Videogame Review: Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress by Bay 12 Games is one of the newer roguelike games to emerge in the last few years, and while it certainly fits the criteria to be considered a roguelike game, it's also a great deal more.

Available to download for free from Bay 12's website, you're going to need a reasonably buff computer to run Dwarf Fortress, something unusual for an ASCII roguelike. My desktop PC has no problems with it, but my aging 1Ghz laptop runs the game at a crawl, and trying to get it to run on this netbook would be laughable. This shouldn't be a problem for most people, but it's a lot more processor-heavy than its ancestors like Nethack or Angband, which would still comfortably run on an old 486.

The first thing you'll be doing on running the game (after it shows the charming, Ceefax-like blocky 'movie' intro) is generate the world you'll be playing in. Dwarf Fortress pretty much creates you an entire world from scratch, laying down mountains and forests, mapping the paths of streams and rivers, and placing settlements. It also goes out of its way to create names for these places, along with a rudimentary history. Your involvement at this point is to sit back and watch; depending on the beefiness of your computer, this can take anything from a few minutes to an hour to complete.

Once you're done, you're into the main part of the game, the building phase. Picking a suitable site for your construction on the world map, you arrive with seven dwarves (Snow White reference completely intentional, I'm sure), a bunch of equipment and supplies on carts, and a few domestic animals such as chickens, dogs and cats. Your task is to build yourselves a successful dwelling, usually underground, in the style of the mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings. And much like Moria, there's going to be plenty of creatures determined to kill and/or eat your dwarves.

Each of the dwarves has a speciality at first, a profession they excel in. Some will be miners or stonecutters, responsible for shaping their fortress in the pattern you specify (in a method much like the old Bullfrog game Dungeon Keeper, where you mark out the chambers you want excavating), some will be hunters or farmers, responsible for bringing in enough food to keep your dwarves alive. In fact, the number of professions available, like so many things in the game, is pretty staggering, stretching over several pages. Through a rather forbidding looking menu, you can assign your dwarves to different tasks, and the longer they work at these, the more proficient they become.

If your fortress prospers and actually survives through the first harsh winter, more dwarves will arrive to supplement your workforce. Or, as is more common, you'll have been torn apart by wolves or goblins, or have simply starved to death. Like so many roguelike games, Dwarf Fortress isn't terribly forgiving.

When (if?) your settlement finally collapses in ignominy, you have two gameplay choices. You can start all over again at another location in the world, and hope you'll have learned something/have better luck this time. But Dwarf Fortress also remembers the locations and layouts of your ruined fortresses, and this is where the second, more traditionally roguelike part of the game, the exploration phase. In exploration, you play the role of an adventurer exploring the ancient depths (or shallows) of your former fortress. It's presumed some time has passed since its fall, and various nasty face-eating things may well have since moved in, but there's also a chance to find some of the treasures the dwarves would have hoarded...

In all, Dwarf Fortress is a fascinating game to play. The learning curve is staggeringly steep for new players, and it'll take you a while to figure out how not to simply starve to death or drown in a river. Fortunately, there's a comprehensive Wiki and very helpful forums which can offer reference and support, as well as a plethora of newbie guides available.With perseverance, it can become incredibly in-depth and eat an enormous amount of your social time.