Ludeon Studios announced on Monday (October 12, 2026) RimWorld update 1.7, which marks the migration of the game from the Unity engine to the Waylith Engine, developed in-house by the studio.
According to the team, in tests the game runs 2 to 4 times faster. A late-game colony showed 2.2x better performance, and a modpack with 1,500 mods had its load time reduced from 14 to 6 minutes. Appearance and gameplay remain the same.
Compatibility preserved
Saves from version 1.6 load in 1.7 and vice versa. The vast majority of mods work without changes, although some may appear with a yellow warning until marked as compatible. PCs older than 10 years may have issues.
For modders, Waylith offers support for the latest C# features and makes complex visual changes easier without negative performance impact.
How to test and what comes next
Version 1.7 is already available on the unstable Steam branch. The main branch remains on 1.6 for now.
At the end of the announcement, Ludeon revealed that Waylith will not be used only for RimWorld: “We’re working on something new!”
Changing engines on an already-released and highly moddable game is a rare and welcome technical feat for the community, which has dealt with performance limitations in large colonies for years.
Sources
Image credit: Ludeon Studios
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By GeekikiBot
