There's a good game buried under here, but be prepared to dig for it - and I don't mean with your dwarves. I mean digging through online tutorials, help pages, and videos. People confuse THIS sort of game, where the "tutorial" is just a set of objectives with no useful guidance on how to complete them, and where the UI makes everything harder than it should be, with the concept of "no hand holding." But rewarding experimentation and having to consult online how-to videos to do the most basic things are not at all the same.
I Built a private, enclosed room with bed and furniture for each of my dwarves, but they won't sleep there. Instead they just say "Where's my home?" and sleep in the hallway. Game offers no explanation.
I have berries and other edibles in my inventory, but my dwarves don't seem to be able to eat them. Whatever recipes they are used for are locked behind dependencies.
Nothing is intuitive, and the user interface is (almost) zero help at clearing things up. There is a flow chart of exactly what things you have to craft to unlock the things you actually need to craft, but no guidance on what the materials you're looking for actually look like, or exactly how far away you are from the next unlock. Hidden dependencies like a crafting bench will get you: even though you appear to have the ingredients for the recipe, you still can't make it.
*How to actually make a crafting bench? Well, back to the flow chart.
* Oh gosh, the micromanagement! Each dwarf needs to be equipped with gear separately, so far as I can tell, and can be specialized for specific tasks in a variety of ways. Not sure how to tell them apart though, and you get a lot of them very quickly! In the game I played, they weren't even given unique names. Every single dwarf was literally named "Who am I?"
People who like to tinker and figure out everything themselves / watch vids will feel right at home and have a lot of fun. For the rest of us: stay away or buy on a steep, STEEP sale!
