The new Rimworld expansion adds therapy pandas, tameable insect hive queens, nanotech-enhanced alligators, prehistoric beasts, giant toads, flamingos, and something called a 'bog hound'

RimWorld's latest expansion, Odyssey, promises to add a pretty amazing amount of stuff to the game's already deeply layered space colony simulation. Between the customisable spaceship, orbital exploration, new biomes, quest system, and a whole machine hive mind threat to deal with, on paper it seems like the biggest expansion yet.

What's piqued my interest, though, is the new animals. As detailed in a new post on Steam, Odyssey will add 40 beasts, including:

• Porcupines
• Various birds, such as man-eating crows, pink flamingos, and quails
• "Bog hounds"
• Aquatic animals, including otters, walruses, and sea turtles
• Prehistoric animals, including mastodons, scimitar cats, and greatwolves
• Lava snails
• "Colossus toads"
• Crabs
• Hippos
• Giant alien insect queens

Odyssey will also introduce new ways to train animals too, which delightfully includes being able to teach pandas to comfort your colonists with friendly nuzzles. You can also train raccoons and pigs to forage for food, wolves and bears to fight for you, megasloths to dig in your mines, and mastodons to "war trumpet" to disorientate your enemies. You can even tame that insect queen and get her to spew eggs at people.

Some animals are too primitive or wild to train… that is, until you inject their brains with "ultratech mechanites" to improve their intelligence, allowing a creature as simple-minded as an alligator to become "a distinguished, loyal bodyguard".

On top of all that is a brand new fishing system with a selection of freshwater and saltwater fish you can catch to feed your colony—plus the adorable detail that colonists will now go swimming for fun, too. Frankly, given the kind of stuff they have to deal with, they could do with the relaxation.

I have to admit, it's been a long while since I last played Rimworld, but if anything was going to bring me back, therapy pandas was probably it. It's not a long wait now, either—Odyssey launches later this week on July 11.