DWARF FORTRESS (a free, alpha release game)

[bogey1]

No, I got it, I really did. I was in position to survive winters and got lazy. I played more than twice actually, but quit several times as a learned.

I never got to the point of nobles or being attacked. I was already going insane managing 30-45 dwarves all doing stupid things and not what I wanted. I really wanted to be able to bring up a screen with all dwarves and sort based on jobs so I could see how many I have doing job X, then be able to click on it and zoom to that dwarf. Or see who was unhappy and be able to click or get hover text on why.

I found 2 huge problems:
1) It's hard to know what's wrong with anyone or why things aren't happening (WTF isn't it smelting steel?)
2) Even if you know, it's a pain to sort through and find how to address it and assign the tasks.

The idea of managing 70 or 100 or 200 dwarves wasn't appealing at all, so I stopped.

Like I said though, given a really good intuitive interface and ways to surface lots of info, this would be an absolutely mind bogglingly incredible game.