dwarven fortress is a game that has been around for the past two decades was both misunderstood and perhaps over-understood, a seemingly impenetrable exercise in crafting, survival, and terrifying graphics. And next month, a very different one dwarven fortress will be available on Steam.
Because this is a chance to get a ton of sales, and also for a whole new audience to experience everything the notoriously free-flowing game has to offer, this Steam release will do so not only have a proper tutorial (a first), but also some enhanced artwork, replacing ASCII terrain and objects with actual art elements.
Here’s a trailer that helpfully compares the original game to the Steam version:
If you have never played the game, Here’s a summary of what our test is about:
Most people play Dwarf Fortress in the fortress mode, which tasks you with building and defending a fortress for a small group of dwarves. You start off with a few dwarves, although migrants typically show up once a year. You must build an economy to make money through trading, then make your stronghold a place that is beautiful for your dwarves to live in and deadly for enemies to get in. You make it beautiful by building beautiful furniture and engraving the walls and floors. The engravings, which appear to the player as textual descriptions, come from the dwarves from the history of the fortress and the wider world. You defend the fortress by building traps, strengthening your military, or finding creative uses for magma when mining within it. It’s much, much harder than it looks, and if you’re lucky, everything will burst into flames in an entertaining way.
dwarven fortress will be released on Steam on December 6th, and while the existing game was always free, this updated edition costs $20. And while I know I’ve said the word “Steam” a lot – this trailer is even for the “Steam Edition” – notice that it will also be published on itch.io at the same price (and Games that are sold there get a bigger share from the developers).
