To understand DF, you need to understand the the reason that the ASCII art exists is because Tarn is not an artist and decided to prioritise other things. Art

To understand DF, you need to understand the the reason that the ASCII art exists is because Tarn is not an artist and decided to prioritise other things. Art was not considered important enough to spend time on. Neither was a consistent UI. Neither was fixing "quality of life" bugs. This was never an attempt to purposely build a subculture that enjoys puzzling out how to play the game. It's a choice of prioritising the other aspects of the work over these aspects. The people who avidly play DF self-selected by being able to persist through all of the sub-optimal parts to discover the wonderful parts. Just keep that in mind if you decide to give it a go. I think to enjoy it, you need to have a relaxed attitude. I see a lot of incensed people on the forums who loudly proclaim, "How can you put up with such a crappy game?". The reputation of being the most complex game in the world, or being the hardest game to play is just wrong, unfortunately. People get the idea that there is some benefit to the complexity -- like using Blender or Vim. But there isn't. It's just complex because the work flows have never been thought through that much and there are bugs all over the place. The reason to play the game is the emergent story telling, for which there is nothing else that even comes close. You persist through the problems, to get to the gems. Maybe some people enjoy the persistence, I don't know, but that's not the point of DF. Anyway, I hope that puts things into perspective.