UnReal World

[eMTe]

Complex and realistic roguelike set in late Iron Age Finland. Game was shareware until 2013. The project started in 1992, but is successfully developed ever since. There are also Mac and Linux ports.

http://unrealworld.fi/

[hello_kitty]

Thx for sharing. I remember spending hours playing this game

[eMTe]

I'm pretty sure developers intended players to spend weeks or months with their child.

One thing I like about the game is that it is outdoor-oriented. So far, I haven't discovered any "dungeons", traditionally understood. This greatly adds to the realism. The whole dungeon-crawling scheme in rpg games has become really boring over years, what's more, in my opinion it was pursued because it provided necessary limitations for less skilled developers. After all, it's easier to set action for a game in a confined space - less terrain to explore, less paths to follow, less monsters, less events, less possible bugs etc. In an open world, full of forests, grasslands, rivers, hills, animals, weather factors difficulties for both developers and players increase drastically. But they also provide fun.

Betrayal at Krondor for example isn't considered one of the best rpgs for no reason: most interesting events in the game - contrary to majority of old rpgs - happen outdoors.