I can’t stop thinking about Dwarves!

So there’s this game...

That’s unfair, calling it simply a ‘game’ is selling it short. There’s this...simulation...a world, if you will. It exists just beneath our own, on our very familiar internet, but on a wavelength undetectable by most humans. But exist it does, and it contains...Dwarves.

Okay, it’s called Dwarf Fortress and it is AWESOME.

This is, literally, the most robust game I have ever played. And I have played a lot of games. Grand Theft Auto, the Paragon of complexity and depth houses maybe a quarter of the gameplay in Dwarf Fortress. It is more than a game, it’s a world, a simulation, a fully-realized universe on which countless variations are available. And it’s FREE!

I discovered this game when it was mentioned offhand by Penny Arcade a while ago, and it languished in the back of my mind until I decided to give it a try last week. Since then, it’s been pretty much the only way I spend my off-time. There’s just so much to do!

So what is it, really? Okay, fine, if I have to shoehorn it into a genre, it’s a lot like Sim City. You mange a group of dwarves as they burrow down, mine out their own town, and then establish a fully-realized economy. But there’s just so much to do! First you carve out your cave, then you start farming, brewing alcohol, and building simple gear in workshops. Then you can start to fortify your town, trade with traders, build traps, and forge metal. After that, you can shape gems, create glass, build towers and any number of complex structures, and make drawbridges and other crazy mechanisms. Then the enemies start to show up, so you recruit and train up your army, arm them with equipment you forge in your forges, and attempt to break the siege. And that’s just the eagle’s eye view. Do you want to know how deep every single component of this game is? This is from the blog of the developer:

Continuing along with poison. I've got venoms injecting again and all of the active syndrome information is being set up properly inside the creatures. Now it just needs to hit the creature with all of the individual effects according to schedule/atts/size/etc., as set by the raws.

Yep, not only is it still under development, but he evidently thought that the syndrome information for various poisons wasn’t being accurately modeled by the game. WHAT?!?

And yes, I said ‘he’. Most of the programming work has been done by one or two guys. That’s it. This is a labor of love, baby. It’s been in development for years, and continues to update all the time. This game is...AMAZING.

If you want to try it out, and I certainly suggest you do, you should probably start here. Just downloading the game won’t help, you really need a VERY detailed walkthrough to help you navigate not only the game logic, but understand what needs to be done, why, where, and how. It’s complex.

So...I just got an influx of 13 new immigrants, which means I have enough people to start considering training up an army and some war dogs. And I’m about to try mining out some magma so that I can use magma to forge instead of charcoal. I may have to buy a new anvil, but I think the human traders will be coming around next season and since my Craftsdwarf has gotten pretty good at making crafts to sell, I should easily have enough money to I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH!

-N