The next RimWorld expansion adds a hefty dose of Lovecraftian terror

I’ve fallen in love with sci-fi colony administration RimWorld, which is unparalleled at creating wild tales via random gameplay occasions. RimWorld has just a few enlargement packs, including issues like royalty, faith, gene-editing, and youngster rearing to the sport. At this time, Ludeon Studios introduced a brand new enlargement pack is on the best way, and it’s going to be the scariest one but: Anomaly.

Anomaly’s content material begins as soon as the colonists “by chance provoke a mad superintelligence,” in keeping with the discharge weblog. “From then on, insanity manifests: Monstrous creatures, mind-bending mysteries, infiltrating parasites, and sanity-shredding phenomena that twist the entire world round you.”

RimWorld is already a reasonably horrifying sport however much less in a supernatural or paranormal means, and extra in being a showcase of man’s inhumanity to man. It’s a sport the place you possibly can harvest organs and menace your slave inhabitants by placing useless our bodies in terrifying cages, in any case. However Anomaly seems to be way more centered on offering an exterior horror menace that your colonists should band collectively to outlive, a la The Factor.

Picture: Ludeon Studios

Ludeon shared some tantalizing situations that the participant could encounter throughout a playthrough, and I’m already excited at the opportunity of encountering the attractive dice. I crave dice. The remainder of the situations are chock stuffed with basic sci-fi and horror inspiration.

At night time, hear the screeching of a psychically-invisible hunter that feeds on human souls. Construct proximity alarms to detect when it’s close to, however you possibly can solely battle it when it chooses to disclose itself. Chip away at its well being each time it returns, and accumulate and examine chunks of its flesh. Flip the tables, turn into the hunter and kill it the place it lives.

A large flesh creature is rising throughout the panorama, consuming and protecting the entire map with a quivering mass of meat. It defends itself with beasts and acid. Struggle it to get samples of its nervous system, then examine them till you possibly can enterprise to its coronary heart and kill it for good.

A parasite has mind-controlled a few of your colonists – however who? They faux to be human as they work to infest others. Observe proof, imprison, interrogate, and medically check folks to seek out out who’s infested earlier than it’s too late.

A pulsating obelisk crash-lands close to your base. You possibly can attempt to suppress its filthy vitality, however the obelisk could lash out and violently mutate your folks, copy them endlessly, or abduct them to an infinite grey maze.

Your colonists turn into obsessive about a stupendous golden dice, one after the other. They construct statues of the dice. They worship the dice. They love the dice.

A corpse arrives that appears precisely like certainly one of your colonists – and appears to observe them. It doesn’t matter what you do, the corpse returns…

And plenty of extra bizarre and horrifying occasions!

Whereas I’m somewhat unhappy that my present, closely modded RimWorld run is coming to an finish, I’m already excited to start out a brand new colony doomed by terrifying obelisks and sneaky mind-controlling parasites. Lareon additionally teased new monsters — and services wherein the participant can examine them.

Anomaly is because of launch alongside replace 1.5 “in a single month,” in keeping with a tweet from RimWorld creator Tynan Sylvester.