If you're a fan of both colony management sims like RimWorld or Sheltered, as well as roleplaying games like the Fallout franchise, Skyrim or Dark souls or even survival games like Rust or Raft, you'll definitely get a kick out of Lo-Fi Games' 2018 post-apocalyptic RPG title, Kenshi. 

You begin in a ruined city in the desert, with nothing but a pair of rag pants and a rusty pipe. You're permitted to explore the 870 square kilometers of the game's map, from desolate wastelands void of anything but banditry and acid rain to lush forests ripe with fauna and flora, much of which may eat you alive. You don't start out as anything special and you can die very quickly. Here's something I like to use to explain this - there's a bandit group called the Starving Bandits who are the weakest enemy in the game, lacking any sort of leadership, skill or food. Your starting character begins about 1/5 as strong as them, and will easily lose to even just one of these bandits. Your first fight against even these guys can very well be your last. But slowly, through careful training and choosing the right allies, you can become something very powerful, something capable of changing the state of many factions within the game, or even start your own and amass an army of warriors with the capability of crushing any group with ease. 

Or don't! Kenshi gives you countless options. Take my first game, for example. After getting aptly beaten by several bandits I chose to settle in a nearby city, where I hired every lone wanderer in every bar until I'd amassed a crew prepared not to explore the wastes and wage war, but to mine copper. This I did for several weeks until I had amassed the funds to equip my men and settle my own city in a nearby desert. We were near-immediately crushed by hordes of bandits but, thanks to teamwork and the tougher folk of my group, we survived and established a thriving agricultural city even in such a barren region, forming powerful alliances and gaining powerful enemies. In my second run, I settled in a greener region and established a smithing operation. With a team of strange alien people, I amassed a fortune creating armor and weapons for the nearby fishing village, turning the tide against the cannibal onslaught. Eventually we were overrun due to a lack of preparation, each individually picked off and kidnapped by cannibals until the only survival was a robot named Burn who led a conquest of revenge against the cannibals that resulted in his death. In one playthrough I gained rank with a group of rebels hiding out in the mountains and led conquest against a crusading nation that ultimately ended in defeat. In another playthrough, I joined these crusaders and crushed neighboring regions in holy righteousness. In one playthrough I played as a humble farming colony in a fertile valley who rarely saw combat and served only as refuge for aimless wanderers and escaped slaves, and in another I played a stealth rogue who began as a limbless man in the desert, eventually to become a legendary assassin. Play as a treasure hunter recovering the ruins of a lost age to gain great technology and eventually create a thriving supercity. There's no class system or set campaign either - you can experience a thousand lives in a single playthrough easily. The lack of skills you begin with makes any achievement that much more difficult and yet that much more satisfying.

Kenshi lets you do what you choose, and your actions will influence how your story plays out. There's a massive map to explore, dozens of factions to discover, ally with or wage war against, plenty of armor, weapons and allies to gain. No one playthrough is the same, emphasized by the massive map complete with unique and beautiful places to explore. I recall one instance where my character, a man missing an arm limping through the desert searching for work, was mesmerized at the arrival of a beautiful pocket of land with glowing trees, fertile soil and beautiful creatures, only to be eaten alive seconds after by lightning-fast dinosaurs. The game has a massive amount of lore, several races including alien-style bug people, horned fighters known as the Shek and strange robots known as Skeletons who are functionally immortal, at the cost of insanity and depression as time passes. The combat in the game is fast-paced and very unique - your characters will become quicker and more graceful in combat as time goes on, and fights get even more flashy as you unlock more equipment and greater foes. Have individual duels worthy of cinema or massive battles spanning several hours - Kenshi combat is your oyster. But should you ever feel unfulfilled by Kenshi's existing map, items and races, don't fret! The game has spawned a massive modding community so that a new playthrough is never boring.

Having spent several many hours on this game already, almost an embarrassing amount given how short the time I've had it, I can comfortably rate it a 9/10 and would recommend it to anyone, especially those who are fans of roguelike RPG, survival or colony games.