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Bay 12 GamesCibbuano says:
I started playing Dwarf Fortress about 3 months ago, and I've never had so much fun losing. It's a freeware strategy/fortress-building game, where you try and make a successful fortress. Graphics are rogue-like and the control scheme is hard to learn. But the complexity is awe-inspiring. I've had dwarves go on a murderous spree because they were upset that their dog died, I've lost to stampeding herds of elephants, I've flooded my fortress by accident. And there's more - so much more!
desertdwellerandy says:
I've described this to a fellow gamer as the ultimate in substance over style. Graphics are strictly ascii based, and the learning curve is a bit steep. But carving your fortress out of the mountain (and coordinating feeding your dwarves, providing them with rooms, fighting off the occasional goblin or toad demon raid) is surprisingly enthralling. The complexity builds as the game progresses as well, from your first anvil being brought in, to starting a police force and soldiers, to the first nobles coming in and having an economy start (with all of your dwarves starting to get paid, and renting their rooms). Still under development, but very playable, and I think worth a look.
Getting Over the Learning Curve
desertdwellerandy adds:
Oh, forgot to include one thing in my initial e-mail. The wiki (http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Main_Page) is very helpful in surmounting the learning curve.
This is like an orgasm
Quoting the wiki:
Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII game which includes both a roguelike adventure mode and a city management mode similar to Dungeon Keeper. It has a very steep learning curve, partly due to its ASCII graphics, but it is one of the most complex games ever released, and is free. Before you play either mode, though, you must generate a world to play in, which persists until you create a new one. World generation can be time consuming, even on modern computers, but be patient. It's worth it.
Dwarf Fortress has three major game modes with a fourth non-game mode:
* Dwarf Fortress: In this mode you manage a number of dwarves, creating a fortress out of the mountain.
* Reclaim fortress: Once you have created and abandoned a fortress, you can take a band of military dwarves to reclaim it from the monsters that will now inhabit it.
* Adventure: In this mode you explore the world in a fashion similar to Rogue or Nethack. During the Adventure mode you can uncover details about your world's legends.
* Legends: In this mode you can read more about the legends of your world, provided you've discovered more about them through adventuring.
An important part of Dwarven Fortress is that it creates (and you play) in a persistent world, though the world is not constantly "on", only when you play the game. However, when you die in either the adventure or fortress modes, your next game will be in the same world only a few days later. You can visit your old fortress, or get revenge on the monster that killed your adventurer. If your fortress or your adventurer had done anything of particular note, there's a chance that the game will generate a legend for them, which you can read about in the Legends section, provided you've discovered enough information about the legend.
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If ASCII graphics make you cry, there are many tilesets available.
A new version was released on October 29, 2007
The list of changes is incredible but the most awaited for is probably the Z-axis - that's right, it's now in 3D.
* There are probably as many different endings in Dwarf Fortress as there are in Go.