Rise to Ruins Catch-All

Rise to Ruins releases on October 14th after a pleasant and busy few years in development, so I thought I'd stand up a discussion thread for anyone who dives in. The game allows you to stand up a settlement in the face of the Corruption, a sort of zombie occupation that must be driven back. Interestingly, each map will end up containing many of your settlements, which can trade resources back and forth as needed in the long-term fight to end the Corruption. Your settlements will rise, yes, but will they survive? Or end up in the eponymous Ruins?

This game has survival and city-building elements built into an RTS resource collection and production framework. It is *not* a twitch game, but rather a thoughtful, well-paced building game. You'll have to locate your settlements with regards to resources, build them out to exploit those, and deal with (some) resources running out over time, potentially. There is a substantial production chain system that lets you build more and more interesting/useful structures, and you'll need to attract new settlers while being careful to be able to support all of your citizens, even when times get tough. Multiple balancing acts ensue.

Anyway, feel free to put your experiences, stories, tips and system sleight-of-mouses here for others to enjoy.

I bought the game years ago and followed development ever since. I'm kind of burned out on the actual gameplay, but I really admire the incredible level of dedication that the developer has put into refining, expanding, and rebuilding his game over the years.

I bought this some time ago, played for 38 minutes while having no idea what I was doing, and set it aside. Glad to hear it is releasing, I will try and give it another go soon(ish).

If you like, there are a good number of intro and Let's Play videos around. This is the collection at the official website. Doubtless we will see more in the coming weeks.

Robear wrote:

It is *not* a twitch game, but rather a thoughtful, well-paced building game. You'll have to locate your settlements with regards to resources, build them out to exploit those, and deal with (some) resources running out over time, potentially. There is a substantial production chain system that lets you build more and more interesting/useful structures, and you'll need to attract new settlers while being careful to be able to support all of your citizens, even when times get tough. Multiple balancing acts ensue. :-)

This certainly sounds interesting.

When playing the game what does it mostly play like? It certainly looks like Rimworld. (FYI: I'm not able to watch LPs atm.)

Rimworld-ish, but with more accessible resources and the ability to avoid a downward spiral. And it's not a story game; it's a struggle against being overwhelmed by zombies and other Corruptions. You will develop multiple settlements, too, over time, and pass people and resources back and forth.

Oh yes, one very important thing to notice. In the lower left corner, there are several buttons that activate cursors you can sweep over resources to select them for harvest. If you don't mark resources, they will not be harvested! So, you initially need wood and stone (and soon crystal). Plan your harvest locations with these cursors and your workers will rush to harvest them.

Is there a good primer writeup somewhere you recommend that gives a good overview of how to play? I truly miss classic computer game instruction manuals.

There's a sort of tutorial that gives you some initial steps to follow. But the best sources are the numerous "Let's Play" or "How To Play" videos. Just pick something recent (or don't get hung up in details that might have changed.

There is also a Steam page that has some writeups on how to get started. Still, it's a matter of getting used to the pace, and the interface. But for me, the single most important starting tip is understanding how to designate areas to be harvested. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory; when you look at buildings, you'll see the necessary precursors, for example. But those tiny buttons in the lower left can really stymie you.

The left side bar, in the middle, is your labor force control panel. You'll start out with about 12 citizens and they will all be builders. It works like this. As you add buildings, they will have staff. Let's say you add a stonecutters hut. That can take up to 4 workers. Remove two workers from your builders, and add them to the roster in your raw materials production section under the stonecutters entry. (Even though the Builders will harvest as required, you will need to dedicate at least one worker to each building to get its benefits.) The two workers will now take stone from the area you designated and provide it to the builders. And so on it goes.

You'll want to prioritize wood and stone production, houses, a well or two, a bottler, a farm and an upgrade to your village center. From there, you can start messing around as you please (don't forget mana production chains either). If you get stuck without defense, dogs can help, and you can burn mana on a golem, but better to get a few Rangers when you can. Don't worry if you lose some folks early on, you'll get Nomads you can take in. It's fairly forgiving.

Enjoy!