Albion Online vs Dwarf Fortress
Albion Online
Albion Online is an absolutely magnificent sandbox style MMORPG that recently went into its summer alpha stages and despite not being fully completed and released yet, it’s an incredible game that puts complete control in the players’ hands and delivers a full-fledged experience that games are rarely able to provide.For instance, the game doesn’t restrict you by imposing a class on you right from the get-go. Instead, you get to develop your character and mold him as you wish. This freedom in character customization makes the game’s PvP quite interesting because you’ll never know which skill sets your opponent will have. Its combat system is also pretty impressive and feels to be a lot more skill-based rather than the common hack-and-slash.
Being a sandbox game, you can build anything you want – most likely a shelter though – using the resource you’ve painstakingly harvested from the game environment. You can even craft items and furniture to be placed within your home, and of course, add some defenses so nobody would be crazy enough to try breaking in your place.
Albion Online is, without a doubt, an amazing MMORPG that fans of games like Minecraft would enjoy. It may not be voxel-based, but many of the game aspects does bring the latter game to mind... a lot.
Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress is one of the most unique and massive fantasy game ever made using only ASCII characters and colors. The game is completely open world in the sense that you are given the freedom to play as an adventurer and set off alone or with other adventurers on an exciting journey above or below ground (or both) to seek glory, fame and riches, or to settle down and help develop your very own dwarven outpost where you can then build a fortress, establish a barony, and in general, order your dwarven subjects around. Aside from the obviously different "art style" used, the freedom of choice, and the amazing amount of details in its gameplay, the game is also unique in its world building. The virtual world created is not only randomly generated with distinct civilizations with detailed histories, hundred of points of interests like towns and caves, as well as a flourishing nature, which includes both flora and fauna.With so many amazing features packaged into a simple-looking game, it is no wonder why Dwarf Fortress is a game that has inspired a wide variety of other modern games, both indie and big triple-A ones, until today. Due to its size, you might feel daunted to dive into a game like this, but once you've learned the basics, you will find yourself fully immersed in this completely open world of symbols and colors.