Carabiners?
Check.
Harnesses?
Check.
Rope?
Check.
Sylvester Stallone?
.....
Recently, as I wait for some other game releases (Path of Exile: Awakening and Crusader Kings 2: Horse Lords, I'm looking at you...), I've been spending time with Dwarf Fortress. It's a game that I love to hate, hate to love, love to love, or hate to hate. My displeasure and pleasure are both due to the fact that you can do so much in this game, but to do so often requires seemingly arcane rituals of interconnecting creations and button presses.
Dwarf Fortress, or DF as I will now refer to it, is the life's work of Tarn Adams. Perhaps I should call him Dr. Tarn Adams, because, you see, he holds a PhD from Stanford in Math. Tarn lived the American Dream of working hard during the day and nerding at night only to become super stressed out, give the system the middle finger, and make DF. Hooray disenfranchisement! Anyways, back to DF. The game is a simulation of what would happen if you dropped seven dwarfs at a site of your selecting in a generated game world with a limited amount of supplies and skills. Sounds charming, right?
But oh baby, it's deep. Like an Isaac Hayes love song. Put the brakes on, I'm getting ahead of myself...ahem.
The graphics are a big stumbling block to many people. Does ASCII sound familiar? Yeah, everything in the game is rendered with a character, except for your dwarfs, who are rendered with "characters." Well, at least in some of the graphical packs you can install to make it a bit more new player friendly. I've played the game, off and on, a few times now and I STILL don't know what all of the little ASCII symbols mean. I find myself constantly referring to a symbol guide on the super comprehensive DF wiki page during the time when I'm picking a site to send off my merry band to.
Everything is keybinds and hotkeys... Yes, everything. While you can use your mouse to do some things (possibly more with other addons), you'll be mainly ordering your dwarfs around by accessing different menus to give orders. Want to dig a 1x1 hole? Well, that'll be a (d) and then a (d) and then you arrow key your mouse cursor to where you want to dig and hit enter twice. Got it?
Stumbling blocks aside, let forth the flood gates of praise. This game is amazing. The game, through the in depth descriptions of each dwarf, really encourages your imagination to concoct a wild narrative.
The mayor wants two tables built? Why? Nobody knows.
A werebadger (yes, any animal can have lycanthropy) attacked your fortress and ripped off the arms of one of your dwarfs. Luckily, you saved him. Now you get to watch him wander about, useless, while your other denizens are forced to periodically feed him and give him drink.
In one of my previous playthroughs, everything was going swimmingly. I had a nice sized fortress that had bursting coffers with an ambition to dig deeper. So, I set an exploratory mining team in motion to tunnel down to see if we could find magma. (Magma=free heat/energy for smelting; Save the trees!) About ten levels down, I was alerted that we had found a "mysterious cavern." However, what I saw blew me away. There was a underground castle littered with corpses from the battle that was going on. Two different monster races (One was ant-men, the other escapes me, sorry) were battling it out for...who cares? My only worry though, past my initial stage of wonder was, "Have they seen me?"
I soon had my answer.
I should have walled up my tunnel downward at the moment I saw them, or not started the tunnel within my own fort walls, or trained my military better, or rigged up an elaborate series of rock fall and cage traps, or had a tame dragon with my exploratory mission.
Alas...
I didn't do any of those things. I like to imagine that somewhere in the multiverse of forgotten DF worlds, there is a world where a ferocious species of ant-men rose from the crumbling walls of a devastated fortress. They spread out like a carpet, and took over that world.
Or...maybe...they dug deeper (however ant-men would dig) and found the real FUN.
cackling sinister laugh as the sun goes down and a crow caws and you get the picture
Play me!
It's dangerous to go alone!
Now I'm having trouble not thinking of novel lycanthropic combinations.
ReplyDeleteWeregoat
Weresnail
Wereadactyl
Yesterday, I had a weremonitor. I'll keep you posted on any funny ones I see. ;)
DeleteAs an update, had a weremarmot attack yesterday right after a minotaur attack. We killed the minotaur with no injuries, but somehow the weremarmot killed two squad members? Bad luck? Fate? lol.
DeleteNow I'm having trouble not thinking of novel lycanthropic combinations.
ReplyDeleteWeregoat
Weresnail
Wereadactyl