This thing can be hard as nails if you're used to games that automate everything away and reduce the level of control you have over your settlement. Even something like Dwarf Fortress can be a bit easier to pick up if you limit the scope of your operation, because your control over your dwarves is actually pretty limited and you need a manager to do anything in bulk. Ratopia gives you total control and it can be a real challenge, even on the easiest difficulties.

A brand new Ratopia player will probably do fine with the basics - it's pretty easy to maintain a stockpile of the essentials at the beginning - but your rats have emotional needs too and the game is constantly pushing you to operate on an increasingly large scale while making sure you have the infrastructure in place to support a settlement of that size. It's really easy to make quick decisions that will inconvenience you in the long run, and correcting mistakes can be costly - every task that you are not personally completing requires that you pay someone, right from the start of the game. No freebies. Not farming, not construction, and certainly not mining. The rats have to pay for services too, though, and now there's a whole ecosystem at play - a rat without a job is going to have a hard time eating or filling their entertainment need, and now you've gotta set up the infrastructure that allows you to collect taxes (because you've gotta pay rats to do some really expensive jobs) and subsidize certain goods/provide welfare for rats that are struggling.

The whole game requires this same level of diligence - it's very easy to find yourself in a situation where you don't have enough grass because you've got workshops that are just eating up the supply in huge quantities as soon as any arrives in storage, so if you don't set conditions under which certain goods can be produced - and do so early on - you're probably digging yourself a huge hole without even noticing.

On the flip side though, this means that it's really hard to compete with the satisfaction this game provides when everything is going smoothly. It's impossible to be confused about why your colony failed unless you're just wholesale ignoring all the information the game gives to you. Each failure is an obvious lesson in scalability, teaching you how and when to prioritize certain tasks, structures, and resources. Building a little rat empire where you've got a stable supply of core goods and your rats aren't filthy or hungry is a reward for perfect planning that encourages you to go just a little further out of your comfort zone.

It's gotta be the economy/political systems that make the game shine, though. Colony sims tend to be more focused on the material aspects of running a settlement, the logistics of producing enough things and getting them where they need to go. It's rare (but not unheard of) for these games to try their hand at incorporating the economics and administrative tasks of a more traditional city builder into the mix, but it rarely feels so essential to the experience as it does here. I think some players will wish the devs had leaned a little more into that side of things - the administrative services you provide are relatively basic - but this project shows a lot of focus and restraint and I think that's a tremendous strength, even if I occasionally find myself wishing for more complex production conditions on my workshops.