In this rat-filled City Builder, one wrong move can change everything - and in my case it was forgetting to add a toilet

Few games have drilled into me the importance of bracing for catastrophe quite like Rimworld. It’s a brutal, unrelenting colony simulator where survival hinges on your ability to foresee threats lurking just beyond the fog of war. And yes, it gets exhausting—rebuilding your base for the tenth time after a pack of rabid squirrels wipes out your entire population can wear anyone down. So I set out in search of a gentler alternative, a management game that wouldn’t demand constant vigilance or punish every oversight with annihilation.

That’s how I found Ratopia, a charmingly cute rodent-centered city builder that looked like the perfect escape. With its whimsical visuals and fairy-tale vibe, it promised a peaceful reign as a kind-hearted rat queen overseeing her devout little followers. I pictured serene afternoons watching my tiny rat citizens scurry about in joy, and tranquil evenings strolling through cozy burrow halls lit by mushroom lamps. Instead, I stumbled into a nightmarish fairground of disease, despair, and overflowing latrines.

Best laid plans

As any seasoned base builder knows, there's a rhythm to survival. You begin with surface-level resources, then gradually dig deeper—both literally and technologically—to unlock rarer materials and advanced production chains. It’s a tried-and-true progression ladder.

In Ratopia, the first step is constructing a City Gate to welcome new rat migrants. From there, you must rapidly scale up to meet their escalating demands as they grow dissatisfied with sleeping on dirt floors and having no entertainment. Early game comfort is crucial—your Ratizens won’t tolerate austerity for long. You’re forced to hustle for research points early on, racing through multiple tech trees just to keep morale from collapsing.

Though the research system allows some freedom—letting you focus on whichever resources you’ve got in abundance—there’s a rigid hierarchy of basic needs that must be fulfilled quickly. Stray from this path, and recovery becomes nearly impossible, as I painfully learned.

The rat race

This was my third attempt in two days—city builders tend to get restarted a lot when things go sideways. This time, I skipped the tutorial. Why bother? I knew the drill. Or so I believed.

Most of this run was spent exploring the map, which grants research points each time you return with a new discovery. I also built a Laboratory early to generate passive research income, thinking I was setting myself up for long-term stability. I secured a reliable food source, silenced complaints about entertainment by constructing a circus, and felt confident everything was under control. I thought I had outsmarted the system.

Then, after hours of meticulous planning—optimizing building layouts, placing decorations, fine-tuning workflows—I finally noticed it. Buried among the notifications I’d ignored was a small alert: one of my Ratizens was sick. That single message marked the beginning of the end.

Like the Plague

In my obsession with perfecting every detail of my rodent utopia, I had overlooked something fundamental: sanitation. Apparently, the natural puddles scattered around the map weren’t sufficient for my increasingly refined rats—apparently, sentience came with an aversion to public puddle-bathing.

Despite my steady stream of research points, I wasn’t generating nearly enough to recover from a full-blown outbreak. To stop the disease at its root, I needed toilets. Simple enough. But treating the sick required far more: a hospital (which needed fabric and stone), a pharmacy (to produce medicine), and a kiln (to make charcoal for said medicine). In short, an entire medical supply chain from scratch. Not to mention the labor force to staff it all—labor I didn’t have, because half my population was already bedridden.

No. I was done for. As I watched my once-thriving burrow descend into chaos, I found myself nostalgically remembering Rimworld. As harsh as its AI storytellers could be, I suddenly missed the clarity of squirrel attacks and pirate raids. At least there, the threats were predictable. Here, in this fragile ecosystem of tiny, pleading eyes and mounting corpses, I had failed. And in my arrogance, I watched my rat kingdom crumble into filth and silence.

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