Quoting: ExpandingManI have to say, there are plenty of games with "retro" graphics that I love (example: Caves of Qud) but so far I have found Dwarf Fortress incredibly obnoxious and I'm having a really hard time getting into it. It's problem is that it's a colony sim game, not an RPG, and as such it is of a genre where a good UI is *very* important (to me at least).

The thing is there's nothing really like Dwarf Fortress. It's designed and programmed by a PHD mathematician [External Link] with non-programming work from his historian brother, over 20+ years of way more than full time work.

Other games copy a bit of it, and make a "game genre" of that subsection. e.g. Minecraft or Rimworld. Genre descriptions like RPG (DF has way more RPG than regular RPGs) or colony builder don't cover it. It's sort of a parallel world thing, where you can visit and learn, and affect the development of that world's races and civilisations over 100s of years and many ages - through multiple settlements, outposts/holdings, learning and sharing things with your civilisation like domestication of certain animals, and even AI controlled expeditions/raids from your fort. If a newbie fortress fails, just send another expedition to reclaim, the penalty is minor - things like possessions being randomly scattered about. Fortresses can even be mostly built above ground, although heretical. Adventure mode (not ported to steam as yet) let's you explore, loot, or do objectives with a force while the fort runs on AI.

Caves of Qud devs have said it wouldn't exist without DF: https://www.pcgamer.com/tons-of-game-developers-are-praising-dwarf-fortress-today-in-celebration-of-its-steam-launch/ [External Link] . The Sims, Terraria, and heaps of construction games too have derived from it.

Youtube tutorials is probably a good way to get the basic flow:
DasTactic [External Link] or Blind [External Link] . People are expected to use the DF wiki as there's so much content.

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