Yes. It is not really that hard, if you consider how they have probably the best wiki of any computer game and a lot of high quality helper programs. If you alt-tab between dwarf fortress, the wiki and dwarf therapist, it is totally doable. And once you play a couple of games you start to get the internal logic of DF and becomes kind of fun.

Nearly a decade ago I played it a bit over a couple of months. I'd guess 30 hours or so (which is a lot for me, I'm a gaming dabbler, aside from the civ and fromsoft games). It was pretty playable IMO, and would really pull you in, just tedious to navigate the menus.

I eventually got kind of tired of investing so much effort into a fortress that would just randomly fall apart. People say that's part of the fun but I dunno... I found that aspect a bit annoying. It also ran really poorly for me in late game and that kind of put me off too.

Great concept, the ascii is less of a problem than you'd think, but overall just a bit too much effort to keep wanting to come back for more.

Yes. Once it clicked it was so engrossing I found I could think of nothing else. Focusing on work was difficult. Dwarf Therapist became indispensable. I knew all of my dwarfs by name, and I had a plan for all of them. My focus became all consuming. I built a windowed tower that could only be comprehensible if you grokked the Z-layer system. I was very close to having a moat filled with lava. In the end, I dug too deep.

I don't allow myself to play DF any more. It's just too good.

I can get to 80-100 dwarves without huge problems but then I usually get bored with the micromanagement.

DF is not hard if you follow the quickstart guide.

Steam version with better UI and graphics released 6th December

I did "actually played it", think the biggest thing I did was a lava cannon that flooded the area aboveground when invasion game, that was "interesting" build...

Having to relearn everything on interface stopped me from picking it up again, and from what I watched new UI look so much more user friendly

I've lost more hours than I care to count to this game--it's incredibly compelling to a certain type of gamer. Unfortunately (or fortunately for my productivity), there was a military update a few years ago that I found unmanageable, and my attempts to play it have been short-lived ever since.

Every few years I deep-dive into it again, getting usually to a half-build mega project on a fortress with 100-150 dwarves or so.

It's getting toward that time again, I wonder how it runs on an M1.

Yes. It's one of those things I have to keep uninstalled or it'll randomly suck me back in. AMA.