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As a Rimworld lover who couldn't quite get past the ASCII in Dwarf Fortress, I'm super excited for the upcoming release! Rimworld has been a blast and I've hear
by rococode 4y ago
As a Rimworld lover who couldn't quite get past the ASCII in Dwarf Fortress, I'm super excited for the upcoming release! Rimworld has been a blast and I've heard the two games have many similarities (with Rimworld maybe being a slightly more approachable game that's a bit shallower).
- tstrimple 4y agoI love ribworld as well! It's my most played game by far at this point. The mod ecosystem is simply outstanding. That being said, it doesn't even attempt to be the simulation engine that Dwarf Fortress does. It feels like DF is a simulation engine first, with emergent game play almost as a side effect. As much as I like DF, that simulation first development process can be felt during almost every interaction in the game. It's not so bad once you've committed everything to muscle memory, but the learning curve is no joke. https://i.stack.imgur.com/iECXl.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/iECXl.jpg
- krisroadruck 4y agoif you like these games you might also like Oxygen Not Included. It's side-on view instead of top down, but is another excellent little ant farm to sink a couple thousand hours into. Sort of a Rimworld meets Factorio type vibe.
- ericbarrett 4y ago> is another excellent little ant farm I call ONI my "dollhouse." It's such a sleeper compared to similar games. The art and sound effects really elevate it. Klei has such a unique art style and it's really shown off. Also has a much more interesting "survival" curve than most; you'll be presented with many many hours of challenges trying to get a sustainable base, without cheap tricks like ever-escalating interruptions based on quantitative progress (looking at you, Rimworld.)
- bombcar 4y agoThe new version is going to fix some of that; the normalization of menus, etc, will go a long way to "making it feel more game-like".
- tstrimple 4y agoI'm eager to try it again. I went deep on DF years ago, but its more modern competition ended up winning me over but sometimes I still long for that extra crunchy simulation. I'm hoping that the Steam version supports the Steam Workshop. That has been a game changer for me with mods on Rimworld.
- munk-a 4y agoIf you can stomach the adjustment period for ASCII I'd really recommend it. I think it does something a lot of modern games miss out on - it encourages imagination first. The information given to the player is extremely dense and easy to parse once you've adjusted and you're giving your brain a chance to try and play inside your own head. I've built a glorious six floor tavern (slowly) with engravings on every surface - even those not reachable by pathing, why? because I had an image of a tavern floor full of rowdy miners with opera boxes circling the room above them for dwarves of a more refined taste... in the end it's just a box you need to floor scroll to see on the screen but the carved pillars in the middle of the room - the enclaves for dwarves to, in hushed voices, discuss just how beautiful gold is - and the grand skylight in the middle of the ceiling casting a rainbow of different colored light on the ground below... that's awesome. Dwarf fortress is the first thing since MUDing that's really scratched the imagination itch in quite that way and, as someone who has worked in game development themselves, I think it's something that is only possible if you keep to the lowest tech. If you use words or abstract symbols then each player will fill in the details themselves, usually in their head but sometimes in artwork (see Kruggsmash as an approachable example here[1]) which can be extremely fulfilling. I hope to see the non-ASCII version work as a gateway drug to get more people into the imagination of what they're building. And I hope this didn't come off as ranty or judgemental - each person enjoys games in different ways... but low detail art has a way of really spurring the imagination on! 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojT99rDmq5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojT99rDmq5M
- bombcar 4y agoThis is the key for me - DF is like Sim City or other building games (including Minecraft) - you have to be able to create your own goals. Sure, you can keep trying more and more difficult embark locations, but after awhile you'll have DF down well enough that you can survive 'indefinitely' on underground farms behind impenetrable walls. So you begin to do other things, mega projects are a common one.
- kgwxd 4y agoI played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead in ASCII long before I even looked at screenshots of the tiles. Worse than getting stuck with Ben Affleck in the movie of a book you loved. The Jabberwocky was in the screen shot I saw, the description gave such a spooky mental image, but now all I see in my head is the 8-bit swamp monster thingy, like something from the original Castlevania.
- hinkley 4y agoI watched about 30 hours of Kruggsmash's narrations of his Dwarf Fortress runs on Youtube, hoping it would 'sell' me on DF. What happened instead is that I played way more Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included than I had been playing. Most days I preferred ONI due having to go way out of your way to commit war crimes, whereas in Rimworld it's just clicking a couple buttons.
- intelVISA 4y agoYou'll definitely love DF then, I believe the Steam release is soon and includes some nice QoL improvements like a tileset and mouse UX.