Developer Ludeon Studios has announced the fourth expansion for colony sim Rimworld. Titled Anomaly, the expansion will be horror-themed, and is set for release in April. The expansion will be released alongside update 1.5 for the base game.
Rimworld: Anomaly will kick things off when colonists provoke a super-intelligence, which then leads into monstrous creatures, sanity-destroying phenomena, and parasites make their way into the world. The expansion has been described by the studio as being inspired by horror works like Cabin in the Woods, The Thing, Hellraiser, and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
The Anomaly expansion will feature a number of horror-themed scenarios that players might face, like an invisible hunter that feeds on human souls, a massive flesh creature growing across the landscape, or even colonists becoming obsessed with a mysterious golden cube.
There will also be new things to fight in the expansion, including hordes of undead, new death machines, fleshbeasts, water-beasts, and imitations of human beings. Colonists can build new tools to help fight off these enemies, including items like flamethrowers and IEDs that can resurrect the dead.
“It was important to me that this not just be a collection of monsters to shoot at, because the base game already generates those feelings of combat tension and I wanted something new,” said Ludeon Studio founder Tynan.
“So we made sure to design the new threats to follow the arc of classic horror stories: The protagonists encounter a mystery, then realize it’s a threat, and try to survive while they learn more about it, slowly building advantage before they try to turn the tables. It’s a very RimWorld kind of chaos when several of these things are happening at once with different threats.”
The planned update for the base game, update 1.5, will bring with a host of new features as well, such as the ability for wounded colonists to crawl, trait-related possessions, organ decay, and the ability to build wall lamps, flood lights and hidden conduits.
Rimworld is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.