There is a great and popular game called Rimworld[http://store.steampowered.com/app/294100/] that does this. It's a colony management game where the default mode is colonists acting according to priorities and rules you set. You can override if you want but you quickly realize this is only for rare situations. It's really a fun game and a much easier learning curve than Dwarf Fortress.
RimWorld is kindof a cross between a sci-fi variant of Dwarf Fortress and Prison Architect, whose art-style it ripped off wholesale, with the permission of Introversion. I figure Prison Architect is surely worthy of a mention in this thread. (http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/pc.html)
Like DF and Rimworld, PA has that 'imperative' style, where your prison staff are given instructions, but may have problems carrying them out. Also, with the real-life setting, it might help stimulate some thinking about the nature of the penal system and the prison-industrial complex, while, at the end of it, still being a fun game.
Rimworld's play style is actually very little like PA beyond the general indirect management conceit. Even the way building constructions work is different enough to affect your gameplay (PA does all-in-one foundations, RW is more piecemeal).
Most games have a smaller learning curve than dwarf fortress.
That's also the point.
Dwarf fortress is actually a good study on community structuring via challenge based gating. Before the many tutorials, if you could hack df or aurora, you were a particular type of gamer, and the challenge itself was the fun.
I really wish people could know themselves through the game the way I got to.
I'll share an anecdote from my gamer bro in his early twenties. He likes Rimworld, but his complaint is that it's way too shallow compared to Dwarf Fortress. Here was his example:
"I decided to play a game of DwarfFortress in an evil biome. Only I didn't realize the weather was also evil. Within 30 minutes all of my Dwarves were dead from an acid rainfall, cause of death: drowning in their own puss."
$30 for a game that's early access, may never be finished.
$30 for a game that already has more content than many AAA games I've played, is still actively developed, is in many ways more advanced than most AAA games (in terms of the simulation and emergent gameplay). If it were abandoned RIGHT NOW, nobody would ever notice that it wasn't "completed".
I've personally got more value out of playing it than I get from most $60 games and I haven't even played the last two updates yet (which were HUGE).
The expensive packs are expensive because they let you add custom stuff to the game (e.g. Characters named after you) and not meant for the average player.
Those DLC packs are actually more like Kickstarter rewards. The text of the Pirate King DLC is this:
> This DLC gives you the right to enter a name and character backstory into the game, with skills, appearance, and special work requirements. In addition, your character will appear as the leader of another faction!
and follows with a note that says it does not affect game play, only gives you the right to add your desired content to the game.
It's more finished than many "properly released" games. There are many games released to early and quite expensively as EA, but Rimworld really isn't in that category.
Early access is a descriptor that isn't too useful except to say the developer doesn't consider the product finished for a 'first' release. Some developers will label a game as completed when it has serious issues that prevent most from having fun. Other developers will label a game incomplete even though there are dozens of hours of enjoyment to be found. A better judgment is to ignore what is promised, and instead ask if the game as it currently exists justifies the price. In the case of Rimworld, that was a yes for me. It may not be a yes for others. That's fine; we all have different preferences.
Take a game with a lot of free updates, such as Terraria. Consider the game the day it was released. What if it had been labeled 'Early Access' and incomplete because it doesn't have all the features that were given in post-release updates? That wouldn't make it worth any less on the day it was released.
The problem, as I see it, is that the nuance you're talking about isn't visible from the Steam store page. When I see a game that's Early Access, there's not a lot to indicate to me:
a) How far through the QC process the game is
b) Whether the game is going to change dramatically in the next 6 months
c) Whether the game is about to be a cancelled project.
d) Whether there are features/portions of the game that will just _not_ work with <insert OS version/hardware/network configuration/...>
Basically, Early Access is too big a tent to be meaningful, except to take as a caution of "you might be paying for vapor."
That's interesting, I've never seen a pre-release DLC that expensive. I wonder if they are going for a kickstarter-style 'fund us' approach with that pack.
no, i didn't. i did scroll down on the store page to see what the DLCs were about but didn't see any comparison. makes sense in hindsight considering that they don't actually change anything about the game.
