I've been addicted to Colony Sims and City Builders since I was a little thing who stumbled upon Pharaoh while looking for my dad's disc containing Nero Burning ROM so I could print Judas Priest songs and play them on my Hi-Fi.
I enjoyed them as a kid because it was nice to plop things down and see a city come to life, and that's all young me really needed to be entertained.
I enjoy them as an adult because they're some of the very few games where there is a constantly evolving challenge, and it's rare for them to peter out mechanically until you've hit 'the end'. Also, despite a bevy of narrative heavy games promising to have "choices that matter", I find it's the Colony Sims that offer more morally dubious means of survival (Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included) that have me thinking about my choices. They're a good genre, and I could probably write a paper on why they're one of gaming's best.
But one issue I continually run into them is that it's often just far too simple to optimize all the fun out of them, essentially leaving you with an ant farm simulator. This is mostly a me issue; A brief Engineering unit, two decades of City Builder experience and S-grade autism mean I'm just naturally suited to these kinds of games. My brain exists in grids, after all.
Dwarf Fortress, then, stands out for being the one exception: It is impossible to optimize the fun out of this game, in part due to how many moving parts it has. While the game advertising itself as an indepth world sim might turn prospective buyers off, I find that it's actually incredibly easy to get started once you figure out what the fuck a Manager is and why you need one yesterday. The fun comes from how many things are working in the background while you tend to your titular Fortress, and the ways those moving parts can snap.
"Losing is fun!" is the DF community's motto - officially adopted in game with the Steam release - and the in game tutorial even suggests you should brace for a failure. Sure, the actual mechanics are simple, but the shell around them is full of curveballs waiting to happen. Each Dwarf is simulated, having a home and family (dead or alive) and a religion and preferences and relationships with other dwarves. Other civilizations exist outside of yours, each with their own needs and goals and faiths. There is an entire world generated at gamestart, with a history and events and historical figures and secret treasures. Everything I just listed makes the foundation of your Dwarf Fortress save, and the joy of DF is watching a fortress bloom until a part of that foundation breaks and triggers a crisis.
Rivalries can bubble to the surface during a tavern brawl, spiralling into multiple murders that will demoralize anyone who witnesses it. Elves may view your wanton desecration of trees as cause for your erasure and send an army to wipe you off the map. Your burgeoning fame and fortune may draw the ire of legendary figures, for good or ill. And sometimes, just sometimes, you're the victim of Ocean's Eleven as carried out by fucking Kobolds.
Ultimately, I and many others are making this sound more complex than it is. The UI is a bit shit even after the Steam release, some mechanics are best learned through a wiki, and there's a lot of seemingly random (but not) stuff happening). But the actual core of DF is plopping down zones, workshops and orders before watching your dwarves carry them out. It is very simple once you get the hang of it. Indeed, sometimes you can go ingame years without events, allowing you to expand and grow your little ant farm with joy.
And then Ukrist Stonejoy engraves a children's toy with a depiction of him gouging out his rival's eyes, followed by your guard captain announcing a man was found without eyes, and now you have to learn what the Justice tab does.
I enjoyed them as a kid because it was nice to plop things down and see a city come to life, and that's all young me really needed to be entertained.
I enjoy them as an adult because they're some of the very few games where there is a constantly evolving challenge, and it's rare for them to peter out mechanically until you've hit 'the end'. Also, despite a bevy of narrative heavy games promising to have "choices that matter", I find it's the Colony Sims that offer more morally dubious means of survival (Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included) that have me thinking about my choices. They're a good genre, and I could probably write a paper on why they're one of gaming's best.
But one issue I continually run into them is that it's often just far too simple to optimize all the fun out of them, essentially leaving you with an ant farm simulator. This is mostly a me issue; A brief Engineering unit, two decades of City Builder experience and S-grade autism mean I'm just naturally suited to these kinds of games. My brain exists in grids, after all.
Dwarf Fortress, then, stands out for being the one exception: It is impossible to optimize the fun out of this game, in part due to how many moving parts it has. While the game advertising itself as an indepth world sim might turn prospective buyers off, I find that it's actually incredibly easy to get started once you figure out what the fuck a Manager is and why you need one yesterday. The fun comes from how many things are working in the background while you tend to your titular Fortress, and the ways those moving parts can snap.
"Losing is fun!" is the DF community's motto - officially adopted in game with the Steam release - and the in game tutorial even suggests you should brace for a failure. Sure, the actual mechanics are simple, but the shell around them is full of curveballs waiting to happen. Each Dwarf is simulated, having a home and family (dead or alive) and a religion and preferences and relationships with other dwarves. Other civilizations exist outside of yours, each with their own needs and goals and faiths. There is an entire world generated at gamestart, with a history and events and historical figures and secret treasures. Everything I just listed makes the foundation of your Dwarf Fortress save, and the joy of DF is watching a fortress bloom until a part of that foundation breaks and triggers a crisis.
Rivalries can bubble to the surface during a tavern brawl, spiralling into multiple murders that will demoralize anyone who witnesses it. Elves may view your wanton desecration of trees as cause for your erasure and send an army to wipe you off the map. Your burgeoning fame and fortune may draw the ire of legendary figures, for good or ill. And sometimes, just sometimes, you're the victim of Ocean's Eleven as carried out by fucking Kobolds.
Ultimately, I and many others are making this sound more complex than it is. The UI is a bit shit even after the Steam release, some mechanics are best learned through a wiki, and there's a lot of seemingly random (but not) stuff happening). But the actual core of DF is plopping down zones, workshops and orders before watching your dwarves carry them out. It is very simple once you get the hang of it. Indeed, sometimes you can go ingame years without events, allowing you to expand and grow your little ant farm with joy.
And then Ukrist Stonejoy engraves a children's toy with a depiction of him gouging out his rival's eyes, followed by your guard captain announcing a man was found without eyes, and now you have to learn what the Justice tab does.