of new features, fixes, and changes, adding in plenty for players to explore.
As detailed, the update includes: new books, bookcases, couches, ornate doors, wall lamps, flood lights, hidden conduits, and new features including “clean” actions, bionic jaws and organ decay, visual changes to some apparel, and overall performance and art improvements.
You can learn more about everything coming to RimWorld on the game’s Steam discussion page.
