So a co-worker mentioned this (currently) freeware game I might enjoy. It's called Dwarf Fortress and it's quite fun and unique. The basic idea is your expedition of seven dwarves goes out into the world to establish a new dwarf colony (fortress). So you create a random world, pick a site that looks good to settle, dig into the side of a mountain and start building your new dwarf home.

The game is essentially an extremely complex economic system that you struggle to establish while you fight off challenges that come to attack you. The challenges become increasingly difficult as you hoard an increasing amount of wealth (a very dwarf-like thing to do). As your dwarves dig further and deeper into the earth you're increasingly likely to encounter other kinds of "fun."

The game has a brutally steep learning curve. The point of the game is to loose but have fun doing it. In that process you'll learn more about the game, and do something different and interesting next time.

The game seems to take inspiration from several other games. The economic system seems to be inspired by "The Settlers." The underground digging systems seems to be inspired by "Dungeon Keeper." The fundamental gameplay feel and end goal seems to be inspired by "Nethack." The significant departure from these possible sources of inspiration is that the complexity has been increased by something like a factor of ten or more.

You might like Dwarf Fortress if you enjoy those games I mentioned as possible sources of inspiration. If impressive graphics are your thing I'd recommend you stick with something else. If you can't stand loosing then don't play Dwarf Fortress, you cannot beat / win at Dwarf Fortress in the sense of "You win! Here's a cinematic followed by credits." I suppose if you were really good at the game you could fill the entire map with your civilization... anyway if you've actually read this far and are still interested just Google "dwarf fortress mayday" for a graphically more impressive version of the game than the default distribution. It's all the same gameplay but with a more intuitive to view tileset than the default one. If you actually start getting into it check out Dwarf Therapist. It's a third party program to help you manage your dwarves employment.