Ludeon Studios has emerged with a new announcement revealing the next Rimworld DLC. The new DLC named Rimworld - Biotech has three main focuses: Children and reproduction, controlling Mechanoids, and genetic modification.
Starting with Biotech, colonists (and outsiders) can become pregnant via natural or technological means, leading to them giving birth. There are options for birth control but once born the babies will melt colonists' hearts. Like actual children, they will demand a lot of effort to keep them happy, and healthy from the parental units. Nothing says you have to keep them happy though, and you could choose instead to have them grow up quickly using growth vats into cheap, almost disposable workers and soldiers to populate your dystopian society. If you choose to let your citizens take the time to raise their kids they can grow up with handpicked traits and passions paying off the better education, attention, and upbringing that you have given them.
The next addition involves an enemy in Rimworld coming under your control at last. In Biotech you will be able to create and control a mixture of new and old mechanoids as the former enemies are joined by new labor lines. To control them you need a 'mechanitor', a person with a special brain implant that lets them psychically command your partially alive servitors. It's not just humans serving as a limit on Mechanoids though, using them creates also creates pollution, a new cost in the game. If you've taken a look at Earth lately, that can have quite severe consequences over time which Rimworld - Biotech will also feature.
The final main part of this Rimworld DLC is gene modification, where you'll be able to genetically modify people into xenohumans. These xenohumans can have smaller genetic modifications to areas like personality traits and eye color, or big changes like having furry bodies (making this the perfect gift for whoever keeps releasing all the nude furry games on Steam) and gaining the ability to breathe fire like a dragon. You will be able to create a variety xenotypes from scratch making use of genes from a wide variety of sources. These can be harvested from colonists, people you meet, prisoners you have captured, obtained as quest rewards, or purchased from traders who are carrying around parts of people's genomes to sell to random people they meet.
You can expect to see Rimworld - Biotech in the next few weeks, but its specific release date was not announced. You can read about everything in it, including why they chose these additions, on the steam page announcement.
Rimworld Update 1.4 Available now
Also available today is Rimworld update 1.4. This is on the Steam unstable branch where it is being publicly tested, and might lack some polish. This update adds a lot of customization to the game, letting you turn your colony into whatever color or style you want. Furthering the uniqueness of individuals, your starting colonists may now come with starting possessions based on their backstory, which may make the beginning easier. For those who mod the game, a new mod manager UI and mod mismatch window should make life a lot easier.
The full changelog for Rimworld update 1.4 is available here, though we want to reiterate that it is on the unstable branch and may be more prone to crashes and issues.
