This Oxygen Not Included-style survival city builder is also a rat-themed colony sim with some unexpected Terraria vibes, and you can try it free
Dec. 19, 2023You can try Ratopia for free for yourself
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The wizards at Don’t Starve developer Klei Entertainment helped write a new playbook for colony sims with the release of Oxygen Not Included, andRatopiahas taken a few pages from it and gone off in an adorable direction of its own. It’s a survival city builder that hit Early Access last month, and I’m mighty impressed with the demo so far, which is also giving off some unexpected Terraria energy.
Ratopia’s user reviews – which are 88% positive at the time of writing – draw countless, understandable comparisons to Oxygen Not Included. Both are 2D colony sims about gathering resources, assigning jobs to citizens, building facilities to process and generate goods, and researching new technologies that enable further expansion. You recruit more people to do more stuff and you need more stuff to keep those people happy and alive. Round and round the progression curve goes, and boom, there goes eight hours in the blink of an eye.
So far, so colony sim. The thing that really makes Ratopia pop in my eyes, based on my brief time with the free Steam demo, is the wrapper on this familiar formula. The rat motif is adorable, for one, and translates well to cute little facilities and farms and burrows. The way you engage with the world is also surprisingly Terraria-like at times, which I find exciting.
There’s a very basic action component, and something about the way you explore environments, mine resources, and arrange layered habitats connected by ladders and lifts really hits the Terraria nerve for me. I expected Oxygen Not Included vibes, and Ratopia feels like home in a different sense too. There are even intermittent waves of enemies that besiege your base, which leans more into the array of defensive structures.
If you’re more of a mouse person,have a gander at this turn-based RPG where a pocket knife-wielding mouse fights cats.
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