Note: this is directly from the PCPP article about Dwarf Fortress in Issue #147.
Dwarf Fortress is a game without graphics. Well, thats not strictly true. It's a game that, like Rogue and NetHack, uses American Standard Code for information Intercharge, or ASCII characters- the alphabet, punctuation, and a few special symbols- to represent a surprisingly deep game world.
You might remember Rogue as an infinately self-generating dungeon crawl where you slowly level up while working your way down into the bowls of some hellish fortress. In Dwarf Fortress, you build that situation, painstakingly carving rooms and hallyways out of a mountainside while extracting precious minerals and working them into valuable objects.
Shades of Grey
This isn't a Dungeon Kepper style game, precisely. Your dwarves arn't evil minions bent on holding back the invasion of a lone hero. Rather, they're just there to make a living. Mine the mountain, sell some goods, breed, and of course hold of said invasions from everything from skeletal elephants to magma men.
All this is great, but why should you spend time with a free game that doesn't have any graphics, at least not in the way modern gamers think?
The fact remains, a following for Dwarf Fortress is quickly building online. It comes from the blogs, from lists of free games like PCPP's own Catch of the Month and Garage Games. People are downloading, logging in and loosing themselves inside a missively detailed world. How detailed? Each dwarf has a favorite mineral, that's how. Each dwarf in your settlement expresses a preference for wether or not he or she needs alcohol to get through the working day. each dwarf can go crazy, get possessed by an evil spirit, and take over a workshop to craft a legendary artifact.
Meanwhile, frantically-generated world of creatures and other races, all going about their own businness. Occasionally that business intersects with your own, and it's up to you to prepare your fortress for the inevitable invasion.
Toybox/Sandbox
Battlements and drawbridges are obvious, but how about ingenious series of locks and canals to pump water from underground aquifers and flood the upper levels of your fortress on demand? or prehaps water is too mundane, perhaps magma would suit your style more.
Traps, siege engines, both can be constructed at the component level and be installed in rube Goldberg style interlinkages.
Meanwhile your farms are providing food for the dwarves and raw materials for making everything from clothes to beds. Carve rooms from the mountain and furnish them to attract nobles and eventually a king.
Bored with your fortress? Are all of the minerals played out, the mine extended up fifteen levels and down fifteen? Killed all the magma men and channelled the lava into the chambers of that pesky Cyclops? The abandon the fortress and start a new one.
Your old fortress still persists though, infested with scavengers and even less palatable beasties. And you can amuse yourself for hours taking armies of dwarves through the ghostly caverns and evicting the new tenants and restoring the old hall to their former glory.
Handcrafted Solo
The really amazing thing about Dwarf Fortress is that it's all the work of a single coder. His name is Tarn Adams, and his documentation of this epic works is little short of astonishing.
Detailed bug reports, new features, planned features, all appear regulary on the Bay 12 Game website where the game makes its home.
Then there's the fan created Wiki, which demonstrates not only the detail in the game, but the obsessive nature of the fans and their willingness to help others get into this not exactly intuitive title.
And the eternal question is why. Why is Dwarf Fortress so good, when not a single sprite or texture sugar-coats its massive interlinked databases?
Mind's Eye
Our favorite theory is this. Perhaps Dwarf Fortress is the gaming equivalent of a good talk radio. It's feature-rich but you have to do the bulk of the visualisation in your head. there might be nothing more then a bunch of hashes and plus signs on a gridded map up there on the display, but you can see the smooth stone walls, you can taste the cool air of the min, and you can hear and feel the thunder of the skeletal elephant as it hutles toward you. Even though all you can actually see it a capitol E blinking its way toward a little smiley face.
Maybe it's because Dwarf Fortress lets you visualise the game world in your mind, thats its depth and complexity is able to shine through. Read forum posts- on the game's own forum or on the PCPP forum to- and you'd be forgiven for thinking your're missing some graphics plug-in for the game: the descriptions of the gameplay are that vivid.
there's always talk, as there is always talk, of a graphical front end for the game, similar to the likes of Falcon for Rogue or NetHack. Tilesets abound, though none are officially supported by Tarn Adams himself.
Because there's a risk that graphics will somehow limit the experiance. games that demonstate true free form dynamics are rare, and if you're "told" how to visialise your dwarves, won't that just make the fortress a little less yours? So the ASCII remains. Dig on! - Anthony Fordham
PCPP has a list of Bay 12 Games that they like, the list:
No More Stumpy-Wumples - Violence, potentially disturbing themes, as well as bad language.
I'm Voting For Myself! - All characters are 18+, animal death and bad language.
Fuck You v1.02 - Bad language, breasts and the corruption of toddlers.
Environmental Extremist - Violent and irrisponible content, as well as bad art.
Cross Stompers - Religious content DO NOT PLAY, NO REDEEMING FEATURES! Requires DirectX
Dwarf Fortress was also nominated for the best Indie game of 2007, but lost to Peggle.
"It says something about Dwarf Fortress when Anthony has a poster of a frantically-generated ASCII map on his wall. And it's the ONLY game-related poster he whished to display" - Quote from PCPP Issue #148
[ April 15, 2008: Message edited by: Balistora ]
[ April 15, 2008: Message edited by: Balistora ]
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Topic: PC Power Play Article (Read 2092 times)