I love Rimworld and play it a lot. I frequently see posts and articles comparing the two. I got Dwarf Fortress, watched tutorials, printed out flow charts, and really gave it a try for several hours.
But I didn’t get into Dwarf Fortress :( some of the mechanics are weird. Many things are not intuitive or don’t make sense. Like seeds that are needed for growing mushrooms are defaulted to be used in cooking and the setting to turn that off is difficult to find.
I finally realized an analogy today. Rimworld is like The Sims while Dwarf Fortress is like Sim City. Rimworld you directly control people and micromanage a colony. Dwarf Fortress is Sim City - you zone things and say generally what you want to happen, but don’t control your meeples directly.
Thoughts on the comparison? Any other folks like Rimworld but not Dwarf Fortress?
I played DF before Rimworld came out, never really got into it as this was before it came with a UI. Gotten back into DF the past couple of weeks and am really enjoying it. Definitely a learning curve though.
DF feel a bit better now I’ve given it some time. My only issues with it is stuff like you’ve mentioned, weird defaults. The dorfs eating seeds is one, the default game state FPS makes the game feel way too fast, the default population cap is pretty full on for beginners too. Changing both of those made it far more manageable. That and using nothing but work orders when you get the means. There a a lot of solid videos for newer players, DF you’ll need them for all the finicky things.
Playing Rimworld does makes me miss the Z levels every time though. Rimworld feels like you get a bit more breathing room and can do your own thing quicker. DF I usually take a year or two just to get my colony stable.