Dwarf Fortress

Anybody remember Rogue? Great little game with ASCII graphics (your character was a smiley face, monsters were some letter of the alphabet e.g. b=bat, D=dragon, etc, etc)

Anyway there is a fantastic little game called Dwarf Fortress out there with similar graphics, but the gameplay is quite similar to Dungeon Keeper with some vaguely Sims-like dwarf management. It's actually quite deep and involved, and can take a long time to learn how to play.

Here are some of the things you can do:
- Assign each dwarf some set of tasks they'll do, which they'll gain experience in and improve (mining, carpentry, jewel-setting)
- Build up a military with training areas, equipping dwarves with equipment you made yourself or bought from traders which occasionally visit
- Build bedrooms, dining rooms, offices, catering to the needs of your dwarves
- Build traps, trebuchets, or levers which (if you've engineered them correctly) will flood an area with water or lava
- Watch your dwarves go on insane murdering rampages if enough bad things happen to them to drive them to the edge

Game can be downloaded for free from here: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Some guys started a succession game on a forum where each player took over for a year, then zipped up his save and sent it to the next guy to continue. Hilarity ensues. Here is the saga of the dwarf fortress: Boatmurdered. The beginning of the end really starts in chapter 18 with this line "I've started project "F*** The World", a top secret attempt to funnel magma to the outside. I'll kill those elephants. I'll kill all those f***ing elephants."