Benjamin Bleecker

In depth. Massive. Intimidating. All of these describe the sheer volume and complex systems at play here. The game creates a world, emulating history, terrain, and people from civilizations down to the health each person's index fingers. The amount of things you can do and mess with is downright staggering, if not paralyzing. I've been playing the game for about a decade now and it's finally seeing commercial release, and yet, I don't know if I can recommend it for everyone. The difficulty curve is more of a cliff, and you're expected to do a lot of your own research in order to figure out how things work. The base game has a lot of problems for new players, such as the UI and controls. Once you've mastered that, however, Dwarf Fortress becomes one of the most interesting games you'll ever play.