dwarven fortress, A game that has been around forever and always will be, has never been the most inviting experience for the average, inquisitive gamer. Something the developers have finally decided to work on for the upcoming Steam release of the game.
Write on the game’s store pageCo-creator Zach Adams says:
Dwarf Fortress has the well deserved title of being one of the most excruciating games to learn. There’s a lot going on, even after we’ve changed all the ridiculous keyboard shortcuts and replaced the Matrix-like UI with understandable and gorgeous pixel art. Something else is needed. Something to ease the need to go straight to a wiki just to understand what’s going on. The answer, of course, is the tutorial.
Zach shared some screenshots of the new one Tutorial in action showing things like initial greetings and guides to basics like logging and storing your resources:
“To make the tutorial as good as possible, we found the ultimate playtester: my wife, Annie,” says Zach. “There are many base building games now, enough to get you started with Dwarf Fortress. She doesn’t play any of them. She comes closest to DF with Overcooked 2. After a failed attempt on the original, the latest version of the in-game tutorial allowed her to become good enough to tunnel under a swamp and drown her stronghold.”
The Adams brothers initially got to work dwarven fortress in 2002, so why come to this now? Of course, the upcoming re-release of the game on Steam seems like a good excuse, as dropping the game onto Valve’s storefront – which will also bring things like vastly improved graphics – will bring the game to a potentially large audience of new and curious gamers.
“Our goal is to make this level of play accessible to everyone,” writes Zach. “We want the world to be able to lose this game and have fun doing it.”
The Steam version of dwarven fortress does not yet have an official release date, although fans digging through SteamDB believe it will be out sometime in early 2023.
