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There's an entire subgenre of games trying to make less ambitious, prettier versions of Dwarf Fortress. Banished, for instance. You could argue that even Minecraft attempts to be a 3d dwarf fortress, where you control your one dwarf.

The extra effort in the UI tends to leave far worse games than Dwarf Fortress though.

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Minecraft was actually started as an explicit DF clone and then deviated from there

Minecraft was started as a clone of Infiniminer.

Infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress.

I don't know what definition of "clone" you use, but in my eyes you are using the word too liberally here. Was there any stage of Minecraft development that was even remotely similar to Dwarf Fortress in concept? When I started playing it it lacked, say, crafting, and the only concept it really shared with Dwarf Fortress was the idea of generating terrain procedurally; a concept shared by many games, and one that makes Minecraft compare to Dwarf Fortress like a propeller beanie compares to a wind turbine.

Notch has said so himself.

Which of course makes it so.

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