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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I've never been able to get into DF but I would suggest people check out RimWorld. I've heard it described as "Dwarf Fortress is Rimworld for people who hate fun" [0] and people often draw parallels between the two [1].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/7dm7j8/how_does_r...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/6xeie3/coming_ove...

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I love RimWorld, and have hundreds of hours in it, but I'd say it's really more like Babby's First DF game than truly comparable to DF. It just doesn't have the depth, or capability to present a deep challenge forever. It also takes place in a single layer, whereas DF has gobs of layers.

I actually really enjoy the way RimWorld's gameplay is simpler and more focused. Feels more like a game you actually get to play and less like a simulation you feel compelled to tweak every few hundred ticks.

Obviously, you're not going to get "infinite hours of gameplay" out of it the way you can with DF, but it can be a fun ride for hundreds of hours.

The other thing going for Rimworld is Steam Workshop integration and a very robust modding community.

You want Warhammer 40K in Rimworld? Got it.

You want Lovecraftian horrors in Rimworld? Got it.

You want different types of cats, or barbed wire, or typewriters? Got it.

RimWorld has a giant and engaged modding community. I know many people with multiple thousands of hours in the game.

There's also a very active subreddit at r/RimWorld

Same. I haven’t played DF nearly as many hours as Rimworld, but I can still grok that DF contains far more surprises and emergent gameplay. That said, Rimworld has proven to me how useful a pleasant GUI can be. Even though the gameplay loops are ultimately very predictable I’m always surprised at how I can get sucked into a session with it’s relaxing rythyms.

I played DF many years ago when the modding scene was a lot younger and found it’s complexity to be too intimidating. I eventually quit playing after a few weeks because of it.

I’ve been playing the hell out of RimWorld over the past few weeks. It really is a great entry to the kind of game DF is. The creator did a really good job of designing mechanisms to hold your hand in the beginning. The warnings on the right hand side of the screen were a godsend for me picking up RimWorld to make sure that my housekeeping was in enough shape to keep exploring without having an entire colony wipe for some ridiculous reason. It’s made me ready to try to tackle DF again after successfully running colonies in RimWorld.

I suspect someone can mod DF to give the same kind of gentler entry experience (if they haven’t already).

"The Lazy Newb Pack" has always been a must for me, and for me made it finally playable and enjoyable. One you get the hang of the "Dwarf Therapist" component, the game suddenly becomes much more approachable.

That is a really good point. Rimworld has a predictable and fairly simple loop, but it's a good one, and the UI lets you easily and fully manage everything and react to situations appropriately.

>It just doesn't have the depth

Literally. There's no z-levels, which really kills it for me in a post-apocalyptic sim where you can't dig a defensive moat or put riflemen in towers.

RimWorld doesn't really compare. The world is dead comparatively.

I heard some people recommend Oxygen Not Included, as also being in a similar vein, albeit at a smaller scale(ie, you have only 2 or 3 people in your colony), but with nice visuals (Klei are generally good with the animations, most things are animated, machines have cranks and pinions that move, water and other liquids actually flow with gravity, and visuals match the simulation as far as I have seen). ONI has a somewhat detailed array of systems like electrical wiring, plumbing( separate systems different for liquids and gases, with pumps, sumps, valves, etc), thermal management, people management (food, sleep, breathing air quality, lighting, waste management, morale, etc.)

Hardly comparable to Rimworld. ONI doesn't have combat beyond slaughtering animals. You can end up with your colony starving or suffocating, but you usually caused it yourself / were not careful enough. It also feels like the later part of ONI was quite a bit influenced by Factorio, leading to lots of automation while Rimworld pretty much only only tech subsystem is an electrical grid that explodes whenever you do well.

My first somewhat successful ONI run resulted in me over producing oxygen. Cut to the mid game and now all the tunnels are packed full of bacteria laced oxygen that I can barely keep up scrubbing. All the while my dudes' ears are constantly popping due to the high amount of pressure from the sheer amount of oxygen being pumped into the base.

Rimworld is kinda lame if you've played DF. They are not even comparable.

Rimworld is wonderful if you've played DF. They are very similar games with different levels of complexity and detail.

how so? the production chain is almost as deep. the damage model it's close in detail, and it's not terribly broken (whips anyone?) which should count as far as features go. you can actually caravan, explore people and exterminate faction without being restricted into adventure mode. and when you ask a neighbor for something in the caravan, you get what you asked. weather and climate is much more prominent, including more dangerous event like dry thunderstorm; the storyteller driven game is also quite ahead of seasonal invaders. husbandry is about the same and farming has terrain and light modifiers.

as far as game mechanics go rimworld lack building on multiple z levels and fluids.

and then you have gnomoria....

the real differentiation is the depth world history that df has that's quite unique.

I love dwarf fortress, but let's not put that on a golden pillar.

* Simplistic world generation that doesn't really have a concept of weather or geography/climate.

* No liquid simulation (water/lava) with little physics simulation (falling/flying objects etc)

* Simplistic combat simulation

* No world politics simulation that dictates what happens in the world

* No 3D is the biggest one. RimWorld is Dwarf Fortress as it was a decade ago with a single 2D sheet.

* true, mentioned it

* not really, you get layers and damage type and bleeding and organ failures impacting pawn abilities

* not really you can do diplomacy in rimworld between the colony and factions and it's deeper than current fortress mode options. diplomacy in worldgen is non actionable.

* true, mentioned it

the issue is 4/5 of those thing you repeat from my post don't add to gameplay (fluids) and some detracts even (path has severe issues caused by stairways).

the problem with rimworld is that there's too much micro and that the amount of emergent behavior is extremely limited compared to DF. There's no freedom to create and there's no serendipity. There's randomness but it's not nearly the same thing.

Rimworld took DF and removed all the innovative elements to fit it into a more traditional base building game. Then yes, if you restrict yourself to some very specific elements of gameplay they can be comparable but you don't play DF for the production chains.

The huge range of mods available for RimWorld allow you to address both of these things to whatever level you see fit. I find RimWorld shifts back and forth between a lot of micromanagement and a lot of passive automation depending upon how advanced your colony is and how dire your current set of circumstances is (e.g. I tend to do a lot of microing early on, and after the colony is established I only really have to micro during specific tense situations, like heavy raids).

I've played both. RimWorld became... repetitive really quick compared to DF, however, certain limitations in DF have significantly hindered how much I want to play it, namely I find it super hard to have a good overview of what goes on in my DF fortress after a while while in Rimworld I didn't get that feeling.

both games really shine if you just hit random and go. especially rimworld minmaxing the beginning picking biomes etc makes the game a little more dull.

I love Rimworld.

That said, wake me up when you find that your engraver has engraved a room full of images of rats, out of spite because he doesn't like the noble who owns that room.

Or when your Rimworld character, when trying to build a well, gets swept away by the current, scratches himself against the bottom, and now you have a full colony of vampires. Because it turned out that character was actually a vampire.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimworldArt/

i.e. https://i.redd.it/hkb0dqet17k21.png

For the way many people play DF, I think Rimworld is a better game. However, one of the core features of DF is that the world persists and has history. That's why there is no winning condition. Rimworld has a kind of lame winning condition (get off the planet), but it's there for precisely the reason that it doesn't exist in DF: Rimworld is a game with mechanics optimised for good gameplay. DF is a fantasy world simulator where you immerse yourself in the world and do whatever you want.

Again, for a lot of DF players that point is lost. They want to set up their efficient workflows or build their wonderful creations or they want to slaughter wave after wave of goblins. However, DF is set up in a way that the player is not necessarily important to the world. You die and the world just continues. You explore the world as an adventurer. You get killed by a duck. Life goes on. Your fortress falls to a weregopher. Life goes on. You explore the ruins of your fortress, track down the weregopher and get your revenge. That's DF. Rimworld has none of that.

Rimworld is a good game. DF is more like a toy.

The way I see it, it's like the difference between people who follow a Lego manual (RimWorld), and people who are creative enough to just build awesome things without it (DF). It's 100% what you make of it.

There's an amazing channel on YouTube, called Kruggsmash, that does DF lets plays. In his current series, he initially founded a new settlement based entirely on bee agriculture and trading - no fighters. He kept the population small so they were under the notice of the local goblins, and got set building an awesome looking place with custom bee related statues, engravings and the like. Unfortunately the other dwarf settlements around him (NPC ones) die off because of the local goblin fortress, and refugees start flocking to his settlement. (SPOILERS AHEAD!) He ends up throwing a vampire goblin down the well, and stabs him with spikes which ends up bloodying the water. The dwarves that drink the water then end up turning into vampires themselves, so he now has a fortress of vampire dwarves! He also has a massive prequel to this fortress series where he plays in adventure mode as a boar man and his compatriot goblin buddy (the one now down the well...), going around stealing artefacts and building his own role-play story, with some amazing illustrations to show what's happening in through all the ASCII graphics.

Honestly, he's more than worth a watch. You get very attached to all the characters, especially the dwarves that have been there from the beginning. He's one of the few YouTubers I've ever contributed towards on patreon.

Does DF have a multiplayer mod like rimworld? I love playing together with my partner.

https://github.com/Zetrith/Multiplayer

Honestly, Rimworld is the better game. DF may be the better simulation, but most of the time that simulation does not contribute that much to gameplay, and many aspects of DF detract from the gameplay. I would like rimworld to develop more depth, but it has at least acknowledged that how the player interacts with it is important.

Agreed. Fans will dv this, but it's like saying an etch-a-sketch is on the level of photoshop.

Also (since RimWorld has been mentioned) Prison Architect, may also have some similar qualities, like complex intertwined systems, and emergent events like prison riots, etc.

After the second time I stayed up to 2 AM playing that I deleted it from my computer. Too much fun :(

Then you should never install Factorio... :) I’ve put an ungodly number of hours into that game.

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