‘The Caravan finally arrives at its destination. A river meanders down from slate grey hills and passes through a gorge here, steep slopes rising to the sides. The surface of the river twinkles in the spring sun, dark shapes move sluggishly underneath the dappled surface. Large vegetation is uncommon here, with few trees breaking the monotony of the rolling golden grasses.
A herd of pig-like animals can be seen to the west. The heat distorting their shapes slightly, making them hard to make out.
I think to myself; Here will do.’

If you are a fan of rpg games, or indie games in general you have probably heard of Dwarf Fortress, designed by Tarn (ToadyOne on the forums) and his brother Zach Adams. For those of you who have not heard of this popular indie game however here is an introduction:

The Game-play:

In Dwarf Fortress you take command of 7 starting dwarfs, on a piece of land in a procedurally generated world. The aim of the game - survival of the fortress you are about to begin.
These Dwarfs will do your bidding in a vague sort of way, you are the architect of this fortress if you will; You plan the fort and the dwarfs go about following your orders as closely as they can, taking time to eat sleep and socialise, but at this point in the game pretty much doing your bidding.
As you begin to shape your fortress, your population will grow, migrants and traders will arrive, all feeding your fortress as it slowly grows into a giant metropolis of industry and civilization.

As the game progresses and the players fortress becomes more famous, army’s of your foes appear (maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to attack that elven caravan) and test your defenses, hulking mega-beasts such as dragons making the occasional appearance,

The free-form nature of the game is really shown in the way different players fortresses can look completely different, and also the construct their traps to protect their fortress. For example, in one fortress I had a grand entrance chamber of Moria proportions that would fill with magma at the flick of a lever, turning any would be attackers into molten goo. As the game includes basic fluid physics (semi-realistic water/magma movements, like pressure etc) really interesting traps can be created by using environmental factors to the players advantage.

Adventure mode, in DF is a roguelike game where you take a single adventurer around the world that has been generated, allowing you to visit towns/get quests etc. It is especially satisfying to visit a fortress you have previously abandoned as you can see what has happened to your previous dwarfs and their home. (What happened to all those caged golems for example)

The Stories:

This personally is the reason I play DF, because as you get more and more absorbed into your fortress, you will begin to recognise individual dwarfs and the stories surrounding them.

For example I had a legendary miner, one of my first to arrive to the fortress. He had mined out most of the citadel singlehandedly, and was incredibly quick at blending rock walls to a pulp. However, he was deep in the bowls of one of his masterpiece cave networks when he removed one wrong support, bringing the ceiling above him crashing down. Severely wounded, he was cared for by his friends for several years, all the time getting more and more miserable. Eventually dragging himself to the top of a mountain to commit suicide, only to find he didn’t have it in him.

These stories really make DF’s world come alive, as you feel a kind of attachment to your dwarfs that draws you into the game world much more effectively than most hand written stories.

The Graphics:

Dwarf Fortress uses ASCII to display its graphics. The following screenshot is the same area as described at the start of this article. After a while the way you look at the world is mostly in you imagination, only using the ASCII graphics for basic placeholders of where people are, not what they are doing. Because of this I actually prefer the ASCII Dwarf Fortress more than the thought of a fully 3d version at whatever point it may happen in the future. ASCII is timeless.

The graphics in DF can be improved by the use of tilesets, which replace the ASCII characters with small 16×16 images, allowing players to identify creatures and items easier.

The future:

At the time of writing this Dwarf Fortress is at v0.27.176.38c and you only need to look at the dev page to see that ToadyOne intends to do a lot more to the game before it is anywhere near finished.

Other things to note:

Dwarf Fortress is a hard game to get started playing. I rec-commend bookmarking the dedicated DF wiki and referring to it almost constantly during your first hour or two of play.

The wiki is also very useful as the game does not include tutorials. Because of this players also often find it hard to get started. here is a good tutorial for getting started in dwarf mode.

I absolutely rec-commend playing this game, and try to get through a tutorial. You will be missing out on such a game if you avoid this, because of the ASCII graphics and steep learning curve.

Get the game here.

Thanks Toady for creating such an awesome game!

- Bill

(Started Writing this at 4:25 AM after getting home from work, it is now 7. eek!)