Dwarf Fortress
Sandbox genre
It’s been in development for 21 years now, and is difficult to explain in short. It’s a niche game, but IMO it’s not just the best of the sandbox genre, but one of the greatest games ever made.
1. You generate a world: physics, resources, lifeforms (both mythical and mundane), and civilized peoples.
2. You can move through history, civilizations rise and fall, great beasts roam the world, others are hidden. Civilizations start with Dwarves, Elves, Humans, and Goblins, but Kobolds can form a civilization, and other humanoid species can form tribes and eventually join other civilizations to become civilized. Multi-species civilizations are possible, generally come around a bit later, but can be around from the start of history.
3. Ages of the world. There are legendary beasts: Titans, Demons, Dragons - the first three ages of history are dependent on how many of these are left. Later ages are determined by a certain legendary monster dominating, or the shape of civilizations. Otherwise, it depends on the ratio of mythical (faery creatures and such) vs mundane (cows, horses, llamas, cavies, alligators, sheep, falcons, blue jays, and so on).
4. You can explore the world via adventure mode, or rule over a city in a (relatively) small corner of the world.
5. Embark, 7 dwarves, mine, craft, build, giant fortresses and mega structures if you want. You can also retire a Fortress and start a new one in the same world, in the same Dwarven civilization (there are usually multiple civilizations of every race, even in my little pocket world, there are eight civilizations, 2 of every civilized race). Your population can grow into the hundreds, your fortress may start off as an outpost, but can grow into a Metropolis, with nobility, even the King, and your city can become the capital. If you don’t like dealing with hundreds of dwarves, you can set a population cap—many prefer playing with 40-120 dwarves. I like lots of dwarves to train up and conquer other regions.
6. Trade with your civilization and others. Invade other cities, even launch a revolt against other your own civilization. Have visitors from other cities of other species of people.
7. Even the resources are very diverse, and it’s educational. Tons of different animal types, you can use them for resources. Rather than simple “Iron Ore” you mine magnetite, hematite, or limonite; instead of copper, it’s native copper but also malachite and tetrahedrite. You need a carbon and a flux stone to make steel; there are other alloys you can make, too (like electrum/green gold out of gold and silver). And there are perhaps thousands of different things you can craft; and different materials and qualities of those thousands of items - and items can be made of many different types of materials.
8. You can name your dwarves and such, they have psychological profiles with hundreds of different types of personality traits that combine to form their personality; different dwarves are better suited for different things… also, all other peoples, even animals have psychologies. Also, not all traits are inherent, plenty are learned or acquired from life experience.
9. You can give orders for your dwarves, and give them jobs (there are dozens of different sorts of tasks that can be combined for different jobs. Different dwarves will do different tasks depending on their jobs. Unlike RTS games, dwarves will do tons of things on their own, beyond your control - they’re not just drones that idle when you don’t use them.
10. You can set up command lists with If Then statements, for example “if less than 30 steel swords, if over 250 steel bars, then create 10 steel swords” and you can have dozens and dozens of these to help automate your fortress the way you want it to work.
11. A lot of the challenge is making sure your Fortress runs smoothly, as different dwarves have different relationships, religions, guilds, social circles, and there can be rivalries and violence, crime, and other issues.
12. Speaking of which, there are a bunch of different sorts of designated buildings you can make: homes, dormitories, inns, taverns, offices, libraries, mess halls, stockpiles (with tons of different options), temples, hospitals, Guild halls, farms, etc…
You can get lost in Dwarf Fortress for thousands of hours across years.
https://youtu.be/gZteQoToLdY
(Note, this guy plays with a cap, you don’t have to. I’ll embed when I decide to head down to my office… does anyone know how to embed from mobile?)
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
