How in-depth is this game?

[Jun]

Has been a while since I heard about this game, and I read it has really complex mechanics.
For those veterans who played the game for a while, can you give examples/stories of how deep is this game in terms of sandboxing?
Thanks in advance

[Workster]

It's one of the most complex games with the largest sandbox of practically any games in existence. Just look up on Google Dwarf Fortress stories or recaps and you'll find it to be extremely deep. It can take a long time to learn but it's very much rewarding with enough patience.

[Nova Solarius]

If you want to follow a game of Dwarf Fortress, I suggest you look up either Kruggsmash or BlindIRL on Youtube. Krugg tends to do more heavily edited videos with drawings and such, a style that's more friendly to people that don't play Dwarf Fortress, while Blind does looong videos with few major edits or cuts, being a streamer that posts his streams on Youtube.

There are also a number of Youtubers that do tutorials, like DasTactic and Salford Sal. If you want in-depth tutorials, Sal is my recommended pick. If you just want to learn the basics and then figure things out, which is what I did when I first started playing, look up Kruggsmash's crash course and just play along with that.

[Voliol]

Dwarf Fortress is the kind of game that warps your understanding of "complex". It's like "yeah, of course the workshop system is a long-term placeholder when it doesn't model tool usage, apprentices being supervised by their masters, and needing long rooms for rope making. Sure, there a dozens of skills involved, clutter builds up, and depending on the physical work involved dwarves may become buff or stagnate into corpulence, but it's still, you know, placeholdery.".

[Baron]

Theres some fun stories by people about their fortresses. Boatmurdered was one of the originals. Some of those are fun ways to see the complexity of DF

[Squingus]

Originally posted by Jun:

Has been a while since I heard about this game, and I read it has really complex mechanics.
For those veterans who played the game for a while, can you give examples/stories of how deep is this game in terms of sandboxing?
Thanks in advance

its extremely in depth, definitely something you'll have to learn, but not too complex that it is impossible to have fun or play efficiently.

[mwirkk]

This game is a sandbox that's deeper than you'll ever be able to dig. You may run into a big subterranean boulder blocking your path now and then, but you'll hit bottom. <;b

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by mwirkk:

This game is a sandbox that's deeper than you'll ever be able to dig. You may run into a big subterranean boulder blocking your path now and then, but you'll hit bottom. <;b

And usually immediately regret it.

[Kirino]

Dwarf Fortress is like those Stories that your heard from your Uncle working at Nintendo.
You can do absolutely fine for an Hour or so, and suddenly ravenous Wolves are infiltrating your Underground Fortess, eat your Children, and finally corner the last remaining Dwarf to slowely but surely bite him to death...
AND THAT JUST THE INTRO.
But yeah, Dwarf Fortress generates TONS of situations that (not only your Dwarfs) but the whole Simulated world can run into.
Which in turn, does turn this Game into an absolute Beast of an Simulation.
With only "AI Dungeon" possibly coming close to all the Story´s you can experience here.

[RoReaver]

To put it lightly... the only game that's deeper than this.. is a science fiction 4x game that's so difficult (due to the sheer mechanical depth) few people make it out their home system.
Dwarf Fortress is the kind of game that gives you all the tools to make a Hellevator to the unspeakable depths for washing invaders down to (with lava, water, or both). But won't show you how to do it. And you'll certainly find out what happens if you get the fluid dynamics wrong.

Then there's the dwarven atomsmasher.

Don't even get me started on the possibility of losing dwarves to reanimated crustaceans.

[Nova Solarius]

Originally posted by RoReaver:

a science fiction 4x game that's so difficult (due to the sheer mechanical depth) few people make it out their home system.

Name?

[MTBear]

Idk, but my buddy told me of a rather gay vampire making it's way into his fortress and proclaiming themselves as mayor only to be eaten by a legendary beast in the kitchen someone forgot to close the door to.

[RoReaver]

Originally posted by Nova Solarius:

Originally posted by RoReaver:

a science fiction 4x game that's so difficult (due to the sheer mechanical depth) few people make it out their home system.

Name?

Aurora 4x

[Saul of Tarsus]

My friend, you can choose to oversee a group of Dwarves as they strive to expand and build their civilization.

Or, my favorite thing, you can play the game like it's a sort of D&D game, as one character or with a party.

The sky's the limit, the combat system is more in-depth than any RPG I've ever played, the only way it could be more sophisticated and detailed is if you could pick which specific teeth you want to punch out of your enemy's mouth.

The world-gen doesn't create superficial worlds, it will develop unique ethnicities of Dwarves, Men, Elves and Goblins, with unique inclinations, religions, societies and appearances.

DF's worlds are so alive, so dynamic it's as if you were peering through a magic crystal ball into another universe that's just for you.

[hyperbolic nut chamber]

There's so much emergent gameplay that I've played off and on for years and still have events I never thought could happen occur every fort/adventure mode playthrough.

One time in adventure mode I had a quest to kill some guy so I snuck in his house, killed him with his own axe, then licked the blade. Turns out his house had no heating, my tongue froze to the blade, and I starved to death on the return voyage.

[Doc Clarke]

There is always a balance in terms of gameplay being detail and abstraction. DF leans more towards detail than almost any other game I've played.
It still has abstraction, and for a game to be actually playable - it has to have.

It also has a dichotomy between control and consequence.

You have unprecedented control of things. Every building, every wall is placed by you. It is the shape you decide to make it, It is exactly where you want it to be, and it links to other elements of your civilisation in exactly the way you want it to.
The genius is that, despite this control, you are in a world full of elements you do not control. beasts, monsters, the rest of the world-politic, the landscape you have not yet explored outside inside and UNDER you.

The dwarfs themselves have a level of AI consciousness. Needs, wants, fears. Neurosis, psychosis... that despite being able to control so much. You realise - you control so little.

The analogy is creating a sand fortress as the tide comes in at the beach. You can spend hours digging, making walls, creating channels.

In the end.

The tide is going to win...

and when it does... FUN