Dwarf Fortress

Somewhere along the line I stumbled across a "succession game" thread (here). This is where people play a "round" of some game and then pass everything off to another person to pick up where they left off. This thread is particularly interesting because of the care the players have taken to write "in character" as a person in the game.

So on to the game: it's called Dwarf Fortress. It's an ASCII adventure game. Yep - colored blocks is the limit of the graphics. I've read a lot about it, but it's daunting. The learning curve is something like 5-10 hours. I'm a little fearful of just digging in because of the micro-management involved. You start with just 7 dwarves, which seems easy enough to manage. But you need to do things like dig out a home in a mountain and start managing food and defenses with finite initial resources. Like I said, it's daunting, but then you have bad guys coming in, winter 6 months away, and trading also. It's an immensely deep game. See some stories from players here (it's a blog, so you'll need to dig around for DF posts and stories).

What has me fascinated about the prospects is all the logical choices you need to make. It's a game, but it's not one where you need to figure out the trick to get to the next level. You just need to make good choices to help your clan survive. Infinite possibilities.

There's a wiki to check out for more details. And some graphics packs (I'm using this one) which help get you over the ASCII hurdle, especially if you're running higher resolutions.

I want to get hooked on this game, but I'm not sure I have the time!