The Steam version of Dwarf Fortress looks really good! Neat little icons, the UI looks a lot more discoverable, but the charm of the simple top-down view is still there too.

Rimworld is a lot of fun as a game, but it starts to feel a bit constrainted and same-y from a simulation/story generation point of view after a while. (To be fair though, I haven't explored much in the way of mods, and I've heard they bring a lot of variety to the game.)

Tbh, my main issue with Rimworld is that most of the visible community - i.e. people who post on reddit, youtube, etc. - seem to be focused on optimizing the heck out of everything, treating it like a 4X game or an RTS.

The Dwarf Fortress community seems a lot more open to the story-generator aspect of the game, letting the game lead them in all the weird and wonderful directions it decides to take.

@digital_carver in fairness to rimworld, Tynan has always pushed for the game to be a story generator over a simulator or strategy game. Certainly that's how I've always played, I let the colonists be affected by events. I don't think I've ever even built a kill box or tried to break the game over my knee with minmaxing.

I realize I'm uncommon in this, though, but eh, it's a single player game, people can play any way they want :)

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@wolfechu

Yeah, even one of the in-game dialogues mentions that the story generated is the important part of the game, and so to not try to make the perfect characters. I guess people are just used to minmaxing in games, and it's hard to switch to this mode of thinking.

I think of it like Dungeons and Dragons - munchkining is fun in short bursts, but when you let the characters feel the story as it happens, and respond in at least believably realistic ways, you get a more complete and satisfying experience.

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