# While we're waiting for Spore: Heard about Dwarf Fortress?



## Thadlerian (Jun 3, 2008)

It's this game I've been playing constantly the last week. A freeware game, developed by a guy known as "The Toady One". All graphics have been replaced with ASCII symbols, so that all programming could be churned into functionality.

The effect: A "roguelike" strategy game: Build a mountain fortress á la Moria. You set ot with seven dwarves and a wagon, and end up with a mountain metropolis, complete with industry, military and insane doomsday devices. And the best part: You design all of it. No scripted designs, nothing pre-made; you have to figure things out yourself (with the help of a wiki).

Things you can do:
- Let the program create a vast, realistic world, complete with dynamic historical characters, events, legends, cities and factions.
- Watch your dwarfs run about the place, with complete individual personalities, emotions, relations, skills and inventories.
- Dig deep, up and down, find precious metals, underground rivers, magma reservoirs and ominous chasms.
- Use said rivers or reservoirs to device intricate defensive set-ups: Drown goblin invaders in molten rock.
- Be a nerd, admiring the realistic geology of the mountains.
- Build a city to cater for your citizens' needs - farms, workshops, smelters, wells, stills, kitchens, and living quarters - ready for waves of immigrants.
- Train and arm an elite military division from scratch to defend your fortress from increased goblin attacks.
- Build catapults, and have your dwarfs enjoy themselves flinging rocks everywhere.
- Design mechanisms and traps, allowing the pulling of a lever to raise drawbridges, open monster cages and collapse mountains on top of your enemies.

For a good example of much of what this game has to offer, read about the succession game Boatmurdered.

And the game itself: Dwarf Fortress at Bay 12 Games


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## JDP (Jun 4, 2008)

That looks awesome! It's free, right? But you can donate? I'm not a big fan of ascii type games, but I might be compelled to look into this one!


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## Duchessprozac (Jun 4, 2008)

I tried this one but, my god! It was just too vast for me to take in and the ASCII graphics did not help much.


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