20 Great Moments in PC Gaming
FEATURE
Accomplishing
literally anything in
Dwarf Fortress
By Wes Fenlon
I will never master
Dwarf Fortress, if
such a thing is even
possible. I feel like
that would
essentially be the
sameasmastering life, except with
really obtuse keyboard commands
instead of natural motor functions.
But Dwarf Fortress’s infamous and
intimidating complexity makes even
small accomplishments feel
monumental. In most strategy games,
assembling a base is as simple as
selecting a building from a list with
your mouse and plopping it down. In
Dwarf Fortress telling your dwarves
to dig out a room, use the wood
they’ve chopped to build a bed and a
door, and then properly zoning it as a
bedroom so someone can sleep in
that room is a tiny triumph.
Even building something simple
feels like an accomplishment on the
interactive level because you’ve
learned your way around a difficultUI to do it. But as with everything in
Dwarf Fortress, it goes deeper than
that. Because you don’t command the
dwarves directly, coming up with a
plan and executing it and then seeing
it come to fruition is a thrill. And it’s
all the more satisfying because you
can peer into your dwarves’ heads
and see their thoughts and hopes and
try to make them happy.
In some other game, you might
have an objective to craft a high-level
weapon or relic by collecting the
rarest resources from the hardest
enemies. In Dwarf Fortress, one of
your dwarves may suddenly,
inexplicably, need to craft the best
fucking chair the world has ever
seen, and will be so intent on its
creation that they will literally die if
they’re unable to make it. If you can
supply the resources they need, you’ll
be satisfying their greatest dream in
life. The point is that every little thing
in Dwarf Fortress matters, and almost
all of it is ridiculous.
But mostly you’ll feel smart just
for learning the controls. That shit’s
really hard.14