Prison Architect / Dwarf Fortress?

[Mr. Doctor]

Is this anything like the Prison Architect? I remember buying it but ultimately becoming disatisfied - it borrowed too heavily from other games like Dwarf Fortress, and it just seemed kind of of bland. Looking at the graphics for RimWorld, it looks very similar - alot of the gameplay elements look the same too. Just wondering if anyone has played both and has an opinion?

Note:
I have bought the game and while initially dissapointed, I am beggining to appreciate it.

[Glerk]

Only the art style is simular, nothing else.

[Lorax]

Well if you think prison architect borrowed from dwarf fortress too much this isn't the game for you. It has a some what prison architectish art style but doesn't play like it at all (in my opinion). It's much more like dwarf fortress, but more user friendly. Create a colony and manage the pawns living inside, assign them jobs, grow food, fend off raids, recruit outsiders, trade, make drugs, make weapons, make art, having something crazy eventually kill your colony, repeat.

[Jhonny G]

I don't have any experience with Dwarf Fortress, but I bought Prison Architect and grew bored of it real quick (no more than 20 hours me thinks). Even though I tried to like it all I could.

Rimworld however got me captured right from the start and I'm now way past 100 hours in the small timeframe I have owned it. While similar in apperance they run on completly different beat and I can honestly say I enjoy it immensely. Rimworld is way more 'action packed' from beginning to end and got a somewhat rougelike feel to it, whereas Prison Architech felt like a very dull architech simulator of sorts.

Bottom line.. Rimworld yes, Prison Architect no.

[Ansam]

I've played this game, Prison Architect, and Dwarf Fortress 2. The latter was mostly adventure, as I couldn't be bothered to learn the controls and mechanics of the main game mode.

Anyways, I love Rimworld for it's base building, character development, and RNG events that force you to pull a star trek, or die trying. To me, it's everything I want out of a colony sim, while remaining accesible to someone who may not really know what they're doing.

And the mods are fantastic! Most of which adding the complexity you're probably looking for, such as psychology.

The only thing I know that DF 2 does better than Rimworld, is the combat. Although wounds are quite similair -- damaged neck injures breathing which lowers consciousness which lowers capability -- DF 2 has this air of influence on the combat, where as in Rimworld it's mostly RNG and what weapon you use that determine the injuries.

And Prison Architect, imo feels more like a prsion tycoon. This, feels like a colony survival. Unless you want it to be a tycoon, and just set up a massive building for slave labor on tree harvesting and sculpture production. Just keep the guns locked away lest they riot.

[grapplehoeker]

They are two very good but different games.
Tynan, the Rimworld developer asked the P.A guys for permission to adopt their graphical style for the pawns and the guys behind P.A. graciously agreed. So that is why it looks similar.
In terms of game play and replayability value, Rimworld far surpasses P.A.

[Bullwinkle]

I've only played Rimworld 4 hours (just bought it yesterday). But it looks to me very similar. I grew bored of PA after 23 hours and stopped. I'm afraid the same might happen here. After one day with the game, it seems very similar. I'm sure the people with more hours are telling important things, but those things only matter if you make it past the first or second day. I do hold out hope that this game will hold my attention longer because it is sci fi and I love sci fi. There is a whole world here, and space ship wrecks to scavenge, and a sci-fi story, so maybe different. I hope. The reviews for both games seem to stress the same thing: the stories... the way each new colony (or prison) develops... how the individual pawns and npcs shapes the story... these are what seem to make each playthrough meaningful and fun, at least that's what I've gathered from the reviews I've read.

[savingmeg]

Rimworld is 100% not like PA.. It has more depth and isn't just about building a base. You have to manage everything, yes eventually your colony will run itself.. But then something will happen that kills / destoys half of what you've built and you'll have to start over.. It unpredictable, and amazing in that aspect.. Also, the modding community it has behind it is immense.. So possiblities are ENDLESS.

[Glerk]

Originally posted by savingmeg:

Rimworld is 100% not like PA.. It has more depth and isn't just about building a base. You have to manage everything, yes eventually your colony will run itself.. But then something will happen that kills / destoys half of what you've built and you'll have to start over.. It unpredictable, and amazing in that aspect.. Also, the modding community it has behind it is immense.. So possiblities are ENDLESS.

It was inevitable.

[Nightmyre]

to be short - it's like prison architect, but better in every way.

[Gatherer Thompson]

My only honest complaint about Rimworld is that there's very little "alien" to the game.. A small handful of enemies, farm animals, plants, and drugs, but after that everything else is mundane Earth stuff.

Just like Minecraft stuck with the generic "vanilla" content coupled with robust modding, I guess its up to us (via modding) to add truly alien biomes and creatures..

[Mr. Doctor]

Originally posted by Lorax:

Well if you think prison architect borrowed from dwarf fortress too much this isn't the game for you. It has a some what prison architectish art style but doesn't play like it at all (in my opinion). It's much more like dwarf fortress, but more user friendly. Create a colony and manage the pawns living inside, assign them jobs, grow food, fend off raids, recruit outsiders, trade, make drugs, make weapons, make art, having something crazy eventually kill your colony, repeat.

After posting the topic I have now played it, for an hour or two, which is alot better than prison architect, prison architect just felt like work after a while which wasn't fun, Rim World at least makes you feel like your out of the office. I have played Dwarf Fortress alot over the years- with the graphics packs and sound packs - and have had some awesome and memorable experiences which is to be expected for a game that painstakingly creates a unique world for you with 500+ years of history with thousands of people in it and takes sometimes 20+ minutes to create as it generates each year indiviudlally.

Honestly, the complexity of the history in Dwarf Fortress is almost too detailed -ALMOST- in that the historical conflicts and fueds are so layered and nuanced that you would need to spend hours going through its history archives just to understand one particular faction war. It is an incredibly detailed, great game that Tarn Adams - it's creator- has spent half of his life on -he lives off the donations which are like 3,000-5,000 a month. But the interface is a nightmare and very poorly designed - currently its only a console app with ACII characters - you can install graphics packs but they still only replace the ACII characters. The descriptions in combat - yes limbs are routinely chopped off and heads fly across the room- are the best part but accessing them is just a pain in the butt so what's actually happeneing is very confusing when an attack happens, you have to pause it every two seconds to catch up on all the maiming and finger chopping that happens during battles. I won't even get into the currently unplayable AdventureMode. But to be fair he clearly warns everything is in Alpha when you load it up.

But still, awesome experience, especially when your fortress of two hundred dwarves go mad, kill all the children and you end up with only one sole survivor wandering the halls like a mad person and starve, Best experience was when seven stories under the ground, my mining dwarf broke through to an underground cave where a legendary 100 year old dragon emerged and after brutally murdering the miners, went straight to the giant mess hall where all the dwarves -who I had spent a dozen game hours developing and nurturing- were eating and drinking away. He proceeded to burn 20 people alive on the spot and spent the rest of his merry time biting off heads and completely devoring and immolating ever single soul in the mess-hall, the irony that the dragon went to the mess-hall to eat too was not lost on me, but it was too awful to find it funny at the moment, because in DF every body part is accounted for, so I spent the next five minutes looking hovering over space in the mess hall to see if the heads, feet, and legs (and they even tell you who's head it was) on the bloody chared floor matched my favorite dwarves. I read the text file describing the battle, which describes the moment by moment actions and it was pretty awesomely gruesome stuff. Only a few survived but they were pretty much worthless, with there hands and legs gone.And I won't even tell you the time, in a different fortress, when a soldier got bit by a wolf, and then went back to the barracks where he turned a werebeast and bit and clawed half of the soldiers in the armory. The ones that made it out, also turned into werebeasts, surprise!, and went on to completely cause dwarven society to collapse and spiral into anarchy -after all , how can you defend against something where the very act of defending against it spreads the curse- kind of like dealing with Trump.

So awesome game,. Unfortunately - or very fortunately for gameplayers - great ideas are taken and replicated and in the past 2 years Dwarf Fortress has been essentially cloned in a dozen different versions - most of them bad because they lack the depth of the decades long game they are trying to recreate in one year. But with the renaissance of the gaming industry with indie games and independent developers, eventually someone gets it right - like RimWorld- where they take awesome elements in Dwarf Fortress - and to their great credit they actually are upfront about it - and add their own ideas to it. And the interface and GUI - although a bit crude now - is 10 times better than DF.

Kind of feel bad for the creator of Dwarf Fortress though. I think there's just too many competing forces these days- even for a free game - to keep working on one game for the rest of your life and make a living doing it. It you have a great idea, someone else will take the basic premise and make something better from it.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Pelicanbones:

Great comments by all . I love RM never played DF or PA . I am only commenting and could be wrong but I think I read somewere that Tynan S. early on asked the PA dev if he could use his sprite artwork and they/he/she agreed and once he got going he realized how much depth the sprites had and how well they fit into Rimworld. Great game for me.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/294100/discussions/0/1698293255127090753/?tscn=1520736850#c1698293255127289855

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Ansam:

Dwarf Fortress 2

What?

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Ansam:

Dwarf Fortress 2

What?

My guess was "dwarf fortress too."

[Mr. Doctor]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Ansam:

Dwarf Fortress 2

What?

Dwarf Fortress is technically a sequel, I belive it's official title is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II.