I've played Rimworld on and off over the years since it launched, about 400 or so hours. I've never gotten a colony to the endgame, though, since things either go terribly wrong (sometimes frustrating) or life happens and I stop playing for awhile and lose where I'm at in a save and choose to start a new one.
I finally made it to the endgame, full vanilla with cataphract armor and every colonist loaded with bionics. I had been playing with like, a hyper addiction over the past week, and finally realized that I needed to end the game - I wasn't losing this time, but I was rather stuck playing it too much, so I needed to get off the planet.
One of my colonists, Ghost, was a young child when they joined, and I was able to raise them well. She became my best colonist and had three more children. She was my first maxed out crafter, the one who gets everyone into excellent clothes and armor and really launches you toward the late game.
I built and powered on the ship. Halfway through the 14 day countdown, Randy throws yet another raid at me, during which Ghost went into labor with her third child. I wasn't able to keep the husband around, and Ghost had briefly meandered out of the hospital for some reason, so the child was born sickly. The raid was harsh, with drop pods landing close by the hospital, so I had my docs out doubling up as support. I had to immediately undraft them and bring them to the hospital for this sickly child. I was barely able to keep them alive with my best docs and glitterworld medicine, but everyone made it.
After surviving the onslaught, it was time to load up. Ghost fed and played with her baby, carried her to the cryptosleep casket, and put her in. I decided to watch every bit of it at normal speed, just to savor the last few minutes of my colony. After her baby was in, she got in the adjacent casket.
My colonists had bonded with a few labrador retrievers, their venerated animals. I had my doctor anesthetize the three bonded ones, two girls and a boy. Each one was loaded up by their bonded colonist. No other world would be paradise without them.
I paused for a moment here and really imagined these moments, how real humans would have felt during them. A mother putting her baby into a suspended state, hoping to bring her to a better life, and people with their canine best friends, who were their only source of unconditional love on the nightmarish planet. They were leaving behind their comfortable bedrooms, their rec room that they threw parties in, their dining room, and for some of them, all that they ever knew.
Once everyone else got in their pods, it was time to launch. I went through the ending, imagining my colonists waking up in a hopeful utopia, their ship's AI keeping them safe in their suspended animation for many thousands of years. The game came back to my empty colony: "Everyone is dead or gone. This story is over. Perhaps someone else will find a use for the ruins of this place." The colony was quiet, barring my mechanator's labor bots meandering around.
I just kind of reflected a moment. It was an odd feeling, like being in the place of a large celebration the day after, once everyone who brought that space alive had parted ways back to their own lives. I've always really valued those moments, so it was peculiar to have one with a video game.
Anyway, it was oddly emotional for a game that is also about making cowboy hats out of human skin, so I just wanted to share and see if anyone else also has had unusually emotional experiences with Rimworld. Thanks for reading.