When I first encountered Rimworld in 2015, I thought "The graphics are really jank, but people have been rave reviewing this indie alpha and it seems up my street...maybe it'll occupy a lazy afternoon or two."

I played it squeaky clean and pure, as the good Tynan intended.
I played it bloated and modded almost beyond recognition, warcriming joyously on dinosaur mounts in my sci-fi spaceship.
I save-scummed my way to pefection, then swore a vow of permadeath. I kept my vow, except when I became filled with rage at Randy and alt f4ed to go back a day.
I went naked and alone to the arctic, ate my dog and my dignity before discovering a toasty geothermal vent and an endless supply of trader tartar. Then, a breakthrough! Butchering the "tartar" beforehand yields masses of the finest pale leather - it turns out you don't need cotton fields after all.
I ground my teeth and tapped my toes, more stressed than any adult problem could make me, more engrossed, deeper in flow than any real situation could bring me. My woes melted in the soothing whine/hum of my ancient potato laptop and the only thing of concern became the man hunting swarm of alpacas baying for vengeance at my triple door.

By 2020 I had played the damn game almost every day for 5 years, literally thousands of hours in the thick of a fulltime maths teaching career.

My brother finally just bought me the game after hearing another lament of loss over my latest savegame dying to an update. It was the first time I owned a game on Steam that wasn't free... arrrrrrr me hearties.
I wanted to review it then, but I felt shame at the fact that it said I had played 0 hours. I felt I wanted at least a couple of official hours before writing a review of my absolute favourite game of all time.
I never attained anything like the same fervour of those first 5 years, but I've never played anything as much before or since.

My first child was born in 2023 and I launched the ship for the first time ever as she slept on my lap.
In all my old savegames of 15 years or more I never really considered actually 'finishing' the game; but it felt like a rite of passage, the last thing to clock.
Now here I am, downloading it again at 3am since having a 2 year old is kind of cuts into one's gaming a bit.
I could write a lot more about Rimworld.
But it's finished installing a while ago and I feel like I've never fully explored a roaming raiders stategy...

There's just no other game that gives me the itch quite like the Rim.

worth the year long loading times from my 100s of mods

eat