“Dwarf Fortress” convoluted, but might be for you

Dwarves like gold. This much is common knowledge. But dwarves also seem to like flood irrigation, simple metallurgy, and civil logistics, according to Bay 12 Games, creators of the free game “Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress.” Also, dwarves look like little smiley faces.

“Dwarf Fortress” is often described as a “Rogue-like,” which implies that it is a complex, text-only RPG video game that delights in killing off its players in a hundred different ways. This game differs from many Rogue-likes in that it is not a roleplaying game, but a sort of strategic god-game in the “Dungeon Keeper” or “Evil Genius” vein. It’s still, of course, fiendishly complex and devilishly difficult. But fun, kind of.

When you first start the game, you can either load a pre-existing world or generate one on the fly. The random world generation allows you to watch in dazed fascination as your computer spends twenty minutes simulating erosion, plant growth, and the rise and fall of civilizations to end up with a lush world rendered entirely in text characters.

You begin a game controlling a small band of dwarves with skills that you select and your choice of beginning supplies. You are presented with a rock face and must dig into it to create a fortress, eventually mining the rock for valuable minerals and ores, as well as creating items for trade. You do all this while facing fearsome enemies and the constant threat of starvation.

Even feeding yourself is complicated in this game. Fields need to be watered, which means either letting the underground river flood to create mud or using channels to divert the water into a room, always risking the chance of flooding your entire fortress. Once you’ve done that, you need to assign the field to be planted, and certain plants will only grow at certain times of year. Of course, the field should be fertilized with potash. You get potash from processing ash. You get ash by burning wood at the wood furnace, which you get by designating trees to be cut down. Then the crop can be eaten plain, prepared at a kitchen, milled into flour, or distilled into liquor at the distillery.

Confused yet? Imagine what it would be like figuring this out as you go along. Naturally, there’s an entire wiki dedicated to explaining rules and strategy for this game, and it’s still under development; there is still a long list of planned features on the website. For example, item Req26 reads, “Thrown tantrum objects don’t hit other friendlies, but they should.” This game’s ridiculous.

“Dwarf Fortress” is a fun game, if you enjoy watching your characters slowly die of starvation while slaughtering their mules for food. A few times. This is the game for everyone who thought “Sim City” was too simple of a simulation and wished “Morrowind” had a realistic model of wrestling to the level of distinguishing the upper and lower arm. I had fun with it for a while, but I finally stopped when I got to burning wood in a wood furnace to make charcoal, then combining that with ore in a smelting furnace to get ingots, then processing those (with more charcoal) in a blacksmith’s shop to make weapons, then decorating those weapons with gems mined from the rock and carved in a jeweler’s workshop. If that convoluted description gave you a tingly feeling, then this is the game for you. As for me, I think I’ll go back to the easy simplicity of “Civilization II.”