Games like RimWorld
The three best games after RimWorld are Dwarf Fortress (the deeper story generator RimWorld learned from), Oxygen Not Included (colony survival where physics is the raider) and Kenshi (the open-world sandbox where your colonists can also just leave). The ranking sorts ten games by what they generate: stories, systems, or suffering.
RimWorld calls itself a story generator, and 245,000 Steam reviews at 98% positive suggest the label is earned — nobody remembers their colony's throughput, everybody remembers the wedding interrupted by a manhunting squirrel pack. Copying that is harder than copying a crafting tree, which is why most 'like RimWorld' games only manage the base-building half.
This list ranks ten by what they actually generate. One is a deliberate skip — a competent builder that keeps getting recommended for the one quality it lacks.
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How we picked these
- Colonists with enough interior life that losing one specific person stings.
- Systems that collide into unscripted stories — not scripted event chains.
- Failure that is interesting to watch, not just a loss screen.
- Indirect control: you draft priorities, the colony lives its own life.
- Finished, supported games at 84% positive or better.
The list
01 Dwarf Fortress
The game RimWorld openly descends from, on Steam since 2022 with actual graphics and mouse support, at 95% positive. It simulates further down than anything else made by humans — individual dwarf teeth, cat alcohol poisoning via paw-licking, geology. Harder to read than RimWorld, and the stories it produces are stranger and better. Losing is fun; it says so on the tin.
02 Oxygen Not Included
The systems pick: heat, gas and liquid genuinely simulate, so your colony's real enemy is thermodynamics. Fewer interpersonal stories than RimWorld, far deeper machinery — a late-game base is an organism of pumps and valves you built one panic at a time. 97% positive, and Klei's slapstick keeps disaster charming.
03 Kenshi
RimWorld's freedom without RimWorld's walls: your squad can build a base, or wander a 870-square-kilometre dying world, lose limbs, buy robot replacements and become the thing bandits fear. No main quest, no chosen one — you start as nobody and every scar is earned. Ugly, obtuse, and one of the most storied games on Steam at 96%.
04 Songs of Syx
The scale answer: RimWorld tops out at a dozen colonists, Syx runs cities of 10,000 with battles to match, while still tracking individuals — one developer, 94% positive, absurdly ambitious. Pick it when your colony fantasy outgrows a wooden barn and becomes an actual kingdom.
05 Stranded: Alien Dawn
The closest direct RimWorld translation into 3D — crash survivors, personality clashes, base defence against escalating fauna. It is more beautiful and more approachable than RimWorld and roughly half as deep; a strong first colony sim, or a palate cleanser between thousand-hour saves.
06 Frostpunk
One city, one generator, minus 70 degrees and falling. It trades RimWorld's open-ended sandbox for authored scenarios where every law you sign costs part of your conscience. The colony game as moral pressure cooker — different shape, same 'what did I just become' aftertaste.
07 Project Zomboid
Colony-sim instincts in first person singular: your base, your routines, your slow mastery of a zombie-swallowed Kentucky — this is how you died, the loading screen honestly warns. The sandbox story generator lives here too, just usually with a cast of one until multiplayer makes it a settlement.
08 Prison Architect
The layout brain's pick: regime scheduling, contraband flow, riot containment — a colony where the colonists are actively working against you. The base game's loop remains excellent even after years of uneven DLC; buy the base, judge the add-ons ruthlessly.
SKIP09 Going Medieval
Skip if the storyteller is why you play RimWorld — Going Medieval builds a lovely three-storey stone fort, but its settlers are labour units, not characters, and no story engine is coming to change that. If you want RimWorld-with-castles, RimWorld's Medieval mods do it deeper; for a prettier colony sim, Stranded: Alien Dawn keeps the drama.
10 Timberborn
Beavers, vertical architecture and real water physics — droughts and toxic tides give it the survival pulse most city-builders lack. There is no interpersonal drama; there is the quiet RimWorld pleasure of watching a settlement you designed actually function. The gentlest entry on this list, at 96% positive.
Similar but different
Crusader Kings III
The other great story generator, run on dynastic spite instead of colony survival. Your heir is a drunk, your wife is scheming, and you will tell the tale for years — RimWorld players convert instantly.
Factorio
Remove the people, keep the systems, and discover what your RimWorld brain does without anyone to feed. The purest logistics high in games, and the same lost weekends.
The Long Dark
One survivor, no base to manage — RimWorld's cold-and-hunger math experienced from inside a single freezing body. For when you wonder what your colonists actually go through.
FAQ
Is Dwarf Fortress harder than RimWorld?
Harder to read, not harder to survive — the Steam version's interface removed most of the old cliff face, and early fortresses are actually forgiving. The real difference is depth of simulation: things happen in Dwarf Fortress that RimWorld cannot represent at all.
What is the closest thing to RimWorld in 3D?
Stranded: Alien Dawn — it is transparently RimWorld's structure (survivors, moods, raids, research) with a camera you can tilt. Expect fewer systems and mods, not fewer feelings.
Does anything match RimWorld's mod scene?
In this genre, no — RimWorld's workshop is effectively a second game. Project Zomboid is the runner-up, and Dwarf Fortress needs mods least because the base simulation already outruns everyone.
I want colony stories but less violence. What fits?
Timberborn — the threats are weather and water, not raiders, and failure means a flooded district rather than a massacre. Oxygen Not Included is similar: your enemies are heat and your own plumbing.
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