Dwarf Fortress is an open-ended base-building and adventuring game, but these words don't do it full justice. In a previous post, I talked about a future of procedurally generated RPGs, and Dwarf Fortress is the closest game I've seen to that dream. Players determine what kind of world they want, choosing things like size, harshness, and age, and said world is generated, complete with civilizations, heroes, and histories. My world is called Boksmata, and I decided to start with only five years of history.
My first play session in Boksmata had me controlling Jasro Thrunion, one of the first humans. I walked around a hill for a while and ate some snow, then saw some ravens. I decided to attack a raven as was presented with a series of menus. I needed to first choose what part of the raven to strike at (head, neck, right wing, left foot, and about twenty other choices), then choose exactly how to strike. Should I try and stab this raven through the upper body, or just attempt to step on its wing? I eventually killed the raven, and, not knowing how to cook it, ended up just licking the carcass for nourishment. That night, Jasro made the mistake of sleeping out in the open and was killed by bogeymen.
Dwarf Fortress, at version 0.40.05, is still a work in progress, but it already has a huge number and depth of systems. There are different actions for detecting an odor in the environment and detecting the primary odor in an environment. As I see things at the moment, DF is my procedural RPG except for one huge, huge element: polish.
In its current state, Dwarf Fortress is unplayable for most people because of its difficult, complex, controls and abysmal graphics. DF is made with ASCII art and controlled exclusively by keyboard. Even with the power of wikis and 'newb' mods, learning how to play Dwarf Fortress takes a huge amount of time. I'm glad that such an ambitious game is out there, but I might not be able to fully enjoy it at the moment.
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