The game is Rimworld. And I’m hooked.

It started simply enough; a group of three random fools crash-landed on a planet, trying to survive with only their basic skills and wits. Chop down some trees, build a little hut. Nothing fancy, four walls and a roof. Then a couple of beds, for sleeping and treating injuries.

There were critters nearby, turkeys and raccoons, so I had meat, but then had to build a butchering table to prep them and a crude stove to cook them. Planted a field of potatoes, because hey, if it works for Mark Watney.

At some point here, early on, while exploring the interface, I found the menu that lets you perform surgical operations. I thought I was clicking to harvest the heart from a deer we’d killed, but of course, I was mistaken and before I know it, Magic is on a medical bed and Gregory-heap is trying to remove his heart. I was nervous about what I’d be faced with if I interrupted the procedure, so I let him carry on. Fortunately for me (and Magic, I guess), he failed, which allowed us to stitch Magic back up (heart and all) and let him recover over the next few days. Close one.

The first time we were attacked, the raider came alone. Bonehead move, we had guns and she had a club. A few well placed shots and she was down and unconscious, her body in shock. I hastily built a little room to function as a jail, and sent one of my colonists to retrieve her.

She was a geologist. I didn’t have one of those. So we fed her, treated her wounds (basic medicines, of course. No sense wasting any of the fancy stuff). Then I periodically sent Viktor in to chat with her, convince her to join our colony. She saw the wisdom in the proposal, and now I had a geologist.

Things went well, for a while. Our base expanded, we had a large storeroom and were mining steel, and jade, and stockpiling wood. Even built some solar panels and batteries to power a single air conditioner, since it was summer and we were in the middle of a sudden 115°F heatwave.

Of course, it’s busy work trying to survive, and in all the hustle and bustle, nobody had a moment to tailor any new clothing. That was a problem for Vector, the criminal kingpin that joined our colony a little while back. See, his clothes were old, and tattered. So I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised when he had a mental break, stripped naked and started wandering around in a psychotic stupor.

I asked him not to go outside, but of course he was no longer listening to me. Off he wanders into the sweltering heat, where the inevitable heatstroke lays him low out on the borders of what I consider our “ranch”.

Vector is a good guy when he’s not wandering around naked. He’s our warden, and our sculptor, and I would kind of like to see him not die. So I wake up Magic, and tell him to go out and rescue Vector. He agrees, but apparently somewhere between bed and Vector, Magic decides I’ve woken him up from sleep one too many times, and has an episode of his own. He goes berserk, and stalks back into our compound with the survival rifle I’ve given him (because he’s our best hunter), and starts looking for victims.

If I lose any of my other three colonists at this point, I’m pretty sure our little adventure here will be dead in the water, so I do what anyone would do when faced with this situation; I tell Viktor to grab some lumber, and I wall Magic into our dining room until he cools off.

Now, what to do about Vector? Oh, nevermind. Apparently a nearby rat has turned into a manhunter, and finished him off. After nightfall, when the temperature is safe, someone will need to go out and drag his corpse to our dump to decompose.

This is a fraction of what happened in my first few hours of Rimworld. A couple of weeks in the summer of 5500AD.