Rimworld. It’s like having a fishtank, but with really sociopathic fish. Only game I can think of where the #1 enemy you struggle with, that which shapes your core strategy and approach to every problem, is its single threaded performance.
I really don’t mean this as a dunk on Rimworld, but as is tradition with most things in Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress did it first. “FPS Death” was a common end condition for resilient forts. If natural dangers or greed didn’t kill you first, boredom would as your FPS crawled down into the single digits or, if you were really dedicated, this could become seconds per frame.
Rimworld has kind of done it’s own thing now with the third or fourth DLC expansion but for a majority of its lifespan so far it could charitably be called a DF clone with a readable UI. Now DF has its own readable UI and Rimworld has cybernetics and psychic magic so they’ve sort of both become individual titans of their own genre.
But anyways: while Dwarf Fortress isn’t quite Zork I in terms of influence, there’s a good reason people are pushing to have it added to the game canon. Tynan has never denied that Tam Adams was an inspiration, or tried to hide the influence DF had on Rimworld’s development (hell, the highest difficulty in Rimworld has always been called ‘losing is fun’). And while the two games are clearly similar, the core design philosophy is pretty different. Rimworld’s goal has always been a compelling story through fairly structured gameplay, where DF has always emphasized emergent gameplay and adherence to the simulation. I’ve played both since pretty much they came out (oh fuck I’m old…), but rimworld’s gameplay loop, core modability and not-awful-UI really won me over for casual gameplay. In their current incarnations, both are amazing games, but the question was “comfort game”, and this is my answer.
Nitpick
I really don’t mean this as a dunk on Rimworld, but
(slightly-patronizingly-phrased linguistic tip: including the ‘but’ there is an implied contradiction that severely undercuts the sincerity of the preceding sentiment. I believe your sincerity, many people just don’t know about that weird semantic quirk.)
(And in a ‘hey dude’ moment, FPS death was a thing way way before DF. I remember it killing my cities in SimCity 2000, for example.)
Rimworld. It’s like having a fishtank, but with really sociopathic fish. Only game I can think of where the #1 enemy you struggle with, that which shapes your core strategy and approach to every problem, is its single threaded performance.
I really don’t mean this as a dunk on Rimworld, but as is tradition with most things in Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress did it first. “FPS Death” was a common end condition for resilient forts. If natural dangers or greed didn’t kill you first, boredom would as your FPS crawled down into the single digits or, if you were really dedicated, this could become seconds per frame.
Rimworld has kind of done it’s own thing now with the third or fourth DLC expansion but for a majority of its lifespan so far it could charitably be called a DF clone with a readable UI. Now DF has its own readable UI and Rimworld has cybernetics and psychic magic so they’ve sort of both become individual titans of their own genre.
Er… isn’t DF multithreaded (now)?
But anyways: while Dwarf Fortress isn’t quite Zork I in terms of influence, there’s a good reason people are pushing to have it added to the game canon. Tynan has never denied that Tam Adams was an inspiration, or tried to hide the influence DF had on Rimworld’s development (hell, the highest difficulty in Rimworld has always been called ‘losing is fun’). And while the two games are clearly similar, the core design philosophy is pretty different. Rimworld’s goal has always been a compelling story through fairly structured gameplay, where DF has always emphasized emergent gameplay and adherence to the simulation. I’ve played both since pretty much they came out (oh fuck I’m old…), but rimworld’s gameplay loop, core modability and not-awful-UI really won me over for casual gameplay. In their current incarnations, both are amazing games, but the question was “comfort game”, and this is my answer.
Nitpick
(slightly-patronizingly-phrased linguistic tip: including the ‘but’ there is an implied contradiction that severely undercuts the sincerity of the preceding sentiment. I believe your sincerity, many people just don’t know about that weird semantic quirk.)
(And in a ‘hey dude’ moment, FPS death was a thing way way before DF. I remember it killing my cities in SimCity 2000, for example.)