RimWorld Anomaly DLC adds Eldritch horrors and lets you burn them with fire

Hans, get the Flammenwerfer

It’s all as we have foreseen: RimWorld is getting a brand-new DLC called Anomaly “soon” and many have correctly guessed from the previously released artwork of the expansion, it’s full of Eldritch horrors and forbidden science experiments that have a tendency to go wrong. Well, at least you’ll be able to purge those horrific creatures thanks to the power of flamethrowers.

It’s not simply going to be tentacle monsters from the deep sea that are after your colonists (and their sanity) in Anomaly. At night, an invisible hunter will be after your people, feeding on their very souls unless you set up detection systems and whittle down its health. Cut off chunks of its flesh and study it to reverse the roles.

Turns out that we got a lof things right from interpreting this artwork / Ludeon Studios

There is also a giant flesh creature consuming the land itself unless you stop it, a parasite that’ll mind-control your colonists without you knowing, a mysterious space obelisk mutating your folks, walking dead, a golden cube hat becomes everyone’s obsession and god, and much more – it’s RimWorld, things are bound to get weird and out of control.

As mentioned above, you’ll have some new tools to face these emerging (and, indeed, already existing) threats with. Flamethrowers and Hellcat Rifles are perfect for cleansing zombies or flesh creatures, while special IEDs allow you to resurrect the dead and turn them against any attackers. Mutation Pulsers will transform living creatures into horrors, some weapons induce insanity, and then there is the humble Stun Crossbow for when you need to capture a target.

Yes, this place could definitely use some cleaning / Ludeon Studios

Why would you want to capture Eldritch horrors? Well, for science, of course! You can construct containment and research facilities to study these unnatural creatures and devise better arms to face them with – or, indeed, use their power against your other enemies. Just remember: That’s basically the kind of thing that always goes wrong and lays the foundation for horror movies.

Anomaly will introduce new human enemies as well: Cultists unleashing psychic attacks. A new endgame will see the abyssal void consuming the humble planet you’ve made your home – will you escape its clutches or even try to fight it?

“I wanted to give players new kinds of emotions they haven’t encountered before in RimWorld,” RimWorld creator Tynan Sylvester explained. “We’ve explored feelings around dramatic combat tension, family warmth, problem-solving and many more. Now I wanted to provoke new emotions – dread, psychological tension, suspicion and mystery. The horror theme unlocks a new emotional landscape for us to explore.”

He continued: “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. 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. There aren’t many games which mix management and horror either, so it was an interesting design challenge to marry these two elements.”

Anomaly will be accompanied by update 1.5 for RimWorld, which will add a bunch of features and content to the game for free, such as books and bookshelves, wall lamps, crawling, and a lot more.

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