What is Dwarf Fortress?

In the world of independent game development, there are many great games that go largely unnoticed by the general public. By now we have all heard of the incredibly successful Minecraft, a game developed by Notch and his team at Mojang. It is less likely, however, that you have heard of Dwarf Fortress, a relatively unknown game with an incredibly passionate fanbase.

Dwarf Fortress (the full title of which is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood: Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress: Histories of X and Y) is part roguelike, part simulation, part strategy, and all fun. The player can command armies of dwarves, build up a successful fortress from nothing, take on the role of an adventurer, and slay hordes of goblins and night creatures.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of Dwarf Fortress is that in a world of polygons and realism, the game is presented entirely in ASCII. The average person looks at ggUdgg/ and sees a series of random keystrokes, but a Dwarf Fortress player sees something entirely different: a group of goblins surrounding a dog and his master, lone man whose sword has been wrenched from his grip and cast on the ground amidst a ferocious battle.

                                                      An example of your "typical" fortress

The second most surprising aspect of Dwarf Fortress is its complete lack of any forgiveness. There is no sliding scale of difficulty, there is no reloading a saved game when you die or your fortress crumbles. You are thrown into the middle of a fantastic world that you must navigate and decipher on your own. There is a reason that the game's motto is "Losing is fun!"

Dwarf Fortress, unlike most games, is not developed by a team of programmers and designers. Instead, it has been steadily built by one man, Tarn "Toady One" Adams, over the course of ten years. Despite this time commitment (Tarn has quit his job as a mathematics professor to work full time on the game, living solely on donations from fans) the game is far from complete. Currently, a large update is due to come out in the next few days or weeks, finally pushing the game to one-third complete, or version 00.33.00. Tarn estimates that the game won't be finished for another twenty years or so, and I plan on following its progress and enjoying the results for as long as it takes.

Dwarf Fortress can be downloaded for free on Tarn's website.

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.3