I love Rimworld and play it a lot. I frequently see posts and articles comparing the two. I got Dwarf Fortress, watched tutorials, printed out flow charts, and really gave it a try for several hours.
But I didn’t get into Dwarf Fortress :( some of the mechanics are weird. Many things are not intuitive or don’t make sense. Like seeds that are needed for growing mushrooms are defaulted to be used in cooking and the setting to turn that off is difficult to find.
I finally realized an analogy today. Rimworld is like The Sims while Dwarf Fortress is like Sim City. Rimworld you directly control people and micromanage a colony. Dwarf Fortress is Sim City - you zone things and say generally what you want to happen, but don’t control your meeples directly.
Thoughts on the comparison? Any other folks like Rimworld but not Dwarf Fortress?
I have more time in rimworld but play both. Sometimes DF is nice when you can’t be arsed to care about the people you manage and don’t want to micromanage the way you really have to in rimworld sometimes. Plus there is no storyteller in the rimworld sense. You get more raids if you live near people who don’t like you and I feel like that makes a lot of sense.
The world building element in DF is so cool. Like the world is generated and aged and has history. Rimworld’s planet feels flat in comparison.