Dwarf Fortress: Now what in the hell is going on here?

Enosh is a big fan of Reddit, which as far as I know he uses solely to troll the /r Minecraft populace with his thoughts and feelings about the ever-popular game by Mojang.  Have you heard of Minecraft before?  That was a smart ass question.  Of course you have.  Don’t worry- this isn’t going to be another Minecraft post (though, tangent:  Jungles?  Cats?  AI that makes villagers spin in place like ferrets with ADD?  Whaaaaaat!) I’m sure you’ve had QUITE ENOUGH of that.

Anyway, in /r Minecraft, there are several games that are typically name dropped every so often.  One of them is a small, free, alpha game by the name of Dwarf Fortress.  Enosh sent me the link in an email about two weeks ago, and then promptly told me that he wasn’t going to play it because he has shit to do. I was immediately put off by the fact that the game is done completely in ASCII characters and agreed with him that maybe some games should be left unplayed.

But…  then… I got curious.  I’ve been helping dwarves to eke out an existence for over a week now, but unfortunately more of them have died, offered up as sacrifices to the most titanic learning curve I’ve ever seen in any game.

Minecraft: The best incomplete 8-bit game ever

Wow. This must have taken some serious man hours.

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up a naive PC gamer. I was partial to the LucasArts games, Day o f the Tentacle, X-wing, and the like. There’s  nothing like a machine with more input buttons than letters in the alphabet. Not to mention the PC was high-definition with full anti-aliasing before it was cool. So what’s one of the best games on the PC today? I’m arguing  it’s an 8-bit block builder called Minecraft. This indie game is unique in that the game is still in alpha development and is available for sale at half the projected retail price. That’s right! You can own a partially built game that could potentially break your computer.