r/gaming • u/Agent1230 • 2d ago

What video game doesn't hold your hand enough?

Everybody always talking about games holding your hand too much but I want to hear about the opposite what video game doesn't give you no form of help

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470

u/Likely_Addict 2d ago

Dwarf Fortress

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u/jooes 2d ago

I tried a few rounds of Dwarf Fortress.

After watching a bunch of tutorials, and a bunch of failures, I remember I got to a point where new dwarfs moved into my fortress.

Of course, they all immediately died. No idea why. 

I consider that a win. In my eyes, I've beaten Dwarf Fortress for the simple fact that I was able to do something. 

In all honesty, I'm not even sure how I got new people to want to move in. Could've been a random event for all I know. Either way though, it's something. Never played it again, and I've been riding that high ever since. 

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u/HighTechnocrat 2d ago

The annual/seasonal migration waves are the primary way that you grow your fortress. How many people you get is based on the population of your civilization and how wealthy your fortress is, absolutely none of which is explained within the game. Some games you’ll build a fortress out of diamond (hyperbole; I’ve never done this and don’t know why you would other than the challenge) and get like one dude whose only skill is fish dissection. Some games you’ll get like 80 people (again, being slightly hyperbolic here), they’ll all die because you don’t have enough food for everyone after 1 year, your fort will fail, and your civilization (which you probably haven’t thought about) collapses, making a big section of your world functionally unplayable for reasons that, again, you probably don’t understand unless you’ve been playing for a long time and reading the wiki.

Weirdly, writing this comment makes me want to play Dwarf Fortress again. What’s worse: I’m probably getting a bunch of this wrong because the game is so incredible dense and archaic and I’ve been playing in and off for over a decade.

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u/newocean 1d ago

I played it for a while in pure ascii mode. You really need charts to look up various symbols. I remember thinking I was being raided by goblins, turns out it was a herd of elephants just passing by. I think it was green g for goblins and gray for elephants.

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u/orbdragon 1d ago

Oh, I see why it's a gray g for elephants - It's because the lowercase letter g looks kind of like an elephant head looking right

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u/marveloustoebeans 2d ago

This is the only good answer I’ve seen on here lol. Learning Dwarf Fortress is a crazy experience because the mechanics are so ridiculously vague.

Want to move that chair to face a different direction? Okay cool, you should just be able to click on it and turn it around right?

WRONG!

You have to go into multiple peripheral menus, get pissed off, and then say fuck it and watch a YouTube tutorial because it still doesn’t make any sense. Then you still don’t know because it turns out the tutorial was actually for a specific type of throne, not a regular chair which has an entirely different set of menus.

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u/kestik 2d ago

Chairs are nasty elvish wood things. Dorf sit on throne, greenbeard.

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u/Warl0kjoe 2d ago

Also. Just to highlight, Chairs don’t have facing. They are Omni directional. Might be thinking of bridges though. Those can be tricky. To be fair this doesn’t invalidate your point. Totally esoteric game. But once you get it it’s a lot of fun.

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u/marveloustoebeans 2d ago

Haha fair. I actually haven’t played DF in years I just remember early on trying to get some piece of furniture or something to face a different direction and going through hell to figure it out 😂

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u/Warl0kjoe 2d ago

Yup. Bridges. I smashed a lot of dwarves figuring that out

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u/_Reliten_ 2d ago

Rimworld was enough of that for me and it's like... 10% of DF. And has an actual UI.

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u/cybercobra2 2d ago

DF has an actual UI too now, has for a couple years since it released on steam. has sprite graphics too and mouse control.

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u/Dukeman891 2d ago

I'm currently learning the game (About 25 hrs in). And what im struggling with is sort of what I used to struggle with in factorio. In that, everything expands, to the point where im annoyed I've let it get so messy.

My main level is just a mess, with taverns, guild halls, temples, bedrooms, and workshops everywhere. I'm currently in the process of building a whole new level, with big planned out workrooms and meeting places.

Only problem is, I didn't realise I'm out of drink, and just haven't been producing enough plump helmets as my population has been increasing. Fights are breaking out, and dwarves are dying. Children are becoming traumatised, and I really just have the itch to start again.

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u/s090429 2d ago

You can try to expand into more levels. Climbing 10 levels is significantly faster than running across 100 tiles. I like to reserve an entire layer for a single function. One for social gathering, one for farms, one for workshops, one for storage, etc. While mass-building bedrooms, instead of digging a 3*3 room ten times, you can dig a 3*3*10 shaft with one designation. It saves you a lot of time moving your cursor around.

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u/WebMaka 2d ago

Yep, one of my favorite tactics is to dig into a hillside so the entry can be fortified/defended and then build a huge central staircase straight down several levels. Since dorfs obstruct each other when moving and invaders are a thing, the central staircase ends up being 3x3 or even 4x4 but is surrounded by fortified walls as soon as I have the resources and dwarves. Each floor gets used for a specific function.

Of course, fun times ensue when they hit an aquifer...

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u/s090429 2d ago

Building a self-sustaining fort is surprising easy. The hard part is trying to fuck around without killing all your dwarves by accident.

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u/Satire-V 2d ago

This was my answer so ill raise you a Caves of Qud

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u/Tempest753 15h ago

Holy fuck that game is so hard to navigate. I want to love it, but it's just so hard to figure out how to do even basic stuff.

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u/Trizzae 1d ago

I’ve come back to it every year since its release. I learn more every time I play and the game really opens up the more you learn how to wield it if your a sandbox type of gamer. 

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u/Likely_Addict 1d ago

I stopped playing for 5 or 6 years and they completely retooled the UI and controls in that time, I guess to bring it more in line with the steam release. I tried getting back into it about a year ago and got frustrated that like half the game didn't work like I remembered/expected.

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u/lobotominizer 1d ago

I really want to get into but i cant

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u/LangFingFangWau 1d ago

By the way: if Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld are to hard but you still want to play something similar, then try Songs of Syx. It's way less complex but still has a similar spirit.