Dwarf Fortress

“Except Dwarf Fortress is an actual game, and I've sunk a lot of hours in it.”

“Dwarf Fortress is the paragon of this that everyone points to, for good reason”

“DF is a great comparison, because it speaks to the composability of properties and systems as a key requirement.”

“a trap, which Dwarf Fortress falls into, is to add a vast simulation which the player feels they can never really grasp”

“Dwarf Fortress benefits greatly from the player seeing relatively few samples of the world gen”

“it wasn't despite it that I enjoyed getting into Dwarf Fortress, but in large part because of it”

“I come from a place of love (and fear --- I refuse to install it again) with DF!”

“if you want to play with all the new features, you can't go full keyboard anymore”

“thoroughly enjoying it as a core mechanic of games like Rogue, NetHack and Ancient Domains of Mystery”

“the mystique of dwarf fortress is that it's a game that plays in your imagination”

“really made the Steam version's graphics vastly better than anything else that was available at the time”

“It's imperfections are part of it's charm and if that turns you off from the game then it's not for you and that's OK.”

“Especially if you had been used to using the top mods that existed before the steam release for ease of control.”

“Steam version is much worse than the fan UI options that were already available”

“eventually leading to a fandom popular enough to bring others onboard with the project to produce a GUI and paid steam release version”

“I'll stick to the trusty 0.47.”

“Most annoying is the fact that even though a fair number of keyboard shortcuts exist, a full pipeline often does not.”

“Eventually we determined an ideal set of bootstraps to achieve a plateau of semi functional Dwarf society.”

“Dwarf fortress has managed to create a game with that kind of skill curve with 0.0001% of the resources.”

“I agree then that it's disappointing as someone who has played both versions”

“I used to play Dwarf Fortress back in the 2008-2009 era, and I kept going back to the wiki when I needed to learn something.”

“On my Steam friends-list I have 14 friends who have purchased the game. The top three by play-time are at 314, 267, and 67 hours.”

“none of my muscle memory transfers over and it adds another hurdle to ever getting back into the game”

“is a genre defining masterpiece if you are into procedurally generated narrative driven world sims”

“the immersion just won't come back. My muscle memory, hands firmly on the keyboard, is too persistent”

“I found exactly the discovery fulfilling in Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld and Minecraft.”

“It's a sandbox game, which already selects for people capable of making their own fun with a toy”

“There was no way for me to justify buying anything when they announced dropping keyboard support”

“Claiming the game of systems and their interactions is not complete or compelling because it doesn't hold you hand is laughable.”

“They have a history of at least trying to be transparent, especially in their Future of the Fortress posts”

“"Friendlier" and still one of the worst UIs available. It's nearly impenetrable and the game has no tutorial to speak of”

“Dwarf Fortress is awesome to come into today, give it a try. I started playing it a year ago and I love it.”

“releasing on Steam and adding a friendlier UI helped the game reach new audiences”

“Many of the best games - Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Starcraft, Simcity - all automate their background tedium”

“all my favorite ones have really been in that genre in some way: Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, Cities Skylines, even Minecraft”

“It's an interesting detail that creative frustration earned a place in that web of "realism". It's a significant part of the game.”

“And the systems in systemic games are very simple. (With a few exceptions like Dwarf Fortress).”

“Dwarf fortress proves you can totally do things off script without player interaction.”

“Dwarf Fortress is a very easy recommendation now that it has official sprites.”

“an emergent quality of that game that I’ve admired from afar has been how you can ignore various mechanics”