TWe Are Clones: A Rimworld Story Simulation

• MLP: FiM
• Adventure
• Comedy
• Sci-Fi

Starbot Glimmdroid XX-02 has been sent to a new world, an alternate reality dubbed "Equestria #065." The task: create a colony suitable for living. The problem: this world is already inhabited. How will her colony survive alone on this rimworld?

• Narcotics
• Violence
• Death
• Crossover
• Alt. Universe
• Fluttershy
• Trixie
• OC
• Starlight Glimmer

SwordTune · 2k words  ·  11  4 · 336 views

Ah, Rimworld, the game infamously famous for encouraging the harvesting of organs.

I played quite a bit of Rimworld a while ago and I enjoyed it quite a lot, although I did end up taking a more humanitarian route (meaning no limbs were lost on my run), but I was still intrigued to see a story based on it.

Video game-inspired fics definitely do have the ability to succeed, with Fallout Equestria and Changeling Space Program being top-tier examples of the idea. However… Perhaps I set my expectations too high when coming into this, because I was honestly fairly let down by the results. Let’s get into it. 

The story is pretty much what’s on the tin. Clones of Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, and Fluttershy are sent to explore a newly discovered Equestrian rimworld, where they encounter various natives and creatures in an attempt to survive.

That being said… I don’t know if this story really has a plot. The story is largely driven by the events of the game, which is fair in and of itself, but I was expecting a narrative to accompany it. Because there is so much room for creativity and expansion, room for filling in the gaps and in betweens! But the story just… doesn’t really do that. We pretty much move from day to day, from one in-game event to the next.

And I think that’s one of the sticking points for me. Because there are so few elements of the story to actually talk about here. I couldn’t even tell you much about who this Starbot clone is, why she was made, why she was cloned or why Twilight sent a team here. 

The description offers the only information, briefly mentioning Twilight did some stuff(™) through portal experimentation, but nothing about what kind of an AU we’re dealing with, so I’m left at a loss. 

Trixie, Starbot, and Fluttershy are… somewhat personable. Starlight comes off as cold and uncaring a lot of the time, which would make sense given that she’s (what I’m assuming anyways) a robot. Trixie actually maintains a bit of her fun abrasiveness while actually having an apparently high moral standard, clashing with Starbot on several of her decisions. And Fluttershy felt fairly similar I suppose, though I don’t really have much information to go off of.

Starbot is an incredibly hard character to empathize with here, as her blaisée and cold demeanor makes it hard to really cheer for her. It again makes sense for her character if she’s truly a robot here, but again the lack of a real plotline combined with a relatively dry narrator with no emotional attachment to anything just… isn’t a great combination. 

Again, echoing my previous notion that overall the tone comes off as dry. This isn’t really a fault of the author necessarily, and I attribute it more to the relatively uneventful action throughout the story. I didn’t notice any typos or glaring grammatical errors. 

The best way I can describe this story is to point at the incomplete tag. It ultimately doesn’t do it for me. I feel like nothing interesting really occurs, and even when there are events in the story they don’t come with any buildup or resolution. 

Ultimately I don’t think this works.

One reason is again the length, as the story hasn’t been updated after about 1,500 words, and another is my mentioned point about the story. This doesn’t feel like a fic inspired by the game, but rather more like me reading someone’s account of their run. Which, again, can absolutely work, but in a written medium with a fairly dull narration it just… doesn’t. I think ultimately if you understand how Rimworld works, you’re just reading the account of someone’s playthrough for the first two weeks, and if you don’t know how Rimworld works there isn’t really a story to be had and you’d just be confused by the character’s decisions and actions.

Two days into arriving for example Starbot kills a prisoner and harvests their organs. This is as I mentioned a popular Rimworld strategy, but it’s never explained in the story why she does so. And when she repeats the action for every prisoner she comes across it just… makes her unlikable as a character. Because again, to the Rimworld player the move probably is fine, but to the reader it has no purpose in the story and is only done because ‘why not.’ 

Again, I’m not expecting a story like this to be on the same plane as something like Changeling Space Program, but I was very high on the idea and I’m left feeling like this fic just doesn’t deliver. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the rest of the description, which warns:

This is nothing but a lazy Rimworld crossover, basing many events in the story on whatever happens to this colony within the game. 

I think that this is a fairly apt way to describe this fic. 

This is probably best geared towards people who have played Rimworld, but as a story I can’t really recommend this. 

I may come off as incredibly critical here but it was hard for me to really tackle much. I don’t know if you plan on continuing the fic, but I do think there’s potential in something like this and that you can take it in some very special directions. I suppose I’m just confused why a review was requested with the story in the state that it is.