Oh man, I can't wait. I got burned out with RimWorld recently (it's cool but it's not fun for me; I have been following and supporting the project since Early Access) and I've waited for accessible Dwarf Fortress for ages.
I enjoy ASCII games (Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead [1] is surprisingly easy to get into in ASCII mode), but the obtuse UI of Dwarf Fortress was a little too much effort to learn. I hope the Adams brothers get some well-earned financial stability with this incredible endeavour. They are some old-school software craftsmen, devoted to the art of excellent game design for the sake of it, money be damned.
And I can't wait for the next Kruggsmash [2] series, now with actual, beautiful sprites to pair with his beautiful drawings.
I played quite a bit but gave up because of the inscrutable UI and ASCII graphics, so I'm quite excited about the recent developments. Can't wait to play Dwarf Fortress again once it has actual 'graphics' and (ideally) a better UI!
The handful of games inspired by Dwarf Fortress are cool, but I really hope somebody is working on a proper successor. A game that's even more ambitious with its simulation, with the software appropriately designed so it can be multithreaded and optimized.
Dwarf Fortress is amazing. It's quite possibly my favorite game of all time. But at the same time, it's really only scratching the surface of what's possible with this kind of simulation. There's a whole genre of incredibly deep RPGs just waiting to be created.
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