If you are a building/sim/colony game addict, Rimworld a18 unstable is now available. Of course the devs say that it has more bugs and may do stupid things compared to when it releases their stable build in the future. They would prefer this be used for feedback, not casual playing. Of course, do not expect mods to work or be available yet.

Full announcement here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=36208.0

Changes include: (partial list, see above link for more)

• 3 new biomes... all different types of swamps


• New cave systems which can occur in mountainous terrain (including new fungi and possibly infestations.)


• New weapons: Revolver, auto-gun, recurve bow


• New Furniture: Bedroll, Dresser, End table, new table sizes


• Many new mental breaks: Insulting tirades, corpse obsession, murderous rage, jailbreaker, act like an animal, catatonic


• New mental inspirations: Faster work speed, walking speed, shooting ability increase, inspired recruiter,
  trader, inspired artist


• Ability to banish colonists


• Named world features... Lakes, mountain ranges, swamps...


• Reworked crop blight... now you have a warning to harvest before complete devastation


• Mortars have been changed... Now the blast type is determined by different shells, all fired from the same mortar. New firefoam shell, and anti-grain shell (very high explosive)


• New quests: prisoner rescue, peace talks, world refugee


• New incidents: Tornado, Aurora (mood boost), Meteorite impact


• New quest rewards: healer mechanites, ressurecter mechanites, perpetual power generator, chemfuel auto-factory, orbital weapons(think C&C's ion canon)


• New Chemfuel power generator


• Basic comment of new bugfixes, tunings, rewrites.

Also of note...
They will be [closing sales](https://ludeon.com/blog/2017/10/backstory-in-game-sales-will-close/) of the backstory in game and Pirate King packages on Nov 7th. Name in game will continue, just no more personalized backgrounds.