$43.95 | PC | bay12games.com
The ever-evolving life’s work of brother developers Tarn and Zach Adams, Dwarf Fortress is entering a new age, shedding its text-based graphics for proper pixels and the basic modernity of native mouse support. Still inscrutable Dwarf Fortress remains a treasure trove of procedural myth-making for those delving into it.
At its most basic level, Dwarf Fortress is a settlement sim. With a small group of dwarves, you embark from the Mountainhomes to stake your claim on a plot of distant wilderness. It’s up to you to establish a fortress capable of lasting the ages, from the ground up – or down, in dwarven fashion.
At first, Dwarf Fortress can be deceptively simple. Clunky to control, maybe, but when you’re marking out tunnels to mine and trees to chop it seems easy enough. Within minutes you’re three menus deep, trying to parse labour details and work duties, assign administrative positions, designate burrows, organise food, gems, finished goods and wheat ale.
Leaving that delicate balancing act of fortress management aside, the Steam release’s most obvious changes are visual.
Until now, Dwarf Fortress has been an ASCII-based enterprise, requiring mods for any imagery more engaging than a letter ‘D’ facing you in martial combat.
Now, boasts its
