Dwarf Fortress

[Corel]

So this game currently is strangely addictive for a number of reasons. I think mostly because it's like a combination of Dungeon Keeper with extreme Macro and Micro Management, the stuff you can do in this game is insane. Want to activate a switch that opens up a trapdoor that traps some unsuspecting creatures in a slowly flooding room? Check. Make a multi-level housing district and path ways to find optimal logistical positioning? Check. Hand pick Dwarfs to carry a number of skills, join the army, train them and pick their inventory? Check. Macro everything and everyone to your needs? Got that too.

You would think that the ASCII graphics would put you off, but after 20 minutes or so I stopped caring about them and found them incredibly endearing. I felt really sad that I was forced to butcher a puppy for my dwarfs to survive the Winter, as the dwarf slowly dragged him off to the Butchers and a "?" kept flashing for the puppy.

So here's a picture of my fortress with some annotations because I imagine it's pretty confusing on it's own:



1 - Just to the East of the big 1 is the first residential area that was built, it was originally just a single row of houses then I decided that it really should just be made to a communal street with a dining hall at the end of it. The dining hall used to be where the giant yellow 5 was, but decided to move it for military purposes. By the way you can assign Dwarf's their own indivudal rooms in this game. It's stupidly in depth.

2 - The second residential area being made, in response to site 3 being built. This site will be further developed as I get more immigrants.

3 - The newer industrial site that was built. Industrial areas contain workshops that dwarfs of specific skills (The more proficient, the better) can make a variety of items like weapons, trap devices, instruments, beds etc.) Decided to put on here so that it was closer to the stockpiles and the workers of both area 1 and 2 could get easier access to both. That purple stuff is the rotting of corpses, you get used to seeing that pretty quickly.

4 - Older industrial area that was first built.

5 - This area and South of the main road is the military defence which are barracks and my Guard Captain's office and quarters, best place to put them I think seeing that is where the entrance to the place is. This is where you can assign squads to sleep and spar with one another. There is also an archery range on the Southern road. The big blue block just West of the big yellow 5 is the trade depot where other civilisations can come and trade with me.

6- North of the yellow 6 are the fields which have their own seasonal crops which is one of the main reasons why my Dwarfs have not starved to death (yet). Also my main stock piles of food, wood, refuse and ammunition are also here.

7 - The main river flowing past my fort, and the source of lots of fishing. I think as times get more difficult and armies start to siege me I will channel the water into some sort of moat with a drawbridge. If I REALLY put some thought into it, I would set up a mechanical lever in the fort to unleash the entire water so it swept upwards and trapped/washed the opposing force away. However testing such a thing could be quite difficult!

Quite a wordy post, but this is not even touching the surface of this game.

But really, 5 megabytes and free download is a sure game to try. Be warned though that the amount of stuff to learn is INSANE. I've been playing for a few days wiki'ing everything to make things work, and I'm still finding new things out.

Also, I have the potential for a crazy cat lady.