I love Rimworld and play it a lot. I frequently see posts and articles comparing the two. I got Dwarf Fortress, watched tutorials, printed out flow charts, and really gave it a try for several hours.

But I didn’t get into Dwarf Fortress :( some of the mechanics are weird. Many things are not intuitive or don’t make sense. Like seeds that are needed for growing mushrooms are defaulted to be used in cooking and the setting to turn that off is difficult to find.

I finally realized an analogy today. Rimworld is like The Sims while Dwarf Fortress is like Sim City. Rimworld you directly control people and micromanage a colony. Dwarf Fortress is Sim City - you zone things and say generally what you want to happen, but don’t control your meeples directly.

Thoughts on the comparison? Any other folks like Rimworld but not Dwarf Fortress?

  • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    I’m kinda in the same situation as you, hundreds of hours in rimworld, but DF hasn’t clicked.

    I’ve only given it a couple of goes though, and honestly if I think back, I don’t think rimworld really clicked for me initially, so part of me is just running on the assumption I’ve not sunk enough time into the game to get comfortable with it really

    I think one of the big differences is with rimworld you can kinda ignore 95% of the stuff in the game on your first few goes, and I think that makes it a bit less daunting. There are still bits of rimworld I’ve still not touched, but every playthrough I knock a few more things off (still need to really give a sanguophage run a proper try, for example). With that approach it becomes a gradual skill gradient that keeps you interested

    With DF my initial reaction was a bit of a baptism of fire. I got the impression you need to interact with a lot more of the game’s systems to even get off the starting line.

    If I really sat down and gave it another few runs, I know I’ll probably fall in love with the game

    • AirDevil@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      I hear that. I did try to pregame and watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials before jumping into DF. Still had to Google a bunch of stuff. I remember feeling frustrated trying to make soap (even with a flow chart). Like I made the workstation for it but no soap came. Then I learned I needed lye but didn’t know how to make it. Learned it came from the butcher but didn’t know how to hunt @_@ a lot of those stacked and I eventually gave up.

      I only recently got Ideology for Rimworld and am exploring that now :) lots more in the other DLCs to play through too