https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/
It does, however, also have the fanciest abstract ASCII graphics I've ever seen.
(the other reason is that it's just a damn good game)
Adding graphics to DF means more new players give it a try, but most of them are going to bounce off of the wildly inconsistent menus. It's an acquisition funnel thing; the total players will be incoming players times the percent that are okay with the graphics times the percent that are okay with the menus. My assertion is just that in DF's case the menus have room for a bigger lift, because they're really that bad.
Maybe because they're not used to ASCII look? What are the stats for old players? The tiles version has laughably low information density, I can't imagine playing it for any extended period of time.
Well, the stats for old players are subject to survivor bias.
> The tiles version has laughably low information density, I can't imagine playing it for any extended period of time.
I cannot speak for DF specifically, because perhaps the tiles do indeed have bad distinguishability, but from purely an HCI point of view images can contain a lot more visual information than a single character glyph + a color can, so that does not hold up generally.
What may apply to you is that you have already learned to "read" the ASCII mode, and therefore have to spend less conscious effort to make sense of it than of the tiles version, and that it therefore is indeed easier for you to play in.
In any tiled implementation of roguelike, Tiles are way larger than equivalent characters, so clearly in practice they don't.
Humans are very good at recognizing different letters. Images that differ by a few pixels, not so much. At the resolution at which the letters are displayed it's impossible to have an equivalent image that is recognizable in any way.
The fact is that in ascii mode I can see a large chunk of the level, including the entirety of my character's field of view. In tiles version, my screen is not large enough. I have to scroll just to see what my character is currently seeing. How is this better, or playable at all?
I'd say I played a lot of Pixel Dungeon on my phone compared to this.
Not everyone who grew up with DOS games has fond memories. I'm not one to chase the latest 3d graphics, but sometimes new things can be better for some people.
I myself still play both DCSS and DF in ASCII mode, but it seem reasonable to presume that the reason that old hands like us are fine with the ASCII look is because everyone who wasn't fine with it has self-selected themselves out of the sample. If their goal with the DF Steam release is to bring in new players (and compete with the likes of e.g. Rimworld, whose players are accustomed to graphics), then I see this as a sound decision.
(And of course, seconded that DF's nonsensical command UI is going to continue to stymie their efforts here.)