My entire colony was saved by a tortoise.

This won't be a review like the ones I normally do, going over the pros and cons. Rimworld's a story generator, so I thought I'd share my story. I bought rimworld around two weeks prior to writing this, and set up a small colony. The first animal my colonists tamed was a 212 year old tortoise, who I named "Old Timer." We set up a small farm, and once we found a female tortoise (who I named "Henrietta Peach"), they had kids. And their kids had kids. Soon enough, I had too many tortoises than I knew what to do with, so i tried selling them, and the nearby colonists loved them. But things took a darker turn.

Around 5 days after buying rimworld, my IRL dog, of 15 years, passed. It was sad, but what hit extra hard was old timer's death only a few hours later. Both were blind, both had bad backs - it hurt, and I cried. I dug a big tomb in a mountain for old timer, and laid him to rest in it. But this is not where his story ends.

A few ingame hours later, I got a quest with a ressurection serum as a reward. In that moment, I knew what I had to do, as the end goal of my playthrough.

I couldn't save my dog from old age, but I sure as could save this turtle. Old timer was going to space.

After quickly gunning down some tribals and getting the serum, I needed a way to keep old timer from dying all over again while I aquired the supplies for the ship. Luckily, an ancient ruin was on my map, and after an intense fight with some killer robots, I safely placed him in a stasis chamber the robots were guarding.

Not much happened relating to him. Henrietta died of old age herself, and over the four or so years it took me to complete the ship, old timer's children numbered over 500. i made regular trips to the nearby towns to trade tortoises for the ship's supplies, like plasteel and uranium, and at long last, I placed old timer in the now-finished ship and turned the reactor on.

When you power on the escape reactor, rimworld basically becomes a sort of wave defense game, with a new posse of enemies coming every day for 15 days or so while the reactor charged. This wasn't a big deal - I had troops in power armor with miniguns, and we made it to the end of the 15 days without any deaths. Right as the reactor was at full power, and I told my colonists to enter the ship, things took a dramatic turn. A solar flare knocked out all my defences, leaving me without any kind of fire support. I hurredly got my colonists in the ship, but right as the last one was making his way across the fields to get to it...

Pirates airdropped into my base. I was screwed.

I was about to launch without him, when salvation came in a way I hadn't expected: A tortoise (number 493, to be precise) didn't take too kindly to someone coming out of the sky and attempting to shoot his keepers, and bit a pirate enforcer on the leg. This caused the pirate to hit him with his club, and after that the OTHER pirates started shooting the hundred or so turtles in the base, who promptly attacked back. And, in the ensuing chaos, my last colonist boarded the ship and we escaped.

Old timer, a blind, crippled, undead tortoise repaid me for saving his life - by birthing countless decendants to not only fund my escape, but who also protected me in my darkest hour of need. This game is a gift, and I cannot reccommend it enough. Even if you reload saves to keep the story going how you want, it's still a story worth telling.

10/10: The first game to make me cry.