Well, I've been playing Dwarf Fortress for about two weeks now, and I have to honestly say that it has been at least somewhat entertaining.
The game has so far become more trouble than it's worth, and is now no longer entertaining to me.
Here is my final analysis of the game thus far: current version 0.3.25 alpha, game in development for 9 years. This is my comprehensive review of the game. Essentially, a message to all individuals currently uninitiated in Dwarf Fortress.
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You know that feeling of dread and frustration when you play an RPG, and you realize that in order to progress the game, you need to grind through a horde of enemies that are neither fun to battle nor give you any appreciable reward for defeating them? Well, take that aspect of gaming hell and combine it with the controller for the Jaguar gaming system, and you'll result in the gaming experience you'll get from Dwarf Fortress.
When I heard that the game was still an alpha, I expected something that had been in development this long to be something like Notch's Minecraft or George Moromisato's Transcendence. Going into the game, I expected the graphics to be ASCII and the controls to be a little bit bothersome, but otherwise playable. What I found was that there was a game that was built by the developer, and seemed to be completely and utterly forgotten. The control scheme is totally and completely convoluted, with each and every menu in the game requiring a distinct set of navigational and scrolling controls. Up, left, PgUp, *, +, and many other keys are required in order to traverse them, and most of the controls aren't consistent between menus. Sometimes when you expect that you should be using the directional keys, you find that you're supposed to be using the + or - keys, or when you want to scroll a page you find that the game requires you to use PgUp or PgDn. Of course, this issue is remedied by the fact that there are tooltips at the bottom of each and every menu to ensure that you'll have to glue your eyes to the bottom of each and every screen you encounter to try and determine which of the many keys on your keyboard you'll need in order to scroll through the menu to find what you're looking for or select whatever it is you're trying to use. Of course, some of the common menus, such as Construction have keyboard shortcuts that you can use, many of them do not.
Some of the most significant problems arise when you want to look for a particular item that you've had your dwarves produce or a particular animal that was just born from your herds. The game lists your stockpiled goods in an easy-to use format that categorizes everything in terms of total amounts of goods in your stockpiles, regardless of where it is. Early in the game, you are able to assign a particular dwarf to the task of bookkeeper, whose sole purpose in life is to go around and simply count every single item in your fortress and write it down in your Stocks menu in your Status screen. He does not record where any of the items are, if they're being used, or anything about them. Makes you wonder how he can avoid making mistakes if he doesn't bother to make note of anything other than the massive list of tally marks that he carries around with him. His indiscretion in not providing you with much information about your stockpiles doesn't stop there. The lists of animals and dwarves in your fortress aren't ordered in a logical manner, either. The animals are ordered simply by which animals arrived first, and that's the only way that they're ordered. The list of dwarves in the Unit listing is based off of what they state their profession to be, regardless if that's what they actually do. As much as your top miner may like being called a potash maker, he's not fooling anyone. Managing a list of things that aren't ordered in any logical manner may not be an issue at the beginning of the game, but as you progress, your herds will grow, your population will increase, and your stockpiles of food, trinkets, and armor will expand with them. Whenever you select an individual for a position such as broker, manager, bookkeeper, etc., you encounter a menu that has you select the particular dwarf you want to use for that position. Again, the list isn't ordered in any manner that would seem either natural or intuitive. It takes some research to figure out that the list is actually ordered by what the game thinks are the best choices for that position. It would have been a hell of alot easier to just order it alphabetically, but instead, the GAME will decide what's right for you. Needless to say, there is a LOT of list diving in this game.
After trudging through the game's controls, you'll probably find that there's actually a game there that you can play. The game itself involves Settlers-like gameplay with you controlling and giving indirect orders to a series of dwarves. Investigating them closely, you'll find that each one has an established personality and even experience points allocated to a series of skills that they can use. By using their skills and performing the various tasks they're ordered to do, they'll gain XP and eventually level up in the skill, allowing them to perform the task more effectively. Each dwarf will even have relationships with other dwarves, which can be checked on their relationships screen. A whole myriad of other aspects regarding the dwarves' complexities are available including things like their hygiene, unrequited loves, happiness, personal preferences for jobs and activities.
The entire game world itself is also well done, with dozens of different kinds of stones, metals, and other procedurally generated resources available that make up the particular map that your dwarves settle on. Don't think that the game revolves only around your little settlement, however. The world outside of your particular sliver of land is also procedurally generated, and generated in extremely great detail, which each and every part of the world having its own resources and layout. There are even whole cities and the histories of their entire civilizations that are generated by the game. Despite this level of excessive detail, however, the game still has its obvious flaws that can't be covered up by totally useless bells and whistles.
The gameplay focuses mainly on your fortress, where you'll be trying very hard to do simple things like getting your dwarves to construct the things you tell them to, or to pick up a particular item off the ground. The game doesn't allow you to give dwarves specific orders, forcing you to work around each individual dwarf's personality and idiosyncrasies in order to coax them into doing whatever you want them to do. And even then, they probably still won't do what you want them to do. Things like picking up their discarded belongings off the floor or taking their wounded to your fortress' hospital are things that simply don't get done. Your dwarves prefer to sit idly by and be lazy rather than do some of the simplest of tasks. There are workarounds to this, of course, but the longer you play, the more you'll have to rely on workarounds just to keep your fort functioning properly. Things such as reallocating resource stockpile locations in order to feed prisoners, designating roof-based ponds in order to water fields, and selective deconstruction of beehive farms in order to acquire the goods they produce are things that you'll need to use in order to keep your fort running smoothly. If this all sounds very complicated and overwhelming, you're not alone. Most people who play this game concede that it is, in fact, extremely complicated and difficult to understand.
Overall, I'd give this game a 7/10. The core game is done quite well, with your various Dwarven settlers doing much of what they're supposed to, and the procedurally generated backstory and world history are extremely well done. The main problem is that the core game feels like it was an easter egg. A thing that was intentionally hidden behind a nearly impassable wall of impossibly difficult to learn controls and a menu system that forces you to pull out a word processor and redo the entire thing just so that you can use it. The game is simply alot of work in order to play, and despite its originality and the various nuances of the experience, it's probably not worth the effort.
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And now a message to the established players:
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You know what comes to mind when I think of Toady? I think that he's actually in fey mood. Unfortunately, unlike Urist McDwarf, Toady is highly unlikely to take up residence in a workshop and come out a few years later with a polished, awesome piece of artwork. He's been tinkering away at this game for years now, and he's still working out the particulars of various gameplay elements like vampires or participation in wars between nations. He's stated that he doesn't want the game to be too focused on micromanaging, but with the way he's completely failed to set up a proper way for the player to access various parts of the game, I'm not seeing any other alternative to extreme micromanaging and doing actual office work in order to just make the damn thing work right.
I know I've said that the interface looks like a mess, but upon closer investigation, it looks more like Toady touched lightly on a few concepts here and there in regards to interface programming, such as Search and list ordering parameters, and then simply gave up on it shortly before making it actually usable to the player. He's gone out and developed the core of a game, and then went around making a sort of bonus game with the adventure mode. He's gone and attached alot of bells and whistles to the game before making the game presentable in any way, shape, or form. I don't mind that the game doesn't have modern graphics or that the controls are extremely hard to figure out. My main issue is that after you've figured everything out, you should be able to play the game the way it was meant to be played, and that just isn't the case with this game. The game that Toady has in mind just isn't there yet, and he hasn't bothered to give players a real game to play. Not only that, the game so far doesn't look or feel like anything that seems like it was ever meant to see the light of day, much less be played by hundreds of thousands of users. It feels more like Toady tried to make the game as a supplement to a tabletop D&D game, and never let go of that idea.
Toady noted that he would probably want more donations for the game, but with the way things are going, he's still going to lose alot of players to the game's inherent and blatantly obvious gameplay flaws. The game may be based on the old roguelikes like Nethack, but the only players that are actually sticking around to enjoy the game are the old-fogey die-hards. The gamers that knew a good game when they saw one, and saw a good game in Dwarf Fortress. The only problem is that there's a difference between what you see and what you actually get. In the end, it was not worth the effort. The game just wasn't good enough to warrant the pain and suffering I had to go through to get to it, and is definitely not worth the pain and suffering to continue playing it.
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Topic: Noob guide requested (Read 29845 times)