Minecraft's early game is relatively boring. Empty busywork like punching trees, village raids and strip mining are vestigial gameplay loops that neither Mojang nor Microsoft had the confidence to fix.

I'd agree that they're a bad comparison though. Despite Notch's inspiration from DF, Minecraft has worse bosses, biomes, trading, mining, diplomacy, cooking, innkeeping and NPCs.

Yeah, I think this actually supports the idea that Dwarf Fortress is needlessly bad at onboarding players. Every time I try to get into it, I end up confused by why people enjoy it and unable to figure out how to play it. Whereas with Minecraft, exploring how to play it was actually fun, with Dwarf Fortress, it felt frustrating and unnecessarily obscure.

> minecraft is fun and engaging

It depends, for me it is boring and has pretty dim graphics. I wanted to love it, but it is not fun. It looks like a Sims game, it lacks what e.g. factorio has, that "spark".

DF sounds like it might have that "spark", but I'm afraid to touch it.

Even though I'm a big fan of the game and have been playing it for over a decade now, "fun and engaging from minute zero" is not how I'd describe it. I've seen a number of people (both kids and adults) become frustrated with it almost immediately, and that's with someone experienced nearby to answer questions and let them know what they can do. Without such guidance, they'd definitely have quit and never played it again.