Adventure mode was one of my favourite things about Dwarf Fortress, mainly because it made the infamously complex management game more approachable by letting you play it like a more traditional roguelike. I'm excited, therefore, that Adventure mode is coming soon to the Steam version of the game, and excited even more so that it's aiming to make it even more accessible.
A new update on development which outlines exactly how the new premium version of Adventure mode differs from the original, including its plan for tutorials to guide new players.
]]>Dwarf Fortress is best known as a colony sim, but the wonderfully detailed fantasy world's it generates can be played in different ways. Adventure mode is a procedurally generated RPG campaign in which you control just a single character, and it's now on its way to Kitfox's DF-with-graphics Steam release in April 2024.
]]>Kitfox and Bay12 have struck the earth, manufactured a thousand stone blocks, and laid out a roadmap for the Dwarf Fortress Steam edition's Adventure Mode, together with some forthcoming updates for the existing fortress management mode. Adventure Mode, in case you've been living under a rock (which I guess you probably have, if you've been playing Dwarf Fortress), is the open world roguelike RPG element of the game, which lets you roam the enormous realm you've generated and even tour/loot/disturb the unquiet spirits of your own, abandoned fortress. Alas, there's no word on a release date for the Steam edition's Adventure Mode beyond "not this year".
]]>There are few success stories more inspiring than that of Tarn and Zach Adams. After twenty years of development Dwarf Fortress finally made the jump to Steam in December 2021, complete with exciting new features such as "graphics" and "mouse support". Although the game was already critically lauded, its availability on Steam made it a financial success, with thousands of long-term fans thrilled to provide the brothers with a long-overdue payday.
Following their panel on the highs and lows of procedural generation, the pair had a chat with Rachel about the game's recent Steam release, upcoming features, their favourite player stories and - most importantly - Zach's dog.
]]>Hot (weeks) off the back of Sons Of The Forest and the Resident Evil 4 remake coming out, we're celebrating your bestest best, most favourite survival games this month. Your votes have been counted and tallied, and your accompanying words of praise and affection matched accordingly. But which game has survived to make it to the top of the pile? Come and find out as we count down your 25 favourite survival games of all time.
]]>Dwarf Fortress has long had babies, but if you're using the recent Steam release and its sprite art, they look like adults. That's going to change soon in what Kitfox call their "cutest update ever", which will add baby sprites for every creature in-game, from aarvarks to dwarves to troglodytes.
]]>If you're still intimidated by base building in Dwarf Fortress's Steam release, then there's good news. Patch 50.06, released today, has added Arena Mode into the Steam version. Arena is a sandbox mode where you can spawn any of Dwarf Fortress's various creatures, kit them out with gear, set special conditions, and then watch them battle it out. It is great.
]]>Dwarf Fortress selling half a million copies on Steam in just a few weeks already indicated that its creators, the Adams brothers, were due a windfall. Now the latest earnings report from Bay 12 Games is here to put an exact dollar figure on that success. Here's a tease: revenue in January was up over 462x since December.
]]>In games it's often a delight to be proven wrong. Such as, for example, my longstanding belief that Dwarf Fortress would never make the biggest and most important change it possibly could, and fit itself with an interface fit for purpose.
Bay 12 Games have, of course, gone further than that, and released it for general sale on the biggest shop in the business after sixteen years as freeware. There's even a charming new graphics overhaul to replace the famous ASCII symbols which, depending on who you ask, might not have technically counted as "graphics" at all.
I'm not here to discuss the relative merits of this shiny new version and the "classic" version. Both will be updated in future, the latter still free, and neither expected to reach a full 1.0 release inside 20 years. All this chips around the edges of what I've been pondering, which is this: What exactly is Dwarf Fortress's place within our culture now, after a decade replete with games that looked to it for ideas?
]]>Dwarf Fortress released on Steam on December 6th and by the end of the month it had sold half a million copies. That's according to the monthly Bay 12 Games report, in which its developers traditionally share their revenue figures from player donations. Now they have Steam sales figures to share.
]]>Legendarily complicated (and just generally legendary) colony sim Dwarf Fortress launched on Steam a few weeks ago, bringing sprite graphics, more players and millions of dollars for developers Bay 12 games. Brothers Tarn and Zach Adams have spent the past 16 years relying on donations, so actually selling their game has now allowed to expand their team and hire someone from their community to help with the programming. They say "Putnam" will be the first non-Adam to ever see the code behind the curtain. Cue the Indiana Jones face-melting gif.
An update yesterday also added Steam trading cards, as well as giving you the option to flick between classic and premium graphics.
]]>How the heck do you review Dwarf Fortress? Much like the procedurally generated world spat out at the start of every game, there’s already a huge pile of established lore and history out there from the 16 years it’s been around. It’s like being asked to review Lord of the Rings. It's a vast undertaking, and there aren't any friendly eagles on hand to cut through its dense mythos. Prior to releasing on Steam, I had put a few dozen hours into what is now known as Dwarf Fortress Classic (which is still available for free from Bay 12's website), split over several different periods of time. Thing is, I never really got very far. I’d find a good tutorial, lose a few fortresses to horrible mistakes and then really get established. But then I’d be distracted by the realities of everyday life and by the time I got back to it, I’d forgotten everything and all my resources were hopelessly out of date because of all the wonderful, lovingly detailed updates. Then the cycle would start again.
The good news is that this new version of Dwarf Fortress released on Steam does an admirable job of making the game considerably more approachable. I was apprehensive at first, but then something clicked and I lost the first of what would be many afternoons over the past fortnight, safe in the knowledge that when I eventually stepped away from this goliath, I’d be able to come back without feeling overwhelmed and have to start all over again. It’s still good ol’ Dwarf Fortress, but this is the most accessible the game has ever been while still being deep, demanding and a legend worthy of being inscribed on a mudstone goblet.
]]>Grab your pickaxe and secure your book of procedurally-generated poetry, because Dwarf Fortress is out on Steam right, flipping, now. Bay 12 Games's hugely ambitious colony sim, which is notionally a game about building a fortress for small, bearded humanoids, but is really an engine for generating elaborate fantasy histories and player-driven stories within them, has been in active development since 2003, with an initial launch in 2006. Since then, it has been continually developed by brothers Tarn and Zach Adams, who have added a truly wild amount of stuff over the last two decades. It's also famously as impenetrable as its title suggests, mainly due to its ASCII visuals and unwieldy, keyboard-exclusive control scheme.
]]>Dwarf Fortress is coming to Steam on December 6th, which on its own is fantastic news. Even better news: it will have Steam Workshop support from day one.
]]>The reworked version of fantasy world sim Dwarf Fortress finally arrives on Steam on December 6th, devs Bay 12 and publisher Kitfox Games have announced. The game’s also coming to Itch.io too. It will introduce pixel art graphics, tutorials, and new music and sound effects into the previously ASCII-only world of dwarven delving. You can watch the release date trailer below to see just how different this version actually is.
]]>Fantasy construction sim Dwarf Fortress is, by the admission of its designers, difficult to learn and even harder to master. That’s why the game’s Steam version will have its own tutorial. Co-creator Zach Adams has roped in a novice playtester to try the tutorial out, in the form of his wife Annie. Annie bounced off the original, not-so-visually-appealing version of Dwarf Fortress. Yet, says Adams, the tutorial seems to be working to help Annie ease into the game at last.
]]>As we've written about before, Dwarf Fortress is getting a Steam release with an official tileset, a new UI, and mouse controls. The latest video from Kitfox Games, who are handling the polished release, features original DF co-creator Zach Adams talking through new menus and artwork... while taking his fort's bins out.
]]>Games are increasingly expensive, but there are still plenty of great experiences to be had without paying a single penny for them, just like the ones you'll find below in our list of the best free PC games you can play right now. From newer releases to old-timey classics, our unordered list is packed with the best free PC games available.
]]>"You will not believe what the hell just happened in Dwarf Fortress!" my pal will tell me, proceeding to share a screenshot which, to me, is indistinguishable from e.g.:
██,.,,;lz,zl;L:@gjse,.gm.,,.m.zm,.m,x.zm.amL:m3jp5jkmToiHy* ████()ht23htuhqIJg.......UG.uos\kjk:███/,,p,c.xz/,c./z,c;\/. ██'z,c./xz,c./zx,cpaswf/w.qfw.,/f,aa███,g.ew/t,3wq./t,,2..@| █3/.6t,.esg,f.e/sg,./ewt,./w4t4..,1t6,m42ijpnz\kuiys8fun/.|█ █|?|..../\/\..|@@@%%$|"(((|..FHzFhLlk@A}||||....*|JGH,.3████ zZ./@Z@@'Z'@@LSXCl;a,sl;FLZL;@'A:@,;'F":%T@:H^OQHOh8^£$.\/.█"That's wild!" I will reply, not wanting to hurt their feelings. But how delightful, then, to watch the latest video from the upcoming premium edition, where co-creator Zach Adams demonstrates defending against a goblin attack and you can actually see it's a goblin attack.
]]>I have failed at creating a Dwarf Fortress many, many times. No tileset has managed to help me, no mod finally made it work. I just can’t get over the lack of a mouse-driven interface. And I won’t have to in the future. The latest development update for the Steam release of the detailed fantasy sim shows menus and mouse control in pefect harmony. Creator Tarn Adams casually flicks through screens without a wiki open on his other monitor, and finds things without phoning the Dwarf Fortress helpline and asking himself for help.
]]>If you've not played Dwarf Fortress, the staggeringly detailed fantasy world simulator, you can't fully comprehend what a nightmare it is to play. It's not the ASCII gaphics that bamboozle you, it's the menus, which hide information and common actions across umpteen different enormous menus, each of which must be accessed with a different button press.
Look at the screenshot above, then. You might think it looks like the UI from an early 2000s Paradox game that's yet to have an art pass. But to me, it looks like heaven.
]]>The last couple of years have been pretty good for management games, but only the select few have made the cut for our list of best management games you can play right now. If you're looking for something to sink into over the holidays, check out our picks below.
]]>Whether you like wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>In case you weren't aware, I've started a brand new Dwarf Fortress diary series, which I kicked off with a fortress-founding video featuring Tarn Adams, the game's lovable dad. This series concerns the fortress of Inkrose: a settlement founded by seven religious fanatics, intent on living by a set of incredibly impractical commandments which I sourced from the capricious dwellers of the Kitfox Dwarf Fortress Discord server. At the end of our first episode, we left our dwarves living in a hovel with no doors, a pitiful pile of weeds to feed themselves with, and seven boisterous, holy beak dogs circling them with ever-more-menacing playfulness.
Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that things get... quite interesting from here. But before we move on to that, I want to do something I always regretted not doing with the Basement of Curiosity, which is provide you with a proper profile for each and every founding dwarf. Come on in, there's pictures and everything.
]]>Once upon a time, seven dwarves set out into the jungle with the simple dream of constructing an underground chimp jail. You can't write sentences like that about most games. But in the context of Dwarf Fortress, the legendary world simulator under permanent construction by programmer Tarn Adams and his brother Zach, it is a perfectly reasonable statement.
Dwarf Fortress is my favourite game. And since it's essentially a machine for generating weird fantasy stories, it's even more fun to narrate than it is to actually play. Hence my previous diary series - The Basement Of Curiosity - which concerned the aforementioned chimp zoo. After a lengthy 25-episode run, the Basement finally came to an end on camera, at this year's EGX Digital event. And while I won't spoil its conclusion, I strongly recommend you watch it for yourself, right here. The ending will... surprise you.
]]>Step aside Basement Of Curiosity, The Tarn Commandments demand it. Last week's PAX Online X EGX Digital event brought us many a wonderful livestream, including a load of Dwarf Fortress content from our resident dwarf expert, Nate Crowley.
Sadly, the sun has set on his long-running series The Basement Of Curiosity - a weekly diary chronicling his attempts to build an illegal, underground zoo in the management sim. But from the ashes of the basement comes an all new series, The Tarn Commandments, handed down by none-other than Dwarf Fortress dev Tarn Adams himself.
]]>Feeling peckish, halflings? Bay 12 Games are still stirring away at Dwarf Fortress' new and improved Steam version, but they've popped out of the kitchen a mo to give us a taste of the sprawling mountainfolk sim's spruced up new interface - turning a simple stone room into a temple to meal deal sandwiches with a streamlined new painting tool.
]]>From our first years we know what it means to build. As babies we're given clacky wooden blocks and colourful Duplo bricks. We are architects long before we are capable eaters of raw carrot. If you're anything like the staff of RPS, you've not outgrown the habit of child-like town planning. Yes, building games often take a managerial approach (at least many on this list do), but a sense of play is always present. It's there when you draw out a road in Cities Skylines, just to watch it populate with toy-like traffic. When you brick up another hole in your mighty Stronghold to fend off enemy swordsmen. When you painstakingly dig a trench for water to flow in Timberborn, just like you did all those years ago on the beach, in an effort to stop the tide washing away your sandcastles. You'll find all these games and more on our list. So here you go: the best building games on PC.
]]>The halls of the mountain king never looked quite so clean. As part of the Guerrilla Collective's big not-E3 Showcase, Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams ran us through the early stages Dwarf Fortress' prettied-up new paid edition - casually commentating over the genesis of an entire fantasy world before closing on a merry band of dwarves striking their first picks against a colourful new mountain home.
]]>As part of its eventual launch on Steam, daunting simulation Dwarf Fortress has been planning a big visual overhaul. "Now with graphics!" Bay 12 proclaim on the store page. In a new little update, they're giving us a look at what the generated world maps will look like with these non-ASCII pixels—though, yes, you'll still be able to use the symbols if you prefer. The work-in-progress map is still pretty cluttered as Dwarf Fortress maps tend to be, but dang is it easier to look at.
]]>We've no idea when the paid version of giant world sim Dwarf Fortress will finally be available, but in the meantime Bay 12 are showing off what the officially overhauled textures will look like. I imagine you've seen its original ASCII maps before. They're black screens with bright green, yellow, and cyan all over that hurt to look at. The new textures are much easier on the eyes, though I'm sure purists will staunchly stick to the original view.
]]>Unless you're in one of those international versions of Big Brother that are still going on, you've probably noticed that we're in the midst of a pandemic of something called the Covid-19 virus. I can tell it's serious because my dad's American girlfriend isn't allowed to visit him, which means he's bored and phoning me in the middle of the day. Haha, I joke. But he is 70, and has a weak heart, plus he's immunocompromised on account of catching Lyme disease from a tick once (which is exactly the sort of ridiculous thing that only happens to country dads).
If you're anything like us, you're now at home, staring at the walls of your living room because of this social distancing thing. But it's not just you. In fact, all of RPS is now working from home for the foreseeable future, too. So in the spirit of camaraderie, I've pooled some suggestions for video games to play while we're self-quarantining. We've got some multiplayer ones, some board-gamey ones, and, of course, a healthy dollop of free ones.
]]>The at times inscrutable and oft eye-straining simulation game Dwarf Fortress has a new update today. It has the beginnings of a villainy system where evil acts like assassinations, coups, and embezzlement can happen during world generation. There are also pets for your dwarves which I'd like to suggest is the most important bit.
]]>Old Nate's Basement of Curiosity might be temporarily closed for renovation, but life and death never stop in Dwarf Fortress. The eternal architects of halfling misery have decided that, despite the rampant bloodbaths, disease, revolt and starvation, there simply weren't enough shady dealings going on down the mines. It's crime time, baby - "villainous networks and investigations" are heading to the eternally obtuse management sim
]]>Dwarf Fortress might be the most interesting game ever made. It might even be the best. But it’s certainly not the most accessible. It looks weird, its control scheme appears to be lifted from some sort of alien church organ, and a good proportion of its features are in fact collisions between the many, many bugs that have sprung up in its thirteen-year development history. There’s a more user-friendly version of the game coming to Steam at some point, but with its release date listed as “time is subjective”, that might not be imminent.
But even if you’re not keen to jump into the game as it stands, don’t worry. The secret of Dwarf Fortress is that it’s actually a weird story generator disguised as a management game, so games are just as fun to read about, as they are to play. And luckily for you, I’ve been chronicling one such game since the start of the year. It’s an epic tale of obsession, hubris and eagle intestines, and given that it’s just finished its first 23-episode season (so I can go and meet the game’s creator on stage at PAX West), now’s the perfect time to read the story so far. You’ll find every chapter linked below.
]]>Surprise! This is the end of the first season of the Basement of Curiosity - but it’s not the end of the story. The series is taking a break… but only because Nate needs to get ready to go and chat with Tarn Adams, the creator of Dwarf Fortress, on Sunday 1st September. Read on to find out more...
--
On the last day of the seventh year of Lorbam’s fort, the dwarves see sunlight for the last time. The last stairs up to the jungle are kicked down, and stone slabs hammered over the holes left behind. The final team of workers scuttles down into a nondescript tunnel beneath the trees, and it is walled up from the inside. At last, the fort is cut off from the world.
]]>The summer of 1991 was all about ants. I was seven years old, and I spent the entire school holiday camped in the garden, gently catching winged queens and housing them in shitty coke bottle formicariums. There I would watch them lay eggs and create workers, who would dig tunnels, search about the place, and scurry in lines with grains of food in their jaws. I was captivated by my bottled nests, by their self-organising complexity, and although I had no idea at the time, I think that those ants might have been my first defining games experience.
]]>Last time on the BoC: With the fort due to be sealed up from the outside world by Dwarven Christmas, the dwarves spent the autumn getting their belongings underground. A ruinous tavern brawl seemed to be a bad omen for the cabin fever to come, until the increasingly autocratic Lorbam made an example of the perpetrator. Despite being the head of one of the most illustrious families in the basement, punch-happy Ushrir was locked in a cell with a beak dog, to demonstrate just what happens to those who disrupt the Leader’s vision.
]]>Last time on the BoC: Fort founder Lorbam has lost her mind, and ordered the whole fortress - once a thriving tourist destination - sealed off from the surface so that she can breed her beasts in the safety of the Great Beneath. During preparations for the move underground, the fort was very nearly breached by a Werepanda: only the bolts of a sharp-eyed hunter - and the harrowing resilience of a war tiger - saved the day.
]]>Last time on the BoC: Having finally achieved her dream of a breeding pair of chimps, at the cost of making a trade deal with the elves go very, very bad, fort founder Lorbam has become… strange. Increasingly distrustful of the outside world, she has decreed that the whole settlement be moved underground, and at midwinter, the overworld gates of the Basement will be shut altogether. Crikey.
]]>Last time on the BoC: Due to a prolonged water shortage during a goblin siege, the dwarves finally breached the underground to slake their thirst. Despite attacks by giant bats and a mishap with a captured goblin swordsman, great treasures were unearthed below - basement founder Lorbam retrieved a feather from Tol, the great winged worm, as well as using herself as bait to catch a mighty jabberer alive.
]]>If you've been following our Nate's attempts to build a Dwarf Fortress zoo in the Basement of Curiosity, you might think it couldn't get much worse between the paved-over Bird Hole and the monstrous bristleworm. Oh it can. Two words: petting zoo. A future update will add the ability for folks to pet animals, y'see.
"Oh god," Basement of Curiosity head keeper Nate Crowley responded.
]]>Last time on the BoC: After a wild summer in which the fortress was revamped, a ghost wrestler arrived, and the Bird Hole was finally bricked over, autumn arrived with its traditional goblin siege. This one was heavier than most: despite an attack from within the enemy ranks by a shapeshifting Werepanda, the blockade remained all season, leaving the fort without a supply of water - and its founder slowly dying of thirst...
]]>Last Time on the BoC: With the exception of a squad of sharpshooters hurling themselves off a roof to punch an invading army, and a vast two-headed giant muscling its way into the fort (only to get thoroughly Idded), the Basement entered a period of shocking prosperity...
]]>Last Time on the BoC: The fort’s period of civil disorder came to a bloody conclusion, and a new wave of immigrants bolstered efforts to begin constructing a suite of new living quarters deep underground. Siege defences were also bolstered, with the construction of a new sniper tower.
]]>Last Time on the BoC: The dwarves partied through a siege. The tantruming Udil claimed her first life, before starting an apocalyptic pub fight. The underground was revealed, in all its dank glory.
]]>Last time on the BoC: The dwarves began digging out some grand new accommodation, and the chef Ushat built a legendary chair called the Hot Thrower, featuring a cool picture of a leopard. The tantrums of the furnacehand Udil grew more intense - and so did conditions in the Basement’s zoo, thanks to the chthonic, squawking sorrow of the Bird Hole.
]]>Last time on the BoC: The Basement’s zoo got some major upgrades, and the fort rode out a goblin siege through the time honoured tactic of hiding. A furnace worker called Udil snapped under the pressure, and some migrants chose exactly the wrong moment to try moving in.
]]>For small developers seeking a breakout hit in the increasingly hard to define simulation/management genre, one of the perennial silver bullet concepts is “Dwarf Fortress, but it looks nice, and people aren’t scared to play it”. Of everything on the market so far, it’s probably Rimworld that comes closest to this goal, but it had the crucial flaw of not including any dwarves.
As such, the race is still on to produce a pretty, user-friendly dwarf-’em-up, and I’m emailed probably once a week by a developer with one in the works. For the most part, I’m skeptical - after all, I love the original DF like a cowboy loves his horse - but this week, I received some images that genuinely turned my head.
]]>Last Time on the BoC: After a catastrophic goblin attack slaughtered the entire military (except Id), as well as their bloodthirsty mayor/captain, the Basement began a frantic programme of fortifications. Former mayor Urist, transformed by grief, was re-elected, and pledged to put aside her differences with Lorbam the Founder in order to make the Basement Of Curiosity the finest zoo in the land.
]]>Last time on the BoC: The War Mayor Dashmob’s bombastic drive to militarise the fortress met a grisly end, as a massive mounted goblin army came sweeping out of the jungle. The War Mayor and his entire army died, slaughtered to the last in holding the goblins off. Everyone, that is, except the seemingly indestructible Id. Now, Id and the Basement’s other survivors must pick up the pieces, and find a new way to survive.
]]>Last time on the BoC: After an Autumn spent beefing up the fort’s military, the new War Mayor Dashmob was spoiling for a fight, when a forest titan marauded into the valley. And while the Mayor and his soldiers made short work of the beast, it turned out it the Titan was only the palate-cleansing prelude to a massive goblin invasion…
]]>Last time on the BoC: Following near-disaster at the gristly green hands of a goblin raiding party, the War Mayor Dashmob usurped the throne of mayor Urist, and began a campaign to modernise and expand the fort’s small but spirited military. A tomb complex was built, a dead donkey was put on display at the zoo, and Amost, the daughter of fortress mascot Id, engaged in some incredibly eerie playtime.
]]>Last time on the BoC: The arrival of marauding goblins ended the brief rule of the usurping mayor Urist, and the battle to drive them off saw the fort’s first non-accidental fatalities, as well as the emergence of several new heroes. But if the Basement’s founder Lorbam hoped to resume business as usual in her weird little zoo when the dust cleared, she was sorely mistaken…
]]>Underground hit Dwarf Fortress will soon emerge into the daylight on Steam, which definitely would be the games store favoured by dwarves as the punchline to a joke. Dwarf Fortress 'Classic' will still be available free, as ever, but this paid version will come with an official commissioned graphics pack for players who cannot fathom the ASCII art as well as new music. Bay 12 Games are still so so so very far from laying down their tools and ending work on their mega-complex management game, which they started over 16 years ago, but this will help keep them ticking over.
]]>Last time on the BoC: The culture war between fort founder Lorbam and the usurper mayor Urist reached a head with the “accidental” death of administrator Mistem. Maddened by the insulting tomb constructed for her supporter, and by the droning of a hopeless freestyle rapper, Urist lost the plot and made some greaves. But amidst all this drama, nobody noticed the goblin raiders approaching until it was too late...
]]>Last time on the BoC: A new migrant, Urist, declared herself mayor, leading to a power struggle with former expedition leader Lorbam. A lot of politically controversial artefacts were made, and wrestlin’ dad Id got blasted into the mince zone by a pack of dingos.
Late Winter, Y2
We return to the Basement of Curiosity at the bum end of winter, in the mildew-stinking, sand-walled cavern that serves as the fort’s hospital. Id ‘Snakebuster’ is convulsing on a palm wood table, his limbs mauled, and his chest so badly houndwrecked you can see his lungs. He’s the very image of a bloke who’s learned the problems inherent in wrestling wild dogs.
]]>Last time on the BoC: The fortress doubled in population, and the dwarves embarked on a serious programme of home improvements. A kobold with no tongue dropped by to visit, and expedition leader Lorbam’s blood started appearing in spooky places.
Mid Summer, Y2
Trumpets sound deep in the jungle, flat notes hanging on the hot air like birds of prey. The inhabitants of the Basement hold their breaths in trepidation - the fort has been beset by weird omens of late, and they are ill prepared for any attack.
]]>Last time on the BoC: Expedition leader Lorbam captured the first set of animals for her underground zoo, and the fort gained its first warrior, in the form of Id “Snakebuster” Osustavuz. A weasel disrupted the fabric of spacetime, and two miners fell in love.
]]>Last time on the BoC: The dwarves of the Basement discovered the concept of medicine just in time to stop the expedition’s demise due to falling logs. Some immigrants arrived to help realise Lorbam’s vision of an underground zoo, while Lorbam herself scraped together the fort’s loose change to buy that zoo’s first exhibit: a skinny hound.
]]>Last time on the BoC: Expedition leader Lorbam shepherded her dwarves to the Jungle of Hides, where they spent the spring digging out a home in a lush valley. Rakust the lumberjack got his leg bruted by a tree, and Imush the craftsdwarf got extremely excited about bins.
Author’s disclaimer: Once again, things get pretty weird here. Accordingly, I should remind you that I’m not truly the writer of this column: the game Dwarf Fortress is. And I have limited control over said game. Essentially, my role is to report on its decisions, and attempt to recognise patterns amidst the electric madness.
]]>Most articles about Dwarf Fortress start with a long-winded attempt to explain Dwarf Fortress, but this one won’t. I don’t want to tell you what this game does - I want to show you, right now. Then, if you’re interested, you can learn all about what it is afterwards.
]]>We return to the exciting conclusion of the tale of Bañec Hazyblockades, a brave hero who set out to conquer the world of Dwarf Fortress with only the power of poetry. In last week's episode, our hero was attacked for no reason by a vicious, but apparently undernourished, archer. It looked like this was the end for Bañec, until suddenly -
- he runs. He cries out in fear, turns tail, and sprints away, leaving me wounded and bleeding on the ground.
I examine myself; I'm in bad shape, and there are two arrows lodged in me. I figure I'm just deciding how I die from here on out, and decide I want to try to make it back to my lord's hall, and hit T to bring up the travel screen, expecting it to tell me I can't while I am bleeding. It opens instantly, and I start walking. Moments later, I find myself staggering through those same chicken fields, still bleeding, though miraculously less, retching and short of breath and still mortally wounded. I stagger past the chickens, remembering the last time I came this way, barely an hour ago, I felt so much younger, stronger, full of hope.
]]>This is a Dwarf Fortress adventurer mode journal, in which I live (and, perhaps die) by the poem.
The goal is simple: try to survive and thrive in Adventurer mode of Dwarf Fortress by relying mostly on the poetry and language skills. Read on to hear the tragic riddle of Bañec Hazyblockades, poet of the Mortal Society of the Released Union, who sang her own death in the Beaches of Talking, meadhall and seat of Izem Sulthodoto, lord of the hamlet Homageshoots.
]]>Life in Dwarf Fortress was hard enough before the devs gave its denizens the ability to remember what had happened to them. After giving those dwarves the ability to remember their spouses being crushed by boulders, I'm pleased to report that the devs have softened up a little.
Now those memories get a tad less painful over time, and reflecting on them lets dwarves grow as individuals: "there are now little character arcs for the dwarves".
]]>Everyone in the world must know this by now, but Dwarf Fortress is utterly ridiculous. Bay 12 Games have been working on their simulation sorta-roguelike for the past 16 years and show no signs of stopping, and will no doubt one day create a level of granularity from which we'll see the emergence of planet-conquering AI superintelligences. To wit: dwarves are about to be given memories.
]]>Dwarf Fortress, the Dwarven catastrophe simulator, has received its first update in well over a year. This one is all about artefacts. Coveting artefacts, stealing artefacts, displaying artefacts to make all your friends jealous -- it’s all very exciting if you’ve ever wanted to split your time between burglary and being a museum curator.
]]>The last time we looked at the dwarf settlements of King Under The Mountain [official site] Pip was admiring its Autumn leaves, like some kind of weird nature lover. This month the Dwarf Fortress-inspired management game has popped onto Kickstarter where developers Rocket Jump Technology are asking for 45 large. But, more importantly, it now has a playable build for potential leaf-lovers to try out. Or, if you're lazy, here's a video.
]]>Dwarf Fortress [official site] is probably the best game of all time. In Dwarf Fortress, there are sloth bears. In Dwarf Fortress, there are sloth bear men. In Dwarf Fortress, your dwarf can strangle a sloth bear man with its own intestines. In Dwarf Fortress, your dwarf can carve an image of herself strangling a sloth bear man with its own intestines into a bed. In Dwarf Fortress, your dwarf can declare that her bed is named Gorrotheodos, which means “The Disemboweled Amazement.”
Dwarf Fortress also has the worst user interface of all time. How bad could the UI really be, you ask? Well grab a chair, because you’ve come to the right place, my friend. Let’s take an extremely detailed look at how to change the settings of a stockpile.
]]>A bard, a prophet, and a petty criminal walk into a tavern and they all become friends, each blissfully unaware that their two drinking pals are - just like them - undercover agents sent by rival factions to pump townsfolk for information. That's the sort of delightful unscripted situation to expect from management sim/anecdote generator Dwarf Fortress [official site] as developers Bay 12 work on its agent system to support its artifact system to support its creation myth system to support its magic system. Dwarf Fortress! That's an anecdote Bay 12 shared in a recent dev blog, by the way.
]]>If it's worth doing, it's worth doing in a delightfully detailed simulation - that's the Dwarf Fortress [official site] way. As developers Bay 12 continue to work on artifacts (as the first step on a long road towards creation myths), they've detailed a little more of their plans for how characters will remember where these legendary items are. It's simple if they themselves hold it but gets complicated when it reaches the level of rumour and begins to fade with time. While Adam will tell you Dwarf Fortress is one of the best strategy games to play, I'm still delighted simply reading about its systems.
]]>As if simulating millenia of erosion and mineral formation and legends didn't generate complex enough worlds for Dwarf Fortress [official site], developers Bay 12 Games have detailed plans to generate creation stories which will spill over into affecting a world's physical geography, ideas of death and the afterlife, mythic artefacts, divine manifestation, and magic. Oh yeah, magic's coming too. No biggie. Just the history of the physical and metaphysical worlds. How lucky we are that our world was generated with the correct conditions for Dwarf Fortress!
]]>That picture above? That's exciting to me. I'd wager it's exciting to you, even if you don't know it yet. Dwarf Fortress [official site] was just updated to version 0.43, which introduces adventurer-made sites; aka the ability to build your own little homestead even when playing the game's roguelike adventure mode and not its all-consuming fortress mode.
]]>An early Christmas present has arrived. On December 1st 2015, one of the largest and most complicated works in the history of the realm known as EarthDwelling received new embellishments. The work known as Dwarf Fortress [official site] has been upgraded by master craftsmen and now contains designated leisure zones, performances and procedural art forms, unique to each civilisation. And that's not all. Details below.
]]>That feeling when you finish a long series of books, or a television series, and say goodbye to the characters for the last time. Closing a world, pulling down the shutters and knowing that it has run its course, is a peculiar sensation. Indeed, it can provoke a sense of loss. How utterly ridiculous I felt last week when I mourned the ending of tens of thousands of tiny football-men, each of which is little more than a pile of numbers and behaviours. BUT CAN ANY ONE OF US CLAIM TO BE MORE THAN THAT, I thought, as I uninstalled Football Manager 2015 [official site] and prepared to move on to the beta for the new model.
I'm very bad at goodbyes.
]]>Perhaps my favourite part of procedurally-spawned hardship in Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress [official site] is how dwarves mark and remember events. An engraver seems as likely to decorate a wall with an image of a nice cheese as they are, for example, that time a burning elephant stomped a dozen of their pals. Maybe it's morbid, maybe pragmatic. I keenly await shocking tales of what'll happen when kiddydwarves start playing make-believe - which they will in the next release.
]]>Dwarf Fortress [official site] has been generating fascinating anecdotes for years, but those stories have been told by its players. Soon the dwarves themselves will join in: recent posts to the game's development log have dealt with adding the ability for your fortress inhabitants to write their own stories, poems and alternate histories.
]]>Maybe it's just a symptom of getting old, but increasingly I want to revisit games I feel I could yet get more out of far more than I want to play something new. I've got these two awful tendencies: one is to run away from something if it's too demanding, and another is to be so preoccupied with collecting or unlocking everything that I don't stop and smell the flowers. I deny myself appreciation for and insight about some games because I'm too worried that I'm missing out on some infinitely more ephemeral aspect of them, like whatever's behind that door or what that high-level spell does. So these are just a few of the games I want to play again, in an impossible world where I had the time to.
]]>Dwarf Fortress [official site] has been donation funded since 2007 and according to its monthly status updates regularly pulls in more than $3000 each month. It costs a lot of money to develop and distribute the beguiling dwarven strategy game, however, and perhaps you've been one of the people wanting a new way to toss optional dollars in its direction. In which case, good news: Bay 12 have set up a Patreon for the game.
]]>Dwarf Fortress is a titan of PC games, famous for among other things its complexity, its decades-long development plan and its procedural world generation. In light of some coming additions - procedural, culture-specific forms of poetry and dance - Adam and Graham decided to discuss why such seemingly minor detail is exciting and important.
]]>It's rare that we post about an update to a game that isn't already available for download, but no game other than Dwarf Fortress [official site] so often tempts me to break with tradition and post every future changelog item. I'm only so strong, you know? That's why I'm posting about the coming addition of dwarven poetry now that developer Tarn Adams has shown a little of how the system works.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Which of the Dwarf Fortress sub-games should I play today: the fortress mode which has come to define the entire project; the adventure mode I've argued before is an easy gateway to the game's simulatory wonders; the fictional encyclopedia it creates at world gen, full of procedural histories; perhaps the arena mode, where you can pit the game's real and fantasy creatures against each other, to see who would win in a fight between a dragon and half a dozen elephants?
]]>Dwarf Fortress updates come in two flavours: those that impress non-players with changes to world generation or patch notes about spitting dwarves, and those that impressive experienced players by changing some small UI or control thing in a small but significant way. Version 0.40.20 is the latter, because it allows you to set job priorities and it makes it so dwarves will regularly change activity in order to complete whatever is most important.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam explores his own gaming history to understand why he plays and why he writes.
This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do it in the first place. Why, of all the wonderful and fascinating things that exist, do I spend so much time thinking and writing about games?
]]>"The mind has been rewritten quite a bit," starts one of the patch notes for the new Dwarf Fortress update. The first addition to the fantasy simulation game in two years, version 0.40.01 offers sweeping generation to world generation and simulation, combat and movement, fortresses, trees and, yes, the mind. Step below for a dive into the game's wonderful patch notes, and for more barely coherent rambling about how great this game is.
]]>Dwarf Fortress is not as hard to play as you think it is, but there's no denying that its ASCII graphics lack modern clarity. Chances are that if you've played the game any time in the last two years, you did so not using a vanilla install, but by partnering the complicated fantasy simulation with third-party tools like DwarfTherapist or Stonesense.
As of earlier this week, Stonesense just became a lot more powerful. It previously let you visualise your world with isometric sprite graphics in a separate piece of software, but now that angled art can be integrated directly in the game itself. Best of all, it can be used not just as a visualiser but as an interface to control part of the game.
]]>Dwarf Fortress has long been one of game development's most interesting blogs, owing to its creators' propensity for adding absurd amounts of detail to their fantasy world simulator. But for the past two years, none of those updates have actually been available to play. That's about to change. In this month's Bay 12 Report, Toady One says that a new update including all those various tweaks and expansions is finally just around the corner.
]]>Dwarf Fortress is famous for producing anecdotes by the minute. The two-man, twelve-year, donation-funded indie project weaves together procedurally generated geography, civilizations and histories to create a rich fantasy world. It simulates its characters - standard fare like dwarves, elves, goblins, etc. - down to the most minute detail, and when all its systems combine, the results are often hilarious, occasionally tragic, and always surprising.
It's also blissfully easy to play. The game is free to download and easy to install, the UI comes with a detailed and handy help system, and there's a community wiki full of guides - not that you'll need them. I started from scratch last night and was having fun immediately. Let me tell you about my experience.
]]>It's Monday and, if you have the same system shocked headache as I do, you might find it comforting to peruse a selection of in-development games. There are videos, there are GIFs (but only one!), there are fine anecdotes. There are promises of a brighter future somewhere on the horizon. It's videogaming ibuprofen.
Cyberdragons! Colour blindness! Dwarven rumours!
]]>This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do it in the first place. Why, of all the wonderful and fascinating things that exist, do I spend so much time thinking and writing about games?
]]>'Cinematic' should rightfully be a dirty word when discussing games and yet Max Payne 3's marketing wears it proudly, like a sweat-stained vest or an inappropriately jaunty tie. A cutscene is cinematic, every detail and angle just so, no room for accident or deviation, but to aspire to a ‘cinematic’ experience during play is to ignore so much of what makes experiences within a game unique to the form. We run, gun and react in worlds that rely, for the enjoyment they bring, on the accidental and the curious as much as they require adherence to a plan. Here’s to the unexpected, the unplanned and the unforgettable.
]]>Almost a year ago, Quinns told you that it would be a wise idea to read Matul Remrit, a collaborative storytelling effort from deep within the demented and ridiculous realm of Dwarf Fortress. He wasn't wrong and now it falls to me to tell you to watch the latest installment. There are still bits of word-text on the screen occasionally so do bring your reading spectacles but this is a short film detailing the dwarves greatest battle yet, a tale of death, bravery and tragedy.
It's a wonderful glimpse behind the number-crunching and complexity that illustrates why Dwarf Fortress is such an important game - it isn't scripted, but it generates so many possible scripts. I wish I had the talent to tell my tales so well.
]]>A massive update for alternate world simulator Dwarf Fortress just landed and, by the Sacred Caverns That Bristle With Features, it's a big 'un that has been eleven months in the making. I'll list more below but for starters, it looks like Adventure mode has been guzzling down its vitamins, with cities now having more variety, tombs to explore, and better traps and abilities. As for Dwarf mode, let's just say vampiric and lycanthropic infections and leave it at that, shall we? Oh, but there's so much more. The temptation to begin a new chronicle is strong.
]]>Gameworlds have become ever-more lavish, but has there been a dark price paid for this? Craig Lager believes so. Production values are up but these worlds don't seem to react to players' actions as fulsomely as they once did, he worries - are we allowing games' strange logic to take us for granted? But there is yet hope. Frowned at: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dragon Age II, Skyrim. Smiled at: The Witcher 2, Dwarf Fortress, Outcast. Please note these are Craig's views, not necessarily those of RPS.
In my version of Human Revolution, the police station should be surrounded. There should be SWAT teams, negotiators, probably even an evacuation zone. Adam Jensen’s face should be being projected from every single screen that litters Detroit's streets as Eliza explains him as being a more-than-prime-suspect in a new, horiffic incident. An hour ago, she would explain, Jensen asked for access to the police morgue and was declined. Now the back door has been broken into, and a path of corpses and hacked computers lead to the morgue in which a body has been clearly tampered with. Instead, Jensen walks into the main lobby and is greeted with “Hello”.
]]>Dwarf Fortress is, in so many ways, the very apex of PC gaming. It is its alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. It's almost impossible to imagine another game ever approaching its scope, complexity and cold brutality. We should worship at its all-knowing feet. Of course, 99% of us will never be able to play the bloody thing, thanks to it having history's most obtuse control-set. Help is at hand, in the form of a free online class.
]]>What makes Matul Remrit the Dwarf Fortress diary you should be reading? So many things. The fact that it's a collaboration between a writer, editor, artist and musician. The bleak and deeply weird tone of it that could not be more true to the game (as opposed to Tim Denee's stuff, which makes the game comparatively accessible). The glimmering quality of it.
]]>Onionbog is booming. Booming like a stinking, sulphurous deep-sea crater, emitting stinking hot burps on a regular basis. But I'm no fool. That's why I'm building defenses. To keep my lovely hole in the ground safe.
I love this place. I hate this place. I'll hate to see it fall. I'd love to see it fall.
]]>In which I make biscuits, make money, and begin making sense of things before something happens that makes me say "What the fuck" many, many times.
To clarify, what I'm trying to do with Onionbog is tell a story that's also a basic introduction to how Dwarf Fortress works and what it's like to play. There's too much talk about how inaccessible DF is. What happens if you try and fumble your way through the game after only a few hours spent browsing tutorials? Onionbog is what happens.
]]>My Dwarf Fortress introduction & story continues! Whoever thought Onionbog would only last a matter of hours currently has egg on their face, I reckon.
]]>So, last week we finally gave MineCraft the love and attention it deserved. Since then I've received a bunch of emails telling me I should do Dwarf Fortress next. As in, it's another deeply unique PC indie game that we haven't done much coverage on, and it suits a diary perfectly.
You know what? You guys have me wrapped around your little finger. Presenting the Song of Onionbog, Part 1.
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