And the reviews are good! Which is nice. I was particularly taken with this one from Polygon’s Grayson Morley, whose first serious fortress involves a craftswoman named Rakust whose carpentry is skilled but whose friendless, drunken existence pained the author:
There’s no lack of Dwarf Fortress stories online. Many are wild stories, too, much more dramatic than the one I’m telling here. Stories involving zombie camels and chain reactions relating to magma and other deadly fluids. You’ll discover stories of diplomacy gone awry, of bloody war, of ghosts who come back to claim what is theirs. That was my expectation for the game’s story engine going in. That I would have some madcap tale to tell. Instead, I find myself surprised by the game’s capacity to tell smaller stories. Sadder stories. Human ones, despite the subject matter. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the simulation has to offer, but already my Dwarf Fortress story has become about one artisan’s life and her lack of a sense of purpose. Mechanically, I’m unsure that it’s possible to make her happy. Narratively, I am determined to do so, even at the risk of failure. I worry over a future in which Rakust dies, leaving behind her masterwork goods for future generations to admire and enjoy, their beauty plain to behold, but the pain that went into their creation nowhere to be found.
DF is the best game not because the mechanics are deep (though they are) or because it cultivates goofy action (though it does). It’s the best because it rewards the exercise of a fundamentally great human thing: the act of telling ourselves little stories.
