Dwarf Fortress definitely deserves a plug - its run by a two brother team and the game is... hard. They currently earn through donations and are able to keep themselves plugging along.
The games ambition is to simulate an entire fantasy world, literally. His recent update was on the lines of:
" Now you can take rock nuts, for instance, mill them into a nut paste, then put them in a screw press to get oil (into a jug) and a press cake. Both of these can be cooked and the oil can also be made into soap. The press cake shouldn't be as yummy, probably, or maybe it should be restricted as animal feed, but currently it is just food. Jugs are currently anything but clay pretty much, and clay is the next step." - (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html)
The game procedurally generates a world, identifies different types of biomes, soil layers, weathers the terrain, flows rivers, amongst other pre-start activities. After that it populates the world with civilizations, and simulates interactions, wars, kidnappings, interactions/fights with monsters/demons, for about a 1050 years before presenting you the world to do what you will.
The games ambition is to simulate an entire fantasy world, literally. His recent update was on the lines of:
" Now you can take rock nuts, for instance, mill them into a nut paste, then put them in a screw press to get oil (into a jug) and a press cake. Both of these can be cooked and the oil can also be made into soap. The press cake shouldn't be as yummy, probably, or maybe it should be restricted as animal feed, but currently it is just food. Jugs are currently anything but clay pretty much, and clay is the next step." - (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html)
The game procedurally generates a world, identifies different types of biomes, soil layers, weathers the terrain, flows rivers, amongst other pre-start activities. After that it populates the world with civilizations, and simulates interactions, wars, kidnappings, interactions/fights with monsters/demons, for about a 1050 years before presenting you the world to do what you will.
The game creates a LOT of emergent scenarios and stories, one of the more recent ones was this: http://www.nzfortress.co.nz/forum/showthread.php?t=20768
Its immense fun, but the learning curve is brutal; the starting screens without any graphics pack look like the matrix. Really - http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens/dwf5.html
The game is mind-bogglingly complex, and immense fun. Worth taking a look into.
Some other interesting stories which derived from the game- Boatmurdered - http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/ Tholtig- http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=42702.msg7905... Curated thread with links - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=41896.0