12 years. 12 gruelling years since the first Rusters dropped into the wilderness—confused, naked, excited—to start smashing things with a rock in the hope of surviving the game's now-famously unforgiving world.
What was once a scenic but simple overworld (with zombies—remember those?) has changed a lot in those 12 years. Each Rust map is now a multilayered world of forests, subterranean bases, frozen tundras, and full underwater biomes. The game's tech tree takes you on a journey from the hammers and hatchets of prehistory, through the stonework, catapults, and ballistas of the medieval age, all the way through to the drones, auto-turrets, and automated industries of today.
It's a challenging journey, made unpredictable by the dozens of other people you share a server with, and by the simple conceit that when you die, everything on your corpse is up for grabs. You can embark on this journey solo (good luck to you), with friends, or with complete strangers (who, be warned, will be just as twitchy and paranoid as you when you first meet them).
Now in the Steam Winter Sale, you can jump into chaos at 50% off.
So what's been happening in Rust this past year? Well, things kicked off with the Primitive Update in February, which added a new mode that funnels the tech tree down what can best be described as a medieval-punk path. Rockets, guns, modern armour, and structures such as silos, underwater labs, and train systems are all out, and instead you have to work with catapults, ballistas, siege towers, and plate-like armour. It's a fun alternative for players who prefer their progress not to be halted by a stray bullet (though a mace to the face or crossbow bolt through the eye slit in your helmet remain possibilities).
The Crafting Update in March gave players expanded cooking and foodie possibilities, with pies, wheat, chicken coops, and beehives (which, yes, also meant bee grenades). Then in May, the Jungle Update introduced the game's densest biome yet, letting players swing through the canopies on vines, pillage lost temples for loot, and of course contend with the tigers, crocodiles, and other denizens of the new biome.
Beyond that, there've been untold meta updates, with workbench changes designed to get players out into the world more and clashing over monuments harbouring precious blueprint fragments. Loot in monuments has also been reshuffled and new puzzles have been added, giving a welcome refresh to a part of the game that's been largely unchanged for several years.
Oh, and if the 12-year celebration trailer is anything to go by, cows are coming to the game too, joining the chicken coops and new farming elements to help players live out their pastoral rancher fantasies (that can be shattered at any moment by a band of marauding players). So, y'know, Moo-ey Christmas and all that.
Rust is still growing, and still in the top 10 most played games on Steam by current player counts—as much of a constant on Steam as a Counter-Strike or a PUBG. It's one of the deepest survival games out there, with the possibilities and paths to success expanding with each update, yet its commitment to letting you lose everything is what keeps players coming back, committed to improving with each run.
Jump in now, and you'll still get to partake in the Christmas event. Keep your ears peeled for jingles and presents raining down from the skies for you to bash and open, while an advent calendar lets you claim a new gift each day up to 1 January.
See? Rust can giveth as well as taketh away…
There's plenty popping up on the horizon too, with a long-anticipated naval update letting you hit the seas in your very own vessels and build rickety, rusting floating cities on the oceans (as well as ongoing improvements to the core game, of course). Rust isn't going anywhere, but now it's enjoying its annual Christmas boom of new players, it's a great time to enter the fray alongside the latest round of new recruits.
You can head over to Steam now and grab Rust for 50% off until 5 January.
