Rust, a Game Review (2019)

OP mentions that the game is very difficult. I agree, the devs are really bad at managing the game balance, but the luckily the community has created some cheats to make it easier. There's one you can download called rust-analyzer, which can run in your text editor and will often give you a warning when what you've written will be defeated by the syntax and type checker. Also, the github copilot extension will automatically enter many common incantations so you don't have to write them each time.

Although it might be surprising for a game with no graphics or sound, I do recommend having a powerful PC if you want to play Rust. The game is pretty CPU-bound, so don't worry too much about your graphics card, but a CPU with lots of cores is basically required. When running large mods for the first time from crates.io, I basically can't do anything else with my (fairly beefy) computer.

Pro tip: If you find yourself often defeated by the borrow checker, try using Arc<_>. (Experienced gamers will recognize this as a subtle reference to Ark: Survival Evolved.)

Once you have enough practice, defeating the borrow checker is fairly easy. Not mentioned in the article are the two hidden game modes: procedural macros, where you must use rust to write rust, and the fearsome "unsafe code". Unsafe code is so difficult that not even the developers have told us precisely how to win, although someone has written a tool called Miri that can often tell you when you're losing.

One last comment. You don't need to play alone! There's no built-in support for it, but with an extension called Git, you can also enable multiplayer mode.

> Conclusion: I’m reminded of the time I tried Dwarf Fortress, only this time the gameplay is even stranger.

As a fan of DF this quip made me giggle uncontrollably. Lovely article, great humour.

That /r/rust took that subreddit before the Real Rust Video Game has confused many.

(2019)