[sakeido]

This game defies all description. Read the wiki and then try it yourself...
Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The game's homepage
Bay 12 Games: Dwarf Fortress
The game's wiki, which is necessary for success
Main Page - DwarfFortressWiki

It takes a serious effort to get into this game. Being able to decipher the ASCII "graphics" is like learning to read the Matrix and in itself is an impressive accomplishment; but then the amount of information that is relayed by this interface is stunning. I played the game in the old version where you dug only horizontally through a mountain, dealing with the trials and tribulations of immigrants, farming in a cave, bridging a monster-infested chasm, and tapping the lava flow to run a gold minting operation.
Now you can build wherever, so there is even more fun to be had. You don't even need to dig. You can build castles and shit now. Deal with nobels, emissaries, sieges, whatever.

Whats more is that this is only one half of the game. The Adventurer mode is a straight up Roguelike, complete with insane difficulty curve and frequently unfair deaths.

Things you should know:
- at no point can you use the mouse to do anything. all hotkeys.
- it is resource intensive in some areas, and in Adventurer mode now in particular
- it is difficult
- the learning curve is steep
- all of your dwarves are insane

There are some odd stories I have from this game. I'll relay them later tonight.

Here's some stories. All of these happen with barely any player input; the dwarves have done this on their own.

The Tragic Miner

Kol Sedilònul had a good life at the fortress of Atöllogem (translated as "Findpaint" in the human tongue). She worked hard day in and day out at her mining duties, and attained the rank of Legend. How could she have know that the day ònul Eraraban arrived at the settlement would be the beginning of the end for her?

Despite the master's prohibition against hunting, ònul set out for the wilds immediately after arriving to see what beasts he could trap or kill. Unfortunately, he decided to try his luck against a herd of gorillas. Even more unfortunately, he lived through his massive head injuries and managed to crawl back to the barracks.

For the next year, ònul spent his time tantruming in the corner bed, refusing to let his wounds heal. One day he finally snapped, took up his crossbow, and shot three other dwarves before being put down by the highly trained swordsdwarves of Atöllogem. One of those three was Kol.

Though she took only a glancing blow to the head, Kol was never the same after that day. She found herself losing consciousness on the way to the dig sites. When she woke up, she would painfully crawl back to her bed, by which time she felt strong enough to go back to work, only to pass out again and again.

On the final day of her life, Kol felt herself swooning. She summoned all her rage, fought back against the darkness, and stayed on her feet. She knew she couldn't go on like this... so she went straight to the only bridge across the cave river and dropped it out from under herself, frustrating the sheriff, who despite his best efforts couldn't shackle her drowned corpse. Kol had washed up on the far side of the river, just a few paces away from the newly dug tombs.

Olon the Kinslayer, leatherworker of Yore

So I barely made it through the winter. Didnt have to eat the dogs, but I was at the point where half my dwarves were hunting for vermin, while my few desperate fisherman fished up a storm from the underground river, and tried to clean the damn things at a pace to meet demand. Lost a dwarf to starvation, but made it to spring and finally got some crops in the ground. My early spring migrants doubled my population, bringing all sorts of useless talent (oh hurray... more jewelers...).

The only solution of course was to make the jewelers hunters. Armed with the few crossbows I had around, or their fists, Olin and Edem set out to hunt deer. Edem has become a rockstar, wrestling 5-10 deer to death, occasionally deigning to fire fish bone crossbolts to do the job. Olin on the other hand got his ass handed to him, and is currently being starved to death in his room.

Now then, this finally brings us to my story. As a result of having all this deer carcass to process, I set the butchery to repeat butcher, and rooted around to find my one novice butcher, and set him to work. A day or so later, tragedy strikes. "Olon Erithseneb has been taken by a fell mood! Olon Erithseneb has killed Vabok! Olon has claimed a butchery!"

So here I am panicking a moment. As I take a look, it appears he entered his little craftsmen's trance, seizing the butchery for his holy/unholy work (already I am a little concerned). As my butcher was currently in there trying to butcher deer at a frantic pace, murder was obviously the answer.

So after a day or so of dedicated work, Olon emerges victorious having created this:

Olon Erethseneb has created Kessoshosh, a dwarf leather leggings!

Now unless I am misunderstanding this, his fey trance led him to murder a fellow countryman.... and create pants from his still bleeding corpse.

Simply stunning. He is of course a legendary leatherworker now... I can only hope he will be happy working with more mundane materials in the future....

The Stampede

Once upon a time (24 Opal, 1057, to be exact), in the not-so-great dwarven stronghold Nilaval, "Hammerloved", deep beneath the temperate mountains of Zilirushul Arkoth, there was a farmer named Vucar Rashbesmar. Vucar was not a very good farmer, but for some reason the cow, Unib Ostardoren, had adopted him as her keeper.

Unib was an ancient cow from a long line of noble and large cows. Indeed, she was one of the very pair who had spawned the entire Nilaval herd, now some 80 strong. Her sight was going and she gave little milk in her old age, but she was the matron of the herd, leading them around after her master, Vucar.

Now, on this mid-winter day, there was little farming to be done. All of the tallow was processed and stored in the strong and great dwarven barrels for the great winter, and all of the drink was brewed as well. So Vucar had decided to lend a hand to the miners as they opened an exploratory passage across the rift, in search of the great magma flow or even a coal vein, since lumber was getting scarce. Of course, Unib led her herd after him, much to the dismay of the miners as they squeezed past the cattle in the tiny passage and stepped in the leavings. There was much muttering and moaning, but the miners kept their peace for the most part.

Then suddenly from the rift sprang a terrible and vicious group of ant men! The fiends cut down several miners where they stood, and proceeded down the passageway towards Vucar, slaughtering several more of his helpless friends.

Vucar ran as fast as his stumpy dwarven legs could carry him, Unib and the herd on his tail. But it was useless! The dwarves, seeing the onslaught of ant-men coming towards the stronghold, had closed the great stone gates! He was trapped. He fell to his knees and quivered in fear as the ant men crossed the bridge, their legs clicking on the unworked stone floor, death in their eyes.

But Unib was not so cowardly. Her long life, dealing with cougars and groundhogs, had left her in a better position to deal with the threat than poor Vucar. With a mighty bellow, she head-butted the lead ant-man so hard that his head popped off and flew backwards into the chasm behind him, spraying blood and icor all about. Taking a cue from their matron, the rest of the herd charged into the fray amidst a chorus of mighty bellows, stamping upon the ant-men with their mighty hooves and goring them with their mighty horns.

The battle was short. In all, 13 ant-men fell, and not a single cow was killed. The city gates were reopened, and Vucar and Unib returned to their kin, victorious, the only survivors.

[sakeido]

I am not surprised to see no interest here

Its a fun game if you take the time to get into it, but it is a daunting task to really understand it.
Eurogamer article about the game:
The State of Independence #5 Article // PC /// Eurogamer
Games for Windows article:
page 1 - Flickr Photo Download: gfw-dwarf-01
page 2 - Flickr Photo Download: gfw-dwarf-02
page 3 - Flickr Photo Download: gfw-dwarf-03


The Adventurer (roguelike) mode

[bostjan]

Holy crap, dude!

Someone spent a lot of time to do that...

[sakeido]

It shows up in the gameplay. You can do pretty much anything now... dam rivers, flood your fortress, carve the entire top off a mountain and use that stone to build a castle in the valley below, cut down an entire forest and build a bunch of log cabins, go to war with the elves, dismantle an entire human settlement and kill the children in their beds, fight some goblins, be attacked by elephants, leopards, antmen or the most deadly of them all - Carp - drain streams, leave your migrants out to the mercy of evil unicorns by refusing to unlock your front gate when they arrive, drown trade caravans to steal all their loot, flood the workshop of a crazy crafter with magma, unleash a blood thirsty sheriff upon your populance who will dismember random citizens, you know.

There is a LOT of shit you can do in this game and they add more all the time.

[DDDorian]

I thought I'd bump this thread to add that I never expected a game based entirely on ASCII graphics to put such a strain on my (admittedly aging) machine Know of any other cool new roguelikes like this?