LONG BLOG
My White Whale: Dwarf Fortress
My white whale of gaming is a game that can't even be beaten, and isn't even finished yet. I'm talking about Dwarf Fortress! For those unaware of the game, it's a strategy/simulation game about starting a dwarf settlement with a small caravan of seven dwarfs. From there, it is up to you to decide how you want to build your fortress and how your dwarfs will live.
Dwarf Fortress in all its ASCII glory
I'm not totally sure what it is that has kept me from fully jumping into Dwarf Fortress. Dwarfs have always been my favorite fantasy race, so a game in which I can create my own mountain stronghold is right down my alley. The concept of the game is so neat to me that it is the very first thing I put on the PC I built two years ago.
One of the phrases most associated with this game is “losing is fun!”, yet I've never played one single settlement long enough to even see all my dwarfs die horribly. I guess I'm a little intimidated by the incredible complexity that is going on behind the simplistic graphics. While I can get a basic fortress up and running, I've not taken the time to fully explore all the available options in the game.
Learning the game is definitely a daunting task
This bothers me. I've read several accounts of other people's fortresses and have loved the stories that have been created by this interesting game. A guy named Tim Denee has created two comics about the adventures in his settlements Oilfurnace and Bronzemurder. There's another “project' of sorts that was going a few years back, in a fortress called Boatmurdered. The main gist of this is that one player plays for a set amount of time, posts their save file, and then another player downloads it and carries on. I want to have my own interesting stories too!
This is why I plan on making 2016 the year I finally sit down and dig deep into Dwarf Fortress.
LOOK WHO CAME:
