I’ve wanted to get into Dwarf Fortress for a long time. After all, countless stories entwine around it that are not told about Sid Meier’s Civilization, Populous or The Sims. Dwarf Fortress is a lot more complex in imitating complex contexts than the more classic representatives of the construction strategy and surprises even long-time players with events that they had not experienced before.
Whole sections of the population suddenly become were-lizards, someone has created a bloodthirsty cult by sacrificing elves and goblins, while elsewhere a dwarf thinks so pragmatically that he carves a masterpiece out of the bones of his dead roommate. The ratings on Steam are full of such anecdotes.
Of course, this is also due to the fact that the brothers Tarn and Zach Adams have constantly added new content and connections to their project for 16 years. Why hasn’t anyone seen anything like this before? Well, quite simply: Dwarf Fortress looked like this for 16 years:
The game, which until recently was exclusively text-based, may be more profound than any comparable content: In order to read it, you previously needed a license to decipher matrix code – which was of course also clear to the Adams siblings, who therefore recently released a new version on Steam and itch.io have released.
And with that I saw the chance to finally deal more closely with this phenomenon. Finally, the remastered Dwarf Fortress not only contains all the content of the original, but also, for the first time, a graphical user interface and a tutorial intended to teach you the basics. So there’s never been a better time to build fortresses for dwarves.
It starts with the fact that you no longer have to guess what a purple U or a yellow comma means. Because the underlying principle was adopted one-to-one, dwarves and other creatures jump from one box to the next at high speed and without animation, which is why watching what they do is not particularly fun. Basically you can follow what is happening in the caves better than before.
Apart from that, the new control via mouse is also a huge relief, although the old keyboard shortcuts are still available and you can freely assign the extensive assignment including mouse wheel, double assignment or keys to be pressed several times in an uncomplicated way. Unfortunately, what is still missing is the feeling of full control, because the structure and handling of the menus are so cumbersome, nested or differ from other menus for some unknown reason that you have to think about the usability before you can can sink into the simulation.
Oh, and that you can’t play Dwarf Fortress with a controller… I understand the decision, since such a change would certainly have gone beyond the possibilities of the small development team. But I would love to be able to control the dwarfs bit by bit, comfortably on the sofa or on short trips with the steam deck. Instead, the tiny writing on the small screen is barely legible.
I’m not too happy with the tutorial either, which leaves questions unanswered despite numerous step-by-step instructions and explanatory texts. It also didn’t grab my hand when I first started the new Dwarf Fortress. Rather, you often have to look for the right instructions yourself if you have a question. It’s a blessing that it’s there and lends a hand like a seasoned player when needed! I wouldn’t call it intuitive though.
Luckily, of course, you can recognize a lot of things from here if you’ve already played the build-up strategy or even the imitator Gnomoria. After all, here too, initially with a few settlers, work and living space is set up and it is specified what needs to be done to keep the community alive. You can’t control the dwarfs directly, you just tell the whole group what to do, or assign specific tasks to individual representatives.
As soon as you click together the starting conditions, however, you are left alone with a large number of options. What skills should I definitely give my first seven dwarves? After all, there are more than a hundred of them, which you can increase as you wish in five stages each. Great that you are here! But randomly creating seven gnomes of some kind doesn’t feel good at all. The fact that you can also take tons of resources and animals with you to the new settlement doesn’t make it any easier.
And so one thing remains with the version sold on Steam and itch.io: You can now get into the game without a wiki, YouTube and other help, but in some places you still can’t go any further. You don’t immediately see why some tasks are not carried out, the dwarves are not allowed to be sorted according to their abilities at every point and more. And as helpful as the graphic display is, there are also very few sounds that not only accompany the weather, but also provide important feedback on what the dwarves are up to.
So should you keep your distance if the complex game always seemed a bit too high for you? Don’t! Because even if I haven’t spent nearly enough hours in these fortresses to allow myself a judgment about the actual building simulation, there is so much in here right from the start, while you’re still reading the help texts, that I’m really interested in it now feel like diving into this dwarf world.
In other words: The revised Dwarf Fortress may still not be a comfortable, modern building strategy in terms of technology and user guidance. But it’s finally accessible enough to be played without deciphering ASCII code scrolling vertically across the screen. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the stories that await me there!
