How did you discover UnReal World? -- 10 choice poll

[halavus]

The game was in a recommendation list on r/dwarffortress for someone looking for games like df adventurer mode.
I tried it... and goodbye df...

Just knowing that this game was out there since 1992 and I haven't been aware of it makes me feel sick.

[trowftd]

Okay, it is a little over a year I first found this game so I wanted to write my story about it.

I've always liked survival games, mostly played arcadey games like Don't Starve, Minecraft and so on. At the end of 2019 I've become interested in indigenous cultures and survival skills. While I was doing little projects of mine, I wanted a deeper and more realistic survival game too. I remember exactly searching "Hunter gatherer sim" in google. Led me to a reddit post which one user was suggesting Unreal World. It was a indie game subreddit If I remember correctly. To be honest, I was kind of dissapointed at first. I was not expecting a turn based rogue-like game. I watched some videos, saw the devs and how "real" they were about the whole atmosphere of the game. The videos which they have uploaded made me change my opinions about the game and I didn't even try the free version, I just bought it off Steam at full price (The price was very pocket friendly for my currency even at full). And later I bought one for my friend at sale. Now I don't even look back as I stray further away from video games, URW became the only game I still play and it is the only game which I actually joined its community. I first joined because I wanted to try some mods, but after seeing the other users were pretty chill overall, I decided to join.

I don't really know why but URW is really a special game for me, the theme the message in the outro everything is just perfect. Thank you Sami and Erkka for this amazing game.

[LuchyMane]

I don't remember exactly when I heard of Unreal World specifically, I think I was looking at other roguelikes after playing a bunch of Dorf Fort and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead when I came across it. As soon as I read the description, not only was I super excited about the gameplay but I remembered reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. In it, the perspective character in the modern day, Randy I think, talks about either playing or programming a game which is exactly the same as Unreal World, and was clearly a reference to it. I was incredibly excited that it was a real game, installed it and fell in love immediately

[Melchizedek]

@LuchyMane

Gotta love a post that merges URW and Neal Stephenson. Nice taste in both lit and games. Haven't read Criptonomicon yet, though (took on Snow Crash to begin with).

I was browsing a roguelike curator when I found out about this game. I wanted to find a game that introduced me to a different experience, something that would enrich my worldview. And URW doesn't disappoint. Posts like yours, the devs logs, the in-game entries, all of these are living proof of it.
 

[LuchyMane]

@Melchizedek
Thanks for the compliment haha, I gotta say Neal Stephenson is a great author but his endings always feel a little off-although Cryptonomicon's wasn't bad. Snow Crash is an all time favourite of mine, especially with it's cheesy in retrospect view of the internet's possibilities. It's up there with Red Mars (which is written by Kim Stanley Robinson, my favourite author)

And I'm absolutely in agreement on URW, it's a game like no other which led me down a rabbit hole of researching the lives and worldviews of indigenous cultures. It's definitely improved my life in a small way, even though I haven't played it in ages.

[MilitanttiTalitintti]

I believe I discovered it when I was reading and browsing various sites about Finnish prehistory on the interwebs, sometime in 2020