if you're willing to devote a lot of time to reading the wiki while you figure things out, sure. the interface is horrible but eventually manageable.
i spend a lot of time paused to figure things out and plan stuff, so if that's not appealing it may not be a good game for you. even though i know the interface well it's still annoying to interact with and a huge time suck just to figure out what is going on. and that's even with tilesets and some of the really good helper programs like dwarf therapist and dfhack.
that said, there's nothing else out there like DF and i have lost countless hours to it. lots of people recommend rimworld as an alternative. it may be a fun game but nothing else has the level of deep simulation and emergent storytelling possibility that DF has. the trade-off is that you have to put in a lot of work to figure out what is going on and draw coherent stories out from the mess of information overload the game gives you.
there is a paid steam release coming sometime soon (maybe within a year, but who knows) that will have massive UI improvements. the single DF dev has a bigger team helping him with that release, doing tilesets, UI design, testing etc. I'm actually taking a break from DF until that is released.
if you do decide to try DF now, I would highly, highly recommend the lazy newb pack . it's not just for lazy people and i would never play df without it. it bundles a lot of the third party addons into a handy interface that allows you to turn helper programs on/off, switch tilesets, set certain options etc.
np! one other thing is that if you like your games to have clear goals and win conditions, DF is probably not gonna be satisfying. DF's creators are very devoted to creating a pure sandbox, so there are aspects of the game's design that really have no regard to balance or making "wins" possible or even meaningful. another poster alluded to the fact that there are a lot of cheese strats in DF. this is strictly true, but i would argue if you're playing DF to win like you would a game of Starcraft or whatever, the game is not really designed for you.
i find satisfaction by building elaborate machines or architecture, playing out RP scenarios, designing fortresses for specific, impractical purposes (one of my favorites I've seen is a fortress that was designed to export a balanced, diverse diet for the entire population of the fortresses' civilization) or simply watching for the stories that emerge during the course of constructing the basic necessities of survival. there's certainly a lot of "losing" (invaders, tantrums, engineering mishaps, disease and starvation) but no real winning with any of these ways to play. I like it but definitely a lot of people bounce off the game because of that.
if you're willing to devote a lot of time to reading the wiki while you figure things out, sure. the interface is horrible but eventually manageable. i spend a lot of time paused to figure things out and plan stuff, so if that's not appealing it may not be a good game for you. even though i know the interface well it's still annoying to interact with and a huge time suck just to figure out what is going on. and that's even with tilesets and some of the really good helper programs like dwarf therapist and dfhack.
that said, there's nothing else out there like DF and i have lost countless hours to it. lots of people recommend rimworld as an alternative. it may be a fun game but nothing else has the level of deep simulation and emergent storytelling possibility that DF has. the trade-off is that you have to put in a lot of work to figure out what is going on and draw coherent stories out from the mess of information overload the game gives you.
there is a paid steam release coming sometime soon (maybe within a year, but who knows) that will have massive UI improvements. the single DF dev has a bigger team helping him with that release, doing tilesets, UI design, testing etc. I'm actually taking a break from DF until that is released.
if you do decide to try DF now, I would highly, highly recommend the lazy newb pack . it's not just for lazy people and i would never play df without it. it bundles a lot of the third party addons into a handy interface that allows you to turn helper programs on/off, switch tilesets, set certain options etc.
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np! one other thing is that if you like your games to have clear goals and win conditions, DF is probably not gonna be satisfying. DF's creators are very devoted to creating a pure sandbox, so there are aspects of the game's design that really have no regard to balance or making "wins" possible or even meaningful. another poster alluded to the fact that there are a lot of cheese strats in DF. this is strictly true, but i would argue if you're playing DF to win like you would a game of Starcraft or whatever, the game is not really designed for you.
i find satisfaction by building elaborate machines or architecture, playing out RP scenarios, designing fortresses for specific, impractical purposes (one of my favorites I've seen is a fortress that was designed to export a balanced, diverse diet for the entire population of the fortresses' civilization) or simply watching for the stories that emerge during the course of constructing the basic necessities of survival. there's certainly a lot of "losing" (invaders, tantrums, engineering mishaps, disease and starvation) but no real winning with any of these ways to play. I like it but definitely a lot of people bounce off the game because of that.
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