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[Crossroads Inc.]

Lets be honest, we have ALL been through this..

It seems like every few months you will read an article along the lines of...
"If you liked Dwarf Fortress, you will LOVE this game!"
or
"This game! It's like Blank, meets Dwarf Fortress!"

And usually to say they are Underwhelming is an Over statement...
The other day my brother, who knows i am a Dwarf Fortress fantastic comes at me with Castle Story!
A game he SWEARS is JUST like Dwarf Fortress!
"Look, you control lots of little guys, and they BUILD things! And you have to defend your castle against monsters! It's TOTALLY like Dwarf Fortress!!"
 

SO... How often do the rest of you have to deal with this?

[Mesa]

At this point I honestly don't care.
You just can't make a game JUST like Dwarf Fortress. It's physically impossible to replicate DF's depth and complexity, I feel.

That said, I'm still hoping for the trueform sci-fi Dwarf Fortress...

[thvaz]

Toady should put an easter egg hidden in DF, a graveyard with the name of all the games that tried to imitate DF - and failed.

[iofhua]

It reminds me of Stronghold 2, and how clunky the castle-building was in that. If you watch the dev video I cringed at the part where he was placing mine shafts... Yeah that's not happening.

I love castle-building games, but the only ones I ever enjoyed playing had either a top-down or isometric perspective. When things go full 3D the controls suffer for some reason.

Though one 3D village-building game I did enjoy was the first Black & White. But you don't build castles in that, you just fling fireballs at innocent villagers and watch them burn. In fact my epic-win strategy in that game involved completely ignoring the creature, and building a single gigantic village filled with hundreds of disciple breeders. I would place my creches right next to my temple and sacrifice dozens of children at a time so I could rain fireballs down on the enemy village. It worked every time! I never understood the fascination with the creature. That aspect got even worse in the expansion and in Black & White 2. The original with no expansion is still gold, though.

[Putnam]

At this point I honestly don't care.
You just can't make a game JUST like Dwarf Fortress. It's physically impossible to replicate DF's depth and complexity, I feel.

That said, I'm still hoping for the trueform sci-fi Dwarf Fortress...

It's possible, it'll just take 12 years.

[Mesa]

Maybe, but by that time Dwarf Fortress will be 12 years ahead.

[Crossroads Inc.]

There is one game that is KIND OF Dwarfish, but I don't know if it will ever get finished…
HEre check out:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJmYKKzC0uA[/youtube]

[Blastbeard]

"You've got to try this game, it's JUST like World of Warcraft!"
Show me an MMO that made that claim and met expectations and I'll show you an MMO I've never heard of and no longer have the time to play.
It's no exception here. If your game's selling point is its similarity to another, it is doomed to failure because it will always be in the shadow of its predecessor.

Someone more important than me once said something to the effect of "don't imitate, innovate."  Those are words to live by.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

SO... How often do the rest of you have to deal with this?

I don't have to deal with it, since most of the people I speak to have never heard of Dwarf Fortress before I spoke of it, and all but one haven't played it.

[Boltgun]

There is quite a lot of DF-like these days that are prison themed, space station themed, sci themed and just df with gnomes. My guess is that DF is gaining popularity and some devs who like DF figured that taking this game design and giving it a decent interface would be an instant success.

But DF takes a lot of engineering to achieve. And if you achieve to do that, are you still hitting the casual market you were aiming despite your good UI? For example it would be daring to release a game without health points to the wider audience.

[Trickman]

If your game's selling point is its similarity to another, it is doomed to failure because it will always be in the shadow of its predecessor.

Someone more important than me once said something to the effect of "don't imitate, innovate."  Those are words to live by.

I (regrettably) call bullshit on that one.

The gaming market is CRAWLING with shitty Half-Life/Halo clones. Go to any game shop, go to the unorganized big box with a hundred cheap semi-recent games scattered randomly inside. And there's not a single strategy game. Every single fucking game has screenshots on the back showing some hands holding a weapon. This (blasphemously) includes shooting games with words like "Commandos" or "XCOM" on the title. And the few RPG's are all canned casual-oriented Dragon Ages and Mass Effects, which are all like clones of each other. And of course, you'll find no strategy or tactical games, mind you.

The entire videogame market has been living off copying itself since the PS3 and the 360, and it has spilled onto the PC as well. There are a lot of quality and innovative games, but you have to search hard for them. Especially in the strategy and RPG department (which, for the most part, are the games worth playing). This isn't the 90's anymore.

[tootboot]

No one else has come close to replicating Toady's weird sense of humor which to me is the defining trait of DF.

[Cruxador]

At it's root it's trying to bring DF concepts to a wider market, which is cool I guess, but you're never gonna get really good game designers just copying someone else. There are some that have cool features added though - for example Stonehearth has an interesting system for mod integration and user generated content.

When it comes down to it though, the main design goal for most of these things seems to be "DF, but for casuals" which sort of misses the point of DF and also fails to advertise itself effectively.

[Mesa]

If your game's selling point is its similarity to another, it is doomed to failure because it will always be in the shadow of its predecessor.

Someone more important than me once said something to the effect of "don't imitate, innovate."  Those are words to live by.

I (regrettably) call bullshit on that one.

The gaming market is CRAWLING with shitty Half-Life/Halo clones. Go to any game shop, go to the unorganized big box with a hundred cheap semi-recent games scattered randomly inside. And there's not a single strategy game. Every single fucking game has screenshots on the back showing some hands holding a weapon. This (blasphemously) includes shooting games with words like "Commandos" or "XCOM" on the title. And the few RPG's are all canned casual-oriented Dragon Ages and Mass Effects, which are all like clones of each other. And of course, you'll find no strategy or tactical games, mind you.

The entire videogame market has been living off copying itself since the PS3 and the 360, and it has spilled onto the PC as well. There are a lot of quality and innovative games, but you have to search hard for them. Especially in the strategy and RPG department (which, for the most part, are the games worth playing). This isn't the 90's anymore.

People still buy games in stores?
What is this, the 90s?

Also, making a Dwarf Fortress "for casuals" is really defeating the whole premise of the game - the very things that make this game the Dwarf Fortress is its sheer complexity and depth. By trying to make it casual you have to remove either of the two (though usually it seems like both), which ruins the entire concept.

[Sizik]

If your game's selling point is its similarity to another, it is doomed to failure because it will always be in the shadow of its predecessor.

Someone more important than me once said something to the effect of "don't imitate, innovate."  Those are words to live by.

I (regrettably) call bullshit on that one.

The gaming market is CRAWLING with shitty Half-Life/Halo clones. Go to any game shop, go to the unorganized big box with a hundred cheap semi-recent games scattered randomly inside. And there's not a single strategy game. Every single fucking game has screenshots on the back showing some hands holding a weapon. This (blasphemously) includes shooting games with words like "Commandos" or "XCOM" on the title. And the few RPG's are all canned casual-oriented Dragon Ages and Mass Effects, which are all like clones of each other. And of course, you'll find no strategy or tactical games, mind you.

The entire videogame market has been living off copying itself since the PS3 and the 360, and it has spilled onto the PC as well. There are a lot of quality and innovative games, but you have to search hard for them. Especially in the strategy and RPG department (which, for the most part, are the games worth playing). This isn't the 90's anymore.

Half-Life? Is that one of those Doom clones?