izigame.me

This has to be one of the greatest games I've had the pleasure of playing in recent memory. I picked this game up during the winter sale at full price and I have to admit that it was worth every penny.
This is coming from a guy who's never played a colony simulator before. The only experience I had playing one of these games was spending 30 minutes in the tutorial for Rimworld and hating every second of it. I didn't like Rimworld and according to some people, it's the most beginner friendly colony simulator out there. How is it possible that I didn't enjoy such a polished and somewhat simpler game but ended up spending hours in this janky old game? Well... all these hours are me trying to figure out how to do the simplest tasks. This game will eat up your time. It's not just a game, it's a literary hobby. This is its own thing. Learning this game feels like learning how to play an instrument, or like learning a new language, or even learning how to ride a bike. Referring to the Wiki feels like homework. I don't consider myself to be a nerd and I'm definitely not into those Dungeons and Dragons things and yet I’ve had the time of my life with this beast of a game..
This game just kind of throws you into an ocean and lets you figure out how to swim, or at least stay at float. Let me tell you that you will drown a lot. This game is very difficult, it's not even a joke. Meme on Dark Souls and its reliance on skill all you want but this game will slam you hard with its randomness. There are some things that are way beyond your control. When things don't go the way I want them to, it's frustrating. Which brings me to my next point. Losing is fun… that's the whole point. I just kinda wing it and learn from my mistakes. I'm too lazy to read paragraphs sometimes so I just consult YouTube for help. A big shout out to Blind for helping me out with some of my questions. He makes tutorials for even the most basic things. For example I made a meeting area and my animals were starving and I couldn't figure out why. I then realized what the pasture zone was for so I plopped it down. I didn't realize I actually had to assign my animals to the zone so they just died. I tried to make a well… and it didn't work, so I went to YouTube. This game has become so popular, the resources for help are nearly endless.
I didn't know about this game until 6 months before the Steam release so lucky I didn’t really have to wait much. I knew it existed, I've just never really paid attention to it. Around that time, I tried the free version and I'm happy to announce that this version is better for newcomers. I still have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking at with the old graphics. Not only that, the mouse controls make this a more "tolerable" experience. I say tolerable because like I said, this game isn't easy. It's one of the first games that has made me boil my eyes out. Not because of a sad storyline or anything, it's just one of those things where you pause, cry, brush off the dust, and continue.
The soundtrack is a banger. I thought acoustic guitars were lame and electric guitars sound cooler. Boy did these songs change my mind. It's so relaxing. It's like Minecraft music but guitar. Every time Drink & Industry comes on, It makes me feel very happy to see a lot of pixels having fun in a tavern.
And for those of you who are worried like me, yes you can make the UI bigger. I'm visually impaired and need my letters to be grandma phone big. Unlike Rimworld where it only lets you resize the UI based on your resolution, Dwarf Fortress gives you the freedom to make it as big as you see fit. I haven't noticed any windows obscuring some buttons other than the tutorial window, but you can minimize that and it's still playable. The menu isn't pretty, but I like to read what I'm clicking on.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Let's talk about the optimization, "It's just a bunch of pixelated sprites, what could go wrong?" Proceeds to make the biggest world and cranks everything to the highest... big mistake… this game somehow lags. I'm not too knowledgeable on the technical side of how this game works and how it renders everything, but you need a surprisingly beefy computer if you want this to run properly. I'd say my PC is decent, not top notch anymore but it can still run current day games on medium settings. Lets just say that my computer fans were going crazy. That would be my only complaint so far.
If you are eyeballing this game, I'd say go for it. Maybe do some research before going in, the only reason I managed to keep my first Fortress for a while is because I watched hours upon hours of let's plays from many different people. I got really sick and couldn't get out of bed so I would binge watch many Dwarf Fortress videos all being +45 minutes each. Monkey see, monkey do. And that's what I did. I'm a visual learner and I learned a lot just by watching people play. I went into this knowing what an aquifer is. I also learned how not to be afraid of them. Just build around them…
I 100% recommend this game as a non-nerd and as someone who's never played a colony simulator before. The only thing I can compare it to is The Sims but instead of controlling an urban family of up to 8 members and building a house, you control about +200 creatures with deep and complex feelings and emotions. You build a fortress, a dwarf fortress. Then you try to survive in a not so family-friendly crude world.
Trying this game out opened a new genre of games I like and I’m now open to trying out more like it. I want to try Clanfolk, Oxygen Not Included, Songs of Syx, KeeperRL, among others. I'll even give Rimworld another chance. This game has made me appreciate the detail and endless replayability that goes into these “nerd games”