Reviews - chromium24

Reader, let us cut through some ********.

I don't want to say something cliche. I don't want to say "Dwarf Fortress is the future of gaming", or talk about the complexity of the game as if raw complexity is a good thing. I quite simply want to say that Dwarf Fortress is fun.

Now, it's not thrilling -- not most of the time. Most of the time you're figuring out how to build a cistern to hold water for your well, or managing the crop rotation for your farms, or possibly designing a secure entrance for your fortress. Most of the time, this game is a game of building and construction, of labor management and alcohol. (Don't forget about the alcohol.) No, this game isn't a game that generates its fun from action-packed combat -- though it has some -- or from cinematic cutscenes.

This game is a game of a million stories.

In this game, you will witness a humble cheesemaker pick up an axe in a time of dire crisis, dying at the entrance to the fortress -- his fortress -- to save the girl he has fallen desperately in love with. You will witness a gemcrafter, struck blind by a goblin's spear when he was just a child, be possessed by spirits from beyond this world and craft an artifact as beautiful as any that has ever existed. You will witness a battle-scarred veteran whose emotions have long since died snap like a twig and reap a dozen of his fellow dwarves as if they were wheat before a scythe.

You will see more stories than you will ever realize unfold in front of your eyes, more lives and events than you could possibly know. You will play a game that seems less like a game than it is a world of its own -- a world of dwarves and goblins, of monsters and gold, of stone and pick and mountain.

And alcohol.

(LOTS of alcohol.)