Strke the earth!

December 6, 2022 9:35 AM

This is a new release of Dwarf Fortress. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality.

Dwarf Fortress has released on Steam and itch.io. After 20+ years the game's famously cryptic, text-based interface has been updated with pixel graphics and a GUI.

posted by nathan_teske (39 comments total)

I have already lost thousands of hours of my life to Binding of Isaac & Slay the Spire, I really don't need another game to suck me in and never let go. But what if.....

:-)
posted by Fizz at 9:40 AM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Official graphics! Didn’t think I’d ever see the day.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:41 AM on December 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

I found Polygon's roundup of changes really helpful. Particularly the description of how the UI has been significantly reworked to be more comprehensible. It's not just a graphic tileset, it's a lot of improvements in menus, organization, etc. (And some quirks).

I'd be curious to read the story about how this was done jointly with Kitfox. $30 on Steam for a free game! But greatly improved. Kitfox is also the company that released Boyfriend Dungeon.
posted by Nelson at 9:52 AM on December 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

I should have mentioned in the post that the classic game will remain free/donationware, without the official pixel graphics and new soundtrack, but otherwise feature-identical to the paid release. The community has released graphical tile sets that replace the ascii map and creatures with pixel graphics, but having the support built into the engine is literally a game changer.

A lot of people are streaming DF today; I've had Kruggsmash's stream up to get a deeper look at the new graphics and UI. Kruggsmash's narrative Dwarf Fortress playthroughs could probably be a MeFi post on their own. They're perfect if you can't play the game but still appreciate the emergent weirdness and barely restrained chaos that is DwarFortress.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:00 AM on December 6, 2022 [10 favorites]

A big detail is that the only reason this paid release exists at all is because the dev's brother had a brush with cancer and they live in America.
posted by simmering octagon at 10:16 AM on December 6, 2022 [24 favorites]

I'll be curious how deeply I'll be able to get in, this time around. I've bounced off it a couple times, occasionally getting the itch to take a swing at it (setting up tilesets & all the standard third-party aids). It's been good enough to have me get that itch and come back to it, to its credit.

Usually where I've previously ran into trouble is when I have to put it down. I'm fine with one big marathon session; but when I lose my mental-state of how everything is set up & what I'm planning I get lost.

All that being said, they've earned my coin well enough by this point, and I have enough games in my backlog I've picked up with the best of intentions & not played nearly as much as I imagined I would; so this's a well-earned day-1 buy from me.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:23 AM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Some members of the MeFight Club have been playing this for a while and have been very excitedly chatting about it on our discord server for the last few days. We just created a channel for it today. There should be a link to the discord in the forums or just DM me for an invite if you want to come check it out and discover the terrible secrets of Rotato!
posted by VTX at 10:23 AM on December 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

The interface alone is reason enough to play, I'm finding. To move the screen around, you can drag while pressing the mouse wheel. To go up or down z-levels, roll the mouse wheel. To zoom in or out, Ctrl+mouse wheel. You can use the mouse to designate areas to dig, places for stockpiles, the locations of buildings. Instead of keypresses (although they seem to be still available if you prefer them!), there are on-screen buttons. The major functions are explained in a short tutorial that walks you through the opening steps of establishing a fortress.

I've just started playing this version, but wow, it's so much more comprehensible. Of course most of DF's complexity is in its play and many systems, and just because you can control it better doesn't mean you'll play it well. But most people have a dozen failed fortresses before they really get anywhere. Losing is not just fun, but in some ways, the point of the game, to last long to enough to see which absurdly dangerous thing takes your dwarves out.
posted by JHarris at 10:28 AM on December 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

I saw Tarn and Zach Adams at a PAX panel a few years ago. At the time, I had never played Dwarf Fortress, but did know of its reputation, and the stories. Seeing the brothers' work at the panel, and hearing them talk, made me more interested in the game. I messed around with it on my own later on, but found it inscrutable, even with a bunch of reference links handy. Very much looking forward to giving this new version a go, when I have the time.
posted by May Kasahara at 10:50 AM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Kitfox is also the company that released Boyfriend Dungeon.

I haven't followed any discourse about this game beyond googling just now so am not sure how to take this fact.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:23 AM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I bought this because of all the time I've spent in the dwarfy little worlds, not to mention just how much it influenced games and how good people developers seem to be. Good for them! But realistically I'm not sure I have it in me to play with it anymore. Then again I wouldn't be too surprised to find myself losing a weekend or two to the lure of the mountainhome.
posted by aspo at 11:25 AM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

STRIKE THE EARTH!!!

A post about DF was probably one of the first things I read on metafilter.com, many years before I ever signed up for an account. Glad to see this here today. Here's to many more to come!
posted by some loser at 11:34 AM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Windows only for now -- I guess it's worth breaking out the Windows laptop for.
posted by 3j0hn at 11:42 AM on December 6, 2022

Every time I play Dwarf Fortress, I muddle along for a few enjoyable years - successfully growing crops and raising poultry - but I never quite manage to get an impenetrable fortress set up before I get attacked by a were-gecko who manages to lycanthropize enough of my dwarfs that I can't recover.

(Yes, I know there's a button to turn off the lycanthropy. Yes, it feels like cheating.)

I'm very much looking forward to seeing if a smoother interface lowers the cognitive load of the game enough that I can play it a little more successfully.

(But on the other hand, I'm trying to write a novel here...)
posted by Jeanne at 12:01 PM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

For linux users: I got the itch.io version and I can run it in Wine. (I did have to download an extra dll and drop it in the right folder.) There should be a native linux version eventually.
posted by umber vowel at 12:27 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I stopped playing DF around the time minecarts got introduced and stone was made heavier, and I decided that I had hit my limit of crunch simulation. But I kept following the development (mostly on Reddit) and whoo has this been anticipated. I'm very tempted but I do not have the time right now, and I know how simulation games go for me.
posted by cobaltnine at 12:35 PM on December 6, 2022

I can't even hack Stellaris (even after an AskMe about it and some very kind MeFites giving me tutorials/re-introductions) so I don't think this is for me. But I wish it were? I have a deep envy of people who can really get into these kinds of things; I'd love this kind of engaging escape in life, but I just don't seem to be wired to get pulled into the deeper sim elements.
posted by Shepherd at 1:34 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Picked it up and started as soon as it was available on Steam this morning. During the tutorial, most of the menus are unavailable. My woodcutter knocked a tree onto herself mid-tutorial and became severely wounded and unconscious, making it impossible to perform the next steps in the tutorial. I had to cancel out of the tutorial so I could assign another woodcutter and figure out how to construct a hospital (you can return to the various chapters of the tutorial at any time). It was the perfect way to begin a fortress.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 1:44 PM on December 6, 2022 [17 favorites]

All the conversation I've seen around this new release has been about it only existing because the developers didn't want to get hit with huge bills without health insurance
posted by one for the books at 1:50 PM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

I've bounced off of it a few times... I've ascended with a few classes in nethack and played through DCSS so it wasn't the graphics before. It was just, so much. Kind of Oxygen Not Included with no guidance. Maybe it's time for another try?
posted by booooooze at 3:07 PM on December 6, 2022

I think I've never bought a game as quickly on release as Dwarf Fortress.

Years ago, I spent many moons building fortresses happily chugging along until either a bronze colossus made mincemeat of my dwarves, or the periodic goblin invasion was too much for my soldiers to handle.

I love Dwarf Fortress, and I think it's not as difficult as its Internet legend would suggest (it's still quite difficult, mind you). Choosing a peaceful place to build your fortress, and (very important) not having goblins as neighbours allows you to learn the systems at your own pace. In this case, Dwarf Fortress is not more difficult than, say, Cities: Skylines.

booooooze: I also have Oxygen Not Included, and I find it is more difficult than Dwarf Fortress. I think having to manage heat and moving gases and fluids makes it quite difficult to save a settlement once things get out of balance.

I will agree with everyone else: the systems in the game are buried under a very complex user interface that can only feel comfortable to someone who is used to working with Emacs or (God have mercy on your soul) vi.

Having the wiki open while playing is also strongly recommended, even for experts.

In any case, it makes me happy to know that strange and wonderful projects like Dwarf Fortress can exist in today's gaming world.

Rock and Stone!
(Wait, sorry, wrong dwarf game).
posted by LaVidaEsUnCarnaval at 3:50 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Every time I play Dwarf Fortress, I muddle along for a few enjoyable years - successfully growing crops and raising poultry - but I never quite manage to get an impenetrable fortress set up before I get attacked by a were-gecko who manages to lycanthropize enough of my dwarfs that I can't recover.

Ah, I've been watching Mort Strudel's narrated summaries of his games of DF, in particular Chantedfins (about 3 1/2 hours in total), and there's a section of that where he has to put up with lycanthropy. Ah, it seems to have been in Part 3 (32 minutes). tl;dw: one of his fort's strongest fighters was were-llama'd, and the curse persisted even into undeath. The player created a special burrow just for him, far away from the rest of the fortress, where he could be unleashed upon attacking hordes in relative safety.
posted by JHarris at 4:04 PM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'd be curious to read the story about how this was done jointly with Kitfox.

You're in luck! noclip is making a documentary about Dwarf Fortress and they flew down to Bay 12 HQ to hang out with Toady and ThreeToe for the week of the game's launch on Steam.

noclip does fantastic documentaries about games and game development, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the final product. Here's a previous mini-doc they did about DF, where Toady/Tarn tells the lovely tale of cats in taverns and... well, I don't want to ruin the surprise if you don't know.
posted by chrominance at 4:21 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Kitfox is also the company that released Boyfriend Dungeon.

I haven't followed any discourse about this game beyond googling just now so am not sure how to take this fact.

imo Boyfriend Dungeon is a good game (as is their Moon Hunters) & Kitfox is a company run by good thoughtful people
who try to do the right thing

there was a LOT of discourse just after release about a plot point in the main storyline that involves the player character being stalked & whether the content warning went far enough; they've since updated it to be more detailed

some players felt you should be able to opt out of this the way you could opt out of receiving phone messages from your mom, for players who found that triggering

this led to a huge wide-ranging Pandora's-box-open discussion of questions like "are storylines about abuse themselves abusive," which I'm a little worried about setting off a repeat of with this comment as I'm already edging off-topic

but yeah imo Boyfriend Dungeon is a good fun queer-friendly female-experience-centered roguelite where you date swords & if anyone says Kitfox is an inherently problematic company I will fight them with the swords that I date

on the actual subject of Dwarf Fortress it is such a compelling video game that MeFi's own my ex once broke his arm playing it instead of sleeping, but I better not tell that story where he's gonna read it

(he has a scar now)
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:29 PM on December 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

speaking as the ex in question, yeah, don't forget to sleep while playing DF; passing out isn't really a viable substitute
posted by rifflesby at 4:50 PM on December 6, 2022 [14 favorites]

Does frame still steadily decrease as you grow your population and expand the fortress and introduce more water features (which stress out the mostly invisible fluid dynamics simulation engine)? Most of the game I player circa 2010 ended up with giving up as the frame rate dropped below 1Hz.
posted by kaibutsu at 4:57 PM on December 6, 2022

Dwarf Fortress is not more difficult than, say, Cities: Skylines

This line is funny because I needed to watch a city planner play Cities: Skylines before I was any good with it...

What you unintentionally said to me was: you'll be good at this if you kidnap a dwarf king.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:08 PM on December 6, 2022

you'll be good at this if you kidnap a dwarf king.

No you won't. No one is good at Dwarf Fortress. A slogan of the game is "losing is fun." Increased skill at playing the game is important because it opens possibilities for losing in increasingly ridiculous ways.

In one of my better playthroughs my automated shower overflowed and flooded the mine, killing almost everyone. If you do come to enjoy this game, it is the defeats you will remember most fondly.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:04 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

kaibutsu, probably? They've been clear that beneath the new graphics and interface it's still the Dwarf Fortress engine. If there's a lot going on in your fort there's not much more a computer can do but grind through it.
posted by JHarris at 6:09 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Of course a computer from 2010 is probably a LOT slower than what you have now. (And I do think they have fixed some of the DF slowdowns, but of course some of it is just "that much math gets expensive.")
posted by aspo at 6:36 PM on December 6, 2022

For anyone without a Windows machine, but with OS/X?

Rimworld is kinda Dwarf Fortress meets the television show Firefly, and yeah, OS/X works.
posted by talldean at 6:59 PM on December 6, 2022

According to the steam discussion board "support for Linux and Mac is not planned for the initial release, but is relatively high in the priority list after the initial bug fixes/content updates are complete."

So... maybe? (Also rimworld is much MUCH less complex than Dwarf Fortress. It is a better game as game, but a much less interesting sandbox/toy.)
posted by aspo at 7:04 PM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

This version of the game is going to be the one that hooks me, I think. It lowers the barriers to entry such that I can actually enjoy playing. Having a basic tutorial and graphical tiles and a better organized menu and mouse controls all seem to have done the trick.
posted by JDHarper at 9:56 PM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

A user of the Steam forums wonders:

and tell me how sane ppl can post a gushing positive 10/10 game of the century review on day 1. 20 mins ago the count was 1700, now it's 1900. have all those ppl been playing free DF for 25 years and just waiting for an opportunity to pay $30?

Feel free to weigh in (currently 1257 users have answered "Yes").
posted by rodlymight at 6:58 AM on December 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

Shut up and take my money
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 7:56 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

All the conversation I've seen around this new release has been about it only existing because the developers didn't want to get hit with huge bills without health insurance

TIL I probably wouldn't be able to pay money for a beautiful new Dwarf Fortress today if the Adams brothers lived about 2 degrees further north.
posted by 3j0hn at 8:05 AM on December 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Despite enjoying the occasional rougelike (and being fairly obsessed with DCSS, in particular), I could never really get into terminal/ASCII graphics, so the addition of tiles for Dwarf Fortress makes it much more likely that I will ruin my life by playing it.
posted by asnider at 9:02 AM on December 7, 2022

rodlymight: It just feels so fitting that thousands of people are telling the person that yes, they are happy about this release and the original poster marked some "they are all just afraid of being mocked by the sheeple" comment as the best answer.
posted by aspo at 12:56 PM on December 7, 2022

As mad as it would have sounded to play Dwarf Fortess on a handheld prior to this release,
I can report that the new DF is
surprisingly playable on Steam Deck, in spite of it having neither keyboard or mouse. One of the trackpads has your mouse covered and the default control scheme is a community layout that puts all your main keyboard shortcuts into a radial menu on the other so you don’t really lose any functionality.
posted by rodlymight at 9:25 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]