10 Video Games That Obliterate You In The TUTORIAL

Dwarf Fortress can be best described in one word; complex. Due to its focus on construction and management, realistic physics, and changing weather patterns, there's never a moment where players's eyes aren't darting around everywhere, trying to keep track of it all.

Even though tips are offered in the opening, there's a lack of hand-holding, since the game expects players to actively explore and play around with the mechanics. However, it's difficult to learn, since many concepts aren't intuitive or easy to understand, requiring players to invest time and effort in experimentation.

And if modern fans of the game think Dwarf Fortress is inaccessible, they should see how it started! Before the 2022 update, characters were represented as letters, numbers, or symbols. Unsurprisingly, this Matrix coding visual style was pretty alienating.

Obviously, this aspect isn't a big deal, due to the recent graphical upgrade. But this highlights another problem, since Dwarf Fortress has been drastically evolving over the last two decades. Just when players feel like they have it figured out, key mechanics are added, removed, or reinvented, forcing everyone to relearn everything. Because of this, there are times where Dwarf Fortress feels like it never stops being a tutorial.