Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress has been out for 20 years. For three quarters of those twenty years, I have been playing Dwarf Fortress. Not consistently, sometimes going years on without playing it, but I've been there. I have a lot of opinions from thousands of hours of gameplay, and I've bought the game four times now, thrice sending money directly to Bay 12 as a donation. I'm proudly on the wall of champions, and I don't regret that purchase. Here's the TL;DR. Dwarf Fortress is a massive game with a glacial development speed, questionable design choices, and it is not for everyone at such a core level that you might not even understand if it is for you or not after hundreds of hours of gameplay. It's more of a personal belief than a real true or false statement. But it is for me, or maybe it was, and I just haven't realized I've moved on from it yet. Alright, so here's the thing. Dwarf Fortress has changed massively in these last twenty years, and I can't deny it, but I also can't say that I agree with every single change made. I can't say that I agree with some older changes, and also some newer changes. Things like removing keyboard controls, or focusing on graphics over enhancing the gameplay as things continue to be worked on. I can't agree with how difficult modding has become with the changes to visuals. I don't even know if I agree with the new music, but I'll say that I am just being curmudgeonly on that regard, and resistant to change. Some of the artwork that's come out of the game is just downright atrocious, and I understand that it's just some artist's style, but there really should be some revisions done on a few of the animals and animal people. Some really got hit badly by the ugly stick. I understand that art is a major reason why development has slowed to an utter crawl even compared to before, but just throwing up the first pass and calling it done is a disservice to the game. Thankfully, mods exist, so it's a lesser issue. (EDIT: They may have done more passes on these recently. Take this with a grain of salt, but it's all opinion anyway.) I don't know if I agree with the decision to go with Kitfox as a publisher. I have a distrust for them due to some of their past actions when handling certain games, as well as for their stance on "fantastical racism", which is a very overburdened term for light-hearted ribbing of elves and goblins. It's kind of rich when dealing with a game that has its characters genetically predisposed to disliking other civilizations straight out of the womb. I'm not sure if it's an attempt to beat down grognards like myself to open the community up for new blood, or if it's just overzealous moderation, but it's a bit much. And no, this isn't about gay dwarves and livestock. People up in arms over that need to get real, at worst it's annoying to deal with a gay cow, but gay meat is still as edible as straight meat, just butcher the thing and get a new one on the next caravan. Further to that, Kitfox has seemed to be going down the road of tie-in media and bombastic advertising. I feel like they're trying to make Tarn into a character, or a caricature of himself, rather than having him just be a down-to-earth guy like his postings on the forums would suggest. When I saw the phrase "Tarn Time" show up on my feed, I just about flipped my lid at the pure marketing vomitus. "It's called Future of the Fortress you apes! What are you doing?!" I screamed. And when I saw the magic the gathering tie-in set, I sincerely considered slamming my face through my desk. But maybe I'm just old. The 20s have been a decade of new publishing houses making deals left and right, and the corporations of old are still trying to hold onto power. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw a netflix series on Dwarf Fortress, but I might be shocked if I saw Dwarf Fortress vs Skibidi Toilet toys at Wal-Mart. Please do not let this happen. So, that's the more nebulous part of my rant done. Here's some actual information on the game. The most important thing to remember is this. Dwarf Fortress is not difficult. It's complex, but not difficult. Rimworld is more difficult, whereas Dwarf Fortress is more random and layered. The worst enemy you will face in Dwarf Fortress is yourself, because you'll get bored or tired, and either kill your own fort or retire it. You need to be okay with that, the constant cycle of start-build-refine-repeat, and learn to enjoy the differences each fort will have, rather than the challenge of the game itself. As the wise men say, "Losing is Fun". You'll have your best moments in the end of your days, and the rest is just building up to that point. As for development, it's what I would call very consistently glacial. Tarn said recently that there will be no more "Big Waits" between updates. That's sort of true, but I would also argue that there never really were if we count bugfixes and minor additions. You will have to wait on the order of years between major updates, but you have to know that Tarn (and Zach, at times) and all of their contractors are working and refining and working some more, and that every update is worth the wait. Dwarf Fortress, in all of my memory, has never released an update half-baked. They're always beyond quality. Like I said, you will play this game in cycles if you love it. It'll call you back with its siren song just like it did to me. You'll hear a story, or read a combat log, or see a legends dump, or get a screenshot of a megastructure, and you'll get the itch. And that's all it takes. For me, the 20 year anniversary provided that itch. I had to let the game run for half an hour so I could write this review, or else I'd be stuck playing for hours, or days. But in general, even if this game isn't for you, you'll get hours and hours out of it. Just in one big, long streak, and then you'll be done with it. It's like a diner, either you go for lunch once and have a good meal, or you get hooked and become a regular. Look at all the negative reviews, and you'll see most of them have 100+ hours. Some 1000+. Even the people who hate it can't help but keep going a bit more. At the end of the day, that's why I've bought it four times. That's why I'm over a hundred dollars in the hole on this one game, and eighty of those dollars were spent when it was free. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. You might think I've complained so much that I have to give it a negative review. But I don't, and I won't. I complain so much because I've played this game to death and into unlife. It's a core component of my life, cracks and wrinkles and tears and all. Happy birthday, Dwarf Fortress. Thanks for all the memories, and here's to another twenty years.

This game is like, imagine if factorio, but none of your machines followed orders.

Last night a group of merchants came to my fort. I clicked on their wagon and for some reason it had a creature info box. The wagon is 249 years old. . . My world is only 94 years old. The wagon must be an entity older than all gods, beasts, dwarves, and even the world itself. I love Dwarf Fortress.