Recent reviews by mvrck

To call Dwarf Fortress the seminal colony management simulator undersells it. At it's core, Dwarf Fortress isn't simulating the building of a colony, or for the Adventure Mode players, a quest or story driven narrative for you to experience, in the same way other Rogue-likes might. Dwarf Fortress is simulating a world for you to exist in, with all complexities and uncaring randomness that may entail.

Dwarf Fortress does not care that you are playing it, which is really, the games greatest strength. The world moves on, with or without you - however this doesn't mean you don't have an impact on the world! As your Forts grow or collapse, they leave their footprint on the world, and as the years progress, you can see the changes affected by yourself, and other civilizations.

The game generates an unlimited number of small stories for you to discover if you look - from compulsive gambling vampires that embezzle from civilizations until their blood lust gets them caught and run out of town until they eventually wind up in your fort under an assumed name, to that heroic pet goose who gets the killing blow on the twisted form of a Forgotten Beast and saves your fort from ruin.

But even if you aren't looking to build your own narratives, and just want a good old fashioned colony simulator, Dwarf Fortress has you covered there as well. Build massive sprawling megaprojects, or cozy little hideaways. Set up complex series of work orders to industrialize your site or just let your Dwarfs haul everything around by hand and enjoy the little anthill you built.

Attract visitors with taverns, temples and libraries, or set up complex Rube Goldberg death hallways for invaders to fall victim to.

Become the Mountainhome, capital of your civilization. Or go rogue and declare war on the world itself.

!FUN! is to be had, all you must do is Strike the Earth!


Background: I've been playing Dwarf Fortress since 2015. I love anything colony, or complex industrial simulation related. Year after year new games come out and I always wind up comparing them to Dwarf Fortress, and lament "if only it had a graphical display so we didn't have to hack together visualizations with third party apps". Well, that's here, now, and it's everything I would have hoped for.

All in all I can confidently say the Steam Release and v.50 is an overall superior product than the previous version. There are some small steps back for veteran players as mouse control is integrated into the game, but if it was a brand new release with no history behind it, I would say 95% of those things wouldn't even be noticed.

Get this game. Get your friends to get this game.