One of these ways to lose is more fun than the other - try to say were-horse out loud without laughing - but what they have in common is failure, and telling the stories of your failure to others. Sometimes you lose because you didn’t know the keyboard commands to get your military to the right place at the right time. Sometimes you lose because of something you couldn’t have prepared for, like a were-horse attack.

On another, I used the wrong stairs and had half my dwarves trapped underground. On another, I forgot to get my farms up and running in any meaningful way and ran out of food. On one fortress, I dug into an aquifer and everyone drowned. This is less a game about making systems that work and more a game about the funny stories you’ll eventually tell. That “fun” might be something as simple as having too many cats in your fortress and watching the game’s framerate slow to the single digits, a goblin siege murdering all your dwarves, or accidentally tunnelling into hell. As Dwarf Fortress fans often say, in this game losing is fun. I wish everyone could experience Dwarf Fortress, but it’s a punishing game for people who like to be frustrated.ĭwarf Fortress isn’t for everyone. Nothing about it should work, but somehow it comes together. Dwarf Fortress is a two dimensional fortress-building game about dwarves, which often breaks in fascinating ways.

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