Today I decided to boot up a game I haven’t played in a while: Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress is one of those beautiful indie games that kind of blows your mind. It’s a modern game — it’ll use whatever system resources you give it and ask for more, and it’s not because of bad programming — but it uses ascii art. That is to say, everything in the game is represented by text characters. (Well, that’s not entirely true; there are a few custom tiles — but the basic concept holds.) All that processing power goes to simulation.
Now, I’m not going to tell you that Dwarf Fortress is a fun game. I will tell you that it’s eleven thirty PM and I just took a break after starting at eleven . . . in the morning. I was a bit sad because all my dwarves died of thirst. This seems to have been due primarily to two factors: First, my cook baked all the alcohol into biscuits: and second, I didn’t explicitly tell my dwarves to drink from the three ponds on the fortress’s front lawn. I learned I had problems when they all threw tantrums and dropped dead. Ironically, I didn’t notice sooner because I was building an underground reservoir to get them through the winter . . .
But in situations like that, one must always remember the game’s mantra: “Losing is fun.” And in this game, it really is. Of course, I’ve been a fan of roguelikes for a while, and that may skew my perception — one feature of the roguelike genre is that when your character dies, it’s gone. No loading a saved game. Your little fifteenth-level venom mage gets a spot on the high score table, and that’s it.
Dwarf Fortress is, in many ways, a very advanced roguelike. Its adventure mode, in fact, is a roguelike. But to me, fortress mode is where it’s at. You take control of a group of dwarves and build your fortress from the ground down in a procedurally generated world. You dig out the floorplan, manage the resources, and find clever ways to solve problems (or die). In my opinion, it’s the best sandbox game I’ve ever played.
Unfortunately, it has an even steeper learning curve than most roguelikes. Expect to devote a while to learning the interface, and read up on getting started in the Dwarf Fortress wiki. You’ll probably lose your first fortress pretty fast. You’ll lose your other fortresses too, but it might not take as long.
If you want an idea of just how wacky a game of Dwarf Fortress can get, check out Boatmurdered. I understand elephants aren’t as homicidal as they used to be, and the carp aren’t as vicious, but I did lose a dwarf to a pike recently, so don’t think the game’s gone soft or anything.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go reclaim a fortress.
Current music: The Cranberries, Linger, via Pandora. I love the Cranberries, and Zombie is probably one of my 25 favorite songs of all time. (Ooh, Otherside. I love this one too.)