You want a dwarf? There's your goddamn dwarf.
You want better graphics? Screw you. Dwarves can do lots of stuff. Like digging. Can you dig? Hell no. Play Dwarf Fortress.
- The unofficial motto of the DF community.
If you can get around the 4-bit ascii graphics,
intense learning curve, and at times frustrating control scheme this game will occupy you for days. I don't mean days like you'll play it for a week, I mean days like when you type /played in WoW and get reminded you've wasted upwards of 1,500 hours on a video game.
TL;DR - It has complexity of Oregon Trail with very small scale vaguely SimCity-like gameplay, and has the creative opportunities of Spore and then some... insofar as architecture, contraptions, and culture in a fantasy setting can go.
You can build a burgeoning fortress with a thriving economy, trade with other civilizations, weather goblin sieges, build amazing contraptions with water (DF gives you the ability to build pumps and simulates hydrostatic pressure with water and magma... let your imagination run wild), or just construct insane feats of architecture. Raise a military and get decimated by a bronze colossus that wanders through your region, watch your fortress break out in a giant fistfight when your dwarves get upset over one too many deaths, or maybe accidentally flood your fortress whilst making an ingenious device of some kind... LOSING IS FUN. Some of its charming quirks include nobles that have a habit of walking around wearing nothing but socks, shoes, and five or ten capes, undead carp that stalk onto land and obliterate anything in their path, and the complete lack of reaction dwarves have to fire.
Best of all, it's freeware.
