Our picks, beyond the numbers
5 games like RimWorld we would recommend for different reasons
RimWorld's best stories are rarely the ones you planned. A raid goes wrong, a colonist has a breakdown at the worst possible moment, and suddenly the story you're telling yourself about this colony is completely different from the one you started with. We looked for games that keep some version of that improvised, systems-driven storytelling alive, even where the setting has nothing to do with a sci-fi frontier.
Some of these are the games RimWorld itself cites as inspiration; others take the colony-management idea somewhere stranger or bigger. Here are the five games like RimWorld we'd actually recommend, and the specific reason for each.
Oxygen Not Included
Our first choice for obsessive colony management
Oxygen Not Included asks for the same obsessive attention to keeping a small group alive that RimWorld does, just swapped into a side-view asteroid colony where oxygen, heat and plumbing are the constant crises instead of raiders at the door.
We'd start here for a RimWorld player who loves the management side specifically — tracing a leak, rebalancing a gas loop, realizing three systems are quietly failing at once — more than the raid-driven storytelling. The environmental puzzles here are relentless in a way RimWorld's combat-focused tension isn't.
There's no combat-driven narrative to speak of; challenges are almost entirely environmental, and the side-view presentation is a real departure from RimWorld's top-down layout. Choose this when the systems themselves are the appeal, not the raids.
Dwarf Fortress
For the game RimWorld grew out of
RimWorld's own Steam page lists Dwarf Fortress as an inspiration, and it's a fair comparison: this is a complex construction, management and roguelike simulation that calls itself the deepest simulation of a world ever created, released in its current Steam form in December 2022.
We'd recommend it to a RimWorld player who wants even more simulation depth underneath the colony-management loop — more interlocking systems, more ways for a small decision to ripple outward. The developers have added tutorials to ease new players into building a first fort.
Its interface and presentation ask more patience than RimWorld's, even with those added tutorials, and the pace of learning it is genuinely steeper. Go in expecting a longer on-ramp in exchange for even deeper simulation.
Prison Architect
For the same juggling act, aimed at a prison
Prison Architect asks you to juggle the same kind of competing needs RimWorld does — safety, happiness, resources — just focused entirely on the people you're incarcerating rather than colonists you're trying to protect from the outside world.
We like it for a RimWorld player who enjoys the management puzzle of keeping a group of people stable and productive, and is curious what that same tension feels like when the people in question are prisoners rather than settlers with their own backstories.
The entire premise is running a prison, so the moral tension and storytelling come from a very different direction than RimWorld's raids and random events. Pick this for a different flavor of the same management itch.
Banished
For quieter, raid-free growth
Banished channels the same satisfaction of nursing a fragile group of settlers from nothing into a stable community, trading RimWorld's sci-fi frontier for a medieval one founded by a group of exiled travelers with nowhere else to go.
We'd point a RimWorld player here specifically when they want the colony-building side of the formula without the constant threat of a raid interrupting it — resource balance and steady, peaceful growth carry the whole experience instead.
There's no combat, no raiders and no individual pawn backstories to get attached to — the tension is purely about keeping the numbers balanced. Choose Banished when you want to build without ever being attacked.
Against the Storm
For colony-building reshaped into shorter runs
Against the Storm reworks the colony-building loop into a roguelite structure, where each settlement is a shorter run against a recurring Blightstorm rather than RimWorld's open-ended, years-long colony that can carry on indefinitely.
We'd recommend it to a RimWorld player who likes the core loop but wants each attempt to resolve faster — a dark fantasy setting and a ticking clock give every run its own shape, rather than one long, continuous story.
Runs here are deliberately finite and replayable rather than persistent, and the dark fantasy setting replaces RimWorld's sci-fi frontier entirely. Pick this when you want the colony-building itch scratched in shorter, more repeatable bursts.
