> Would it even be possible to make a truly Kafkaesque game?
Dwarf fortress.
1. Everything to do with the user experience, but if you want specific examples, minecarts, "uniforms", task priorities in the main ui without mods
2. How you actually get to the point where you play the game is Kafkaesque in and of itself (eg the whole starter pack thing)
3. The mind-boggling complexity of everything
4. How banal the game seems much of the time if things are going well
5. How utterly benign things can lead to utter degredation and destruction. (Case in point, I had a happy fortress, one of my guys went out fishing, got caught in the rain, started a murderous rampage that ended up with half the fortress killing each other. During the fight one of my female dwarves put her baby down somewhere, couldn't find it and even though she survived the fight, went into a spiral of despair from which she never recovered)
6. There is no such thing as success. All games end in failure
Now that I think about it, one Kafka environment which does indeed fit the Dwarf Fortress description really well would be the hotel in "Amerika", especially when Karl works as an elevator attendant there. It's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to happen to an elevator attendant in DF (maybe except for the lack of disastrous magma leakage or things like that).
Dwarf fortress.
1. Everything to do with the user experience, but if you want specific examples, minecarts, "uniforms", task priorities in the main ui without mods
2. How you actually get to the point where you play the game is Kafkaesque in and of itself (eg the whole starter pack thing)
3. The mind-boggling complexity of everything
4. How banal the game seems much of the time if things are going well
5. How utterly benign things can lead to utter degredation and destruction. (Case in point, I had a happy fortress, one of my guys went out fishing, got caught in the rain, started a murderous rampage that ended up with half the fortress killing each other. During the fight one of my female dwarves put her baby down somewhere, couldn't find it and even though she survived the fight, went into a spiral of despair from which she never recovered)
6. There is no such thing as success. All games end in failure